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birb_cromble  2d ago (text post)   328 thread views

Weekly Finance Thread 2026-06-06

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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I mean, even if you think there are only those three, there's the possibility that you investing might change the relative proportions of them; there's no point preparing for AI doom, but there's a lot of point in trying to avert it.

I think the second and third scenarios are basically screened off in the near future. Neural net alignment is probably impossible, and it seems unlikely that AI will naturally plateau at "highly profitable but not table-flipping".

Here are the scenarios I see:

  1. World destroyed by AI. As noted, the only thing relevant about this scenario is trying to avoid it.
  2. Neural nets banned or heavily restricted, all neural-net companies have 80% of their market cap go to money heaven overnight. Alignable AI may be developed at some point 30-100 years in the future, but not necessarily by the companies we have now, and even then investing in companies that are trying to cause Interesting Times risks being stiffed by those with more direct control of the singularity event (what are you going to do, sue them?).

Obviously, this means that from my POV investing in these companies might as well be throwing the money in a fire (barring Greater Fool, and even then you're risking scenario 1).

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