All these things are apparently valued at trillions of dollars these days. Where's the trillions, or hundreds of billions worth in improved quality of life? What has gotten better other than the ability to produce more crap?

In terms of SpaceX (the space portion of it) they've produced the cheapest way to get any payload into space. If you pay anybody else, you will overpay drastically depending on who you want to take your payload into space.

In terms of AI, we've seen even here on HN everything from mathematical problems that remaind unsolved, being solved, mathematical proofs being used to disprove theories, heck we even learned more about alzheimers, new antibiotics, precision targeting in oncology, using AI to flag healthcare anomalies in imaging. The benefits are easy to miss, but they're snowballing into place, there's definitely an explosion of useless crap, but you have to look for the real things and you will come to find, that AI is giving us things we otherwise either might not have discovered or wouldn't have within our lifetimes.

Comments like these make me feel like we're living in different worlds. I use LLMs multiple times a day and they've significantly improved my quality of life. They are also steadily becoming more useful over time (e.g. now solving math problems).

Try to keep perspective, these valuations are just functions of the stock market the end result of some spreadsheet. They have nothing to do with quality of life. Why would you relate those two things in the first place?

> Where's the trillions, or hundreds of billions worth in improved quality of life?

Starlink and Claude are both awesome and huge QoL improvements for me!

Nominal global financial wealth is about $350 trillion. If you include real estate global nominal wealth is about $600 trillion.

A good portion of that[1] is what alot of people might call fake money--valuation inflation, etc. And global wealth, even just financial wealth, isn't quite as mobile across borders as one might assume. So marshalling a trillion dollars stateside is gonna make at least some moderate waves. Still, in the grand, global scheme of things a trillion dollars is a rounding error. A trillion isn't what it used to be, and there's trillions to be had even without any realized productivity gains from AI.

[1] I'm no financial analyst, but judging by the last few recessions and the overall trajectory over the past 30 years, I'd ballpark at most about 1/3 of that to go up in smoke if we had a severe downturn tomorrow. It's not all fake money. The whole world has industrialized over the past 30 years on a scale that is still unfathomable for most people today.

Raven, Raven.. that's for those who can borrow against that to know and you to likely never find out.

What you thought your life would improve? Didn't you hear, wages are only increasing, why don't you invest some of that sweet cash into @JumpCrissCross' fund, it'll be alright. What were you going to do with healthcare anyway?

Quality of life doesnt matter. What matters is the choices people make to spend their money on. This is what drives profits.

If you are upset about people spending their extra productivity and labor hours on poision and mental laxitives, i would mostly agree. This is a failure of culture to adapt to distratcions and shiny objects

I think this is the story of tech in general. In my life, I've seen 3 really big steps down for the middle class: 2001, 2008 and then covid. Basic necessities are expensive today - people point to high GDP but what I see is high prices and poverty. And Tech, we've built a dystopian surveillance state.

> Where's the trillions, or hundreds of billions worth in improved quality of life?

I think these IPOs are going to mint tens of thousands of new millionaires or something. That, in turn, will generate massive tax windfalls for all levels of government.

> other than the ability to produce more crap?

This is a big "other than." (And to be clear, the jury is still out on whether AI will let us produce more in the long run.)

The stock market is just a game that rich people use to manipulate money. It is not a reflection of the real world. Consider for example Google, one of the companies with highest valuation in the market. If Google stops working now, the only problem we'll have is getting a few minutes back of our time. Nobody will have big issues in life because one cannot find a web page, view more ads, and watch silly videos! However they will swear that Google is the most important company in the world to justify the money people throw at it. I won't even go to Meta, which is like celebrating that people are using crack cocaine...

this sounds like a reddit comment too much. why would trillions of dollars improve your quality of life. a bunch of companies get investments from a bunch of VCs who took out loans... and that means your quality of life should improve?

And what's more crap exactly? it feels like your grasping at straws to take one set of things and associate them with others. yeah, lots of terrible products out there, lots of enshittification, lots of topics of discussion there. But AI and GPUs are being used in such a diverse way it is impossible to have one opinion on it all like how you're trying to.

I'm not even disagreeing (or agreeing with you), I'm just saying that's a lazy comment to make. if these companies making profits without paying taxes, that's a voter problem (not even politics, just people being shitty voters, self not excluded).

For everyone else who might think they have a better formed opinion on this topic, I only ask that you apply the same level of passion to how the US national debt is now 120% of the GDP. The government is fighting wars and printing money, devaluing your wealth, and indebting your country to previously unseen levels. At least the banks and VCs are using their money (unless they get a bail out again), not your actual tax money, and the tax money and wealth of generations of Americans. You have a president literally stealing billions of dollars in broad day light from literally you.