4/3/2026 at 1:00:22 AM
What's causing the interest rate hikes, Marc? Could it be inflation? Could that be caused, at least in part, by AI sucking up all kinds of things? There's more than one way for it to kill jobs.by jsLavaGoat
4/3/2026 at 3:42:07 AM
Why would AI cause inflation? If anything the drop in cost of labor should be massively deflationary.by hyperadvanced
4/3/2026 at 11:42:54 AM
As the other commenter pointed out, AI is deflationary unless it’s a scam. Cost increases in a subset of the market doesn’t counteract that.Tariffs and dropping 20% of global fossil fuel production on the other hand are _massive_ inflation boosts. The US government is using an assault rifle to shoot the US economy in the foot.
by jurgenburgen
4/3/2026 at 6:07:44 PM
> As the other commenter pointed out, AI is deflationary unless it’s a scam.That other commenter made a very common mistake - confuse shallow econ theory with reality. In practice, AI doesn't have to be a scam in order to be inflationary, it has to only incur higher costs than the labor savings, which is clearly the case today.
The cost of AI has to include the cost of public assistance to the "saved labor" because without that things get political. If you think about it, there's no way for AI to result in anything other than harm in a system which is not specifically built to accommodate AI.
The inflationary pressure is additionally increased by providing the services far below cost on a vast scale. Think about near-worldwide free LLM usage funded by... US inflation, that's the reality.
> Tariffs and dropping 20% of global fossil fuel production on the other hand are _massive_ inflation boosts.
War and war funding are also massive inflation boosts, they should not be missed when discussing inflation.
by bigbadfeline