this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2026
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[–] evenglow@lemmy.world 140 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

This is not about China. This is about private equity being so desperate for money they want new laws that allow the shadow PE banking system access to government money. Tax payer money.

Be very careful around this topic. Reading headlines isn't going to cut it and this is very dangerous territory.

The house of cards needs money urgently. Your money and they are done asking nicely.

[–] tacoplease@lemmy.world 40 points 3 weeks ago

Not just tax payer money, your money, your personal savings.

They're going to burn it all and then oh too bad, it's too big to bailout so fuck you American people! Keep working in servitude till you die at your post.

[–] Bluegrass_Addict@lemmy.ca 18 points 3 weeks ago

I just want to see billions vs 20... one at a time like civilized people. each billionaire+ must defend their life/money by physically fighting every human on earth.. one by one.

[–] BreakerSwitch@lemmy.world 11 points 3 weeks ago

No shit it's not about China. The China argument has whatever threat level is convenient at the moment, which is why we couldn't possibly give any chips to China, until actually Nvidia kind of wants to send chips to china because they want that money too. If it was a real threat, the messaging would have any sort of fucking consistency.

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[–] bricker@lemmy.dbzer0.com 60 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Thats why NASDAQ recently updated rules to allow faster entry into index funds. SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI all will get into index funds and 401k's in 15 days from their IPO now, which means their price collapse will use our retirement accounts as a cushion. Which is pretty on-par for these people.

[–] BreakerSwitch@lemmy.world 16 points 3 weeks ago

Can't wait for every index to have spacex and other ai companies so the retirement funds I can't change the investments for without taking a massive tax hit can have their value diverted into the pockets of the richest men in the world.

[–] Hacksaw@lemmy.ca 45 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

But China isn't spending trillions on their AI....

Why do we need to spend trillions to stay ahead of someone who is only spending billions? Might be worth looking into whatever leak in the system is extracting so much money we need to spend 1000x what our competitors are spending just to keep up. We could start by looking at people who have hundreds of billions of dollars at the heads of the AI companies, looks like a few hundred billions might have slipped into their wallets by accident. I'm sure they'll be happy to give it back to the people.

[–] YoureHotCupCake@lemmy.world 17 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Because China has taken the open source route with their AI and are allowing people from all over to use/contribute to their models. You cannot outspend what they are getting for free, and while our companies compete with one another to be the one true AI company, China's companies/citizens are cooperating with one another to build their AI.

They will win the AI war simply by not playing the capitalism game, all while undermining the enormous investment the US has made into our AIs.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 13 points 3 weeks ago (13 children)

Uh that's not how this works. They're not open source, they're open weight. Well, the smaller distillations are. The big ones are still closed. And it takes a bunch of compute to train them, but they've learned to be thriftier since they don't have access to nearly as much parallel compute as the American companies right now. The models also tend to trail in performance. Takes a lot less to compete for third place than first.

[–] AbsolutePain@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago

Why is this being downvoted? It's factually true.

I'd love actual open source training somehow. But at the moment I don't think an asynchronous training mechanism that would enable this exists, given that running the flagship models on even a small batch of data requires massive compute power.

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[–] MartianRecon@lemmus.org 29 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Oh so you guys didn't give a fuck about China's superior railway system, their better electric cars, and their other areas where they have on par, or superior tech than we do. But when they have better AI you guys want the country to bend over and get fist fucked.

Get the fuck out of here.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

We don’t care about better EVs, we will protect our buggy whip industry at all costs to our own consumers

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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

But when they have better AI you guys want the country to bend over and get fist fucked.

It's legit infuriating to see the Chinese economy investing in bluesky R&D, which has the long term benefit of better software, cheaper hardware, and more useful technology. All while American politicians insist "We need to build more hand cranks and charcoal fire pits to power our billionaire sponsored CSAM engines!"

All this while US Tech Companies turn increasingly to religious hacks to launder their shitty apps and platforms.

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[–] Astronut@lemmy.zip 26 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
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[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 24 points 3 weeks ago

Better idea: tax billionaires. They're the main beneficiaries, they should pay.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 3 weeks ago

It's the final Pillaging stage of a society which is almost entirely structured to maximize rent-seeking of the Owner class.

The snake is eating itself.

[–] dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 21 points 3 weeks ago

Paging Luigi…

[–] FukOui@lemmy.zip 20 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

So that's why nasdaq is changing their rules for SpaceX IPO?

[–] AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I suspect Musk did it first and now that guy wants in on the scam too

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[–] a9249@lemmy.ca 17 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

And there it is folks, the end of the pension plans nationwide.

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[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 16 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (6 children)

As an aside, these types love to see ML development as a money problem: the more you throw at it, the more results you get.

That’s not how it’s been working in practice, though.

More resource constrained companies have gotten thrifty or creative. They’re forced to be efficient and realistic, and to look at interesting papers to fold into their stuff.

At the other extreme, there’s mounting anecdotes that Meta, XAI, and maybe others are spending many man hours simply trying to scale across huge clusters, or even giving GPUs “busywork” to meet resource utilization contracts. That they’re using old architectures. They’re using orders of magnitude more resources to make just slightly better models than small, cheap ones. And even if that’s overblown, their leaders are making terrible decisions, with nutty machinations, and aren’t getting punished for it because they have too much money.

It’s also fueling literal sociopaths like Altman as they do their best to snuff out competition.

All this capital is poisoning the AI space in the US. And it’s going to the wrong places.

Regardless of how everyone feels about “AI,” I believe most of the US is going to fall behind because of this. Except maybe Google.

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[–] Legonatic@lemmy.world 14 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Larry Fink is just another evil out of touch billionaire.

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[–] Greyghoster@aussie.zone 14 points 3 weeks ago

Man with money wants to steal yours to fund a risky bubble? What could possibly go wrong?

[–] Lor@mander.xyz 14 points 3 weeks ago

Fuck Blackrock.

[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 14 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Oh boy, when dedolarization comes, it's going to hit the US like a wall of radioactive bricks.

[–] trackball_fetish@lemmy.wtf 5 points 3 weeks ago

Its already here more or less

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[–] GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world 13 points 3 weeks ago

The thing is the West and China are not really using AI in the same way so saying we are in a race with them is incorrect and using old Cold War tactics to scare the West into spending more money on this technology.

Example of the differences:

The US and China are taking very different paths in the development and deployment of artificial intelligence. In the US, innovation has largely focused on large language models (LLMs) and the virtual world, resulting in chatbots, image generators, and digital assistants like ChatGPT and Copilot. These tools have captured the imagination of both consumers and investors, but questions are now emerging about their real economic value. A recent MIT study, The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025, found that while more than 80% of organizations are experimenting with generative AI, only about 5% of pilots are delivering measurable value. Most remain stuck in early phases, hindered by fragile workflows, poor integration, and a lack of systemic readiness. Meanwhile, informal ‘shadow AI’ usage, that is employees using tools outside official channels, has exploded, thereby creating a mismatch between official adoption and actual productivity gains.

By contrast, China’s approach to AI is more grounded in real-world applications. As Chinese economist Andy Xie recently explained on Tegenlicht, AI development in China is focused on practical domains such as mining, electric vehicles, and industrial efficiency. Unlike the high-cost, high-hype American model, China’s AI strategy emphasizes low-cost, scalable technology that delivers tangible utility. This makes it particularly attractive to the Global South, where cost and accessibility often outweigh cutting-edge innovation. A striking example is DeepSeek, a Chinese open-source chatbot that was developed with limited funding and no ties to elite academic institutions. Despite this, it is 10× more energy-efficient than OpenAI’s models and is already being integrated into consumer products like cars.

https://freedomlab.com/posts/the-ai-narrative-divide-between-the-us-and-china

[–] finallymadeanaccount@lemmy.world 12 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

How about raising money by auctioning off CEOs?

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[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 12 points 3 weeks ago

Hey guys, let's give your pensions to a few CEO's, sounds like a good plan?

[–] Adalast@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago

Let's start with law congressional pensions and 3rd party law enforcement contracts, yeah?

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
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[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Hey its like I been saying for a while now:

Oh you think you have a 401k huh?

That's cute.

[–] REDACTED@infosec.pub 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Why does US feel the need to compete with China? It's going to play out just like when Soviets tried to keep up with the US spending

[–] Dearth@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago

Because the oligarchs in the West recognize that their power will vanish once the people stop thinking of China as an enemy and instead objectively compare the quality of life for the average person in the 2 countries

[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Hey guys, let's liquidate Social Security and invest it all in AI and reap Huuuugee profits!

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[–] eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 3 weeks ago

AI is a fascist scam.

[–] Stern@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago

TIL the Blackrock CEO is appropriately named.

[–] Floon@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

AI is going to crash the economy. It doesn't have a business model that pays for itself. Less capacity is being built than is claimed, and companies like Microsoft and Google would essentially have to double their total revenue to cover the AI capex. Read Ed Zitron for a sober detailed take on the state of the AI industry.

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[–] MrSulu@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 weeks ago

Yes, to be competitive, keeping our people (checks notes) GREAT, we need to access the very money that they already don't have enough of to live safely in later life.

[–] metermatic26@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago

What the actual f#*k…

This is like a daytime robbery.

[–] kerrigan778@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 weeks ago

All that money couldn't pay for a better human suit?

[–] mrmisses@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago
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