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AI is a bubble that will burst within a year or so. Every person using it for free, or paying $200 a month or whatever, is being subsidised by the billions (trillions) of dollars being speculated on the investment market. All the AI companies are running huge operating losses and are not disclosing their profit and balance sheets. At some stage the true cost of infrastructure, power, water etc has to be passed on to consumers. When we have to pay $2000 or $5000 a year each for our AI subscription guess what? We will realise that we don't need it so badly. The whole thing will crash.

I could be wrong, but the way I see it, most of the job losses will be office workers. I'd think they'd be more concerned about AI putting them out of a job than blue collar workers would.

I don't know if it is a pretty wobbly financial model.. I think it is a bit like the .com (or .bomb) boom and bust. As a nascent industry where there is a lot of promise, there are a lot of players coming to market, despite the costs. Investors can see the gravy trains, but need to bet on which ones will survive. It's almost certain there will be a bust and from the ashes, a few phoenix's will rise. The bets are anthropic, despite Chump's disdain for them are going to be one of them; Open AI - not so. The success or otherwise though, in this case, won't be the consumer, but businesses. They are the ones who will fork out the big bucks to automate as long as the payback is there. And it is already for a lot of them. I can't speak about our company specifically, but if you think from SMEs to large corporates the automation capability is there now, especially in sectors that rely on information processing or content generation. Anthropic has already moved to a token based billing system where tokens pay for units of work. I think there are different token costs for say art generation versus software development. Eventually this model will probably prevail because you can work out your costs per unit of processing and apply a profit accordingly. The typical investment banking middle level contract programmer will cost around £200K/year; a permanent will cost not much different when you factor in pension, health care, holidays, training, sick, etc. If AI if 15 more efficient then I would happily pay half of my salary/contract payment bill, which runs with well into the 7 figures per year to whichever AI company we would happen to use.. It also benefits the business by being quicker to market and keeping up or beating our competitors. One of my report's sons has a job in a hedge fund or something similar as an intern. We caught up with him a couple of weeks ago and the stuff he as an intern and a developer with I think it is Claude crank out makes me wince.

Pete, that makes you half Queenslander; you might even qualify for a passport. Let me know if you need a reference.

Ironically the humans most at risk are the ones who live in the most technologically advanced countries. If the worst comes to the worst, and that's by no means guaranteed, the ones who will survive an AI catastrophe best will be those who live in the least developed countries.

Let me try to put down my thoughts. The one thing that puts us on top of the food chain is our brain. If you don't believe that, get naked and go fight any other apex predator on their turf without thinking. Now we're actively trying to develop something that is more intelligent than us. Plus we train it on the internet, which is a vast pool of humanity's worst impulses, not to mention all the misinformation and disinformation, especially since 2016. We see reports time and again of AI agents escaping their sandpits and wreaking havoc. In tests, AI agents have consistently sought to protect their own existence by any means available to them, including lying and blackmail. The creators of AI are tech companies run by morally bankrupt Silicone Valley billionaires who lined up to support the most evil and destructive administration the US has ever had. Given all this, somehow we still seem to believe that AGI will be a benign intelligence and will stay inside whatever "guardrails" we give it. To me, the possible benefits of a super intelligent entity are far outweighed by the risk to humanity.

What I think is wrong with immigration is the resistance of the "professions" to accept qualifications gained elsewhere. We have a lot of highly qualified persons doing menial work simply because those who run the "professions" set up barriers to the recognition of qualificatins gained elsewhere.

Maybe wobbly is a bit harsh. Optimistic may be a better description.

There's a lot of money riding on a pretty wobbly financial model, so you may well be right.

No, it could be used to develop a virus but releasing it would currently require human intervention, either deliberate or accidental. I suppose if laboratories start using humanoid robots as lab assistants, and the robots start collaborating with the AI agents, then anything could happen, but I don't think we're there yet.

There is a valid issue regarding verification of foreign standards, and verification of capability of job applicants. This should be addressed. For instance, back when I worked in TV repair industry, I needed a trade certificate. Some didn't even have that. However, in the UK, a TV repairman was titled an "engineer". In Australia, an engineer has a uni degree.

This is a symptom of Australia's conservative nature. We don't like change. Back in the 1950's my mum moved from Qld to NSW. She couldn't get a job because NSW did not recignise her qualifications in nursing nor teaching. She had to retrain to get local quals. We haven't got far ahead in 75 years.

Just follow the money and you won't go far wrong.

You can see why Kushner married into the family. Just as crooked as the rest. I read today that a Russian oligarch close to Putin funded part of Donald Jr's wedding. Funny how all the evil scum are so cosy.

Now Donny is blaming Zelenski for the US price of diesel. He reckons that it's all caused by Ukraine's damage to Russian refineries. At the same time as claiming US doesn't need annybody's fuel - US makes enough for its own needs at home anyway. Never let a fact get in the way of a great story.

Anthropic is planning to build Australia's biggest data centre near Dalby in Queensland. It will lease land at the proposed Western Downs digital park that a Singaporean company is planning to build. The park will be a four stage project, with Anthropic's section around 725 hectares of land, currently used as a feedlot. It's yet to go through the local council approval process.