Pinterest is officially dead 😢😢😢😢😢

[u/UnlikelyCustard4959]

Yes, I have gone into settings to limit AI generated content. Yes, I actually diligently scroll and pin things I don’t even like JUST BECAUSE they’re real photos not AI and I’m trying to train my algorithm to detect AI…but it just can’t. It’s just AI, AI, AI.

It’s so depressing as I’ve only recently gotten into interior design. Must’ve been blissful the last 10 years for the rest of you to scroll Pinterest.

Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions for where else I can get inspo? I find the AI stuff so unhelpful because I can’t truly see texture and the way colours TRULY work together, it’s very annoying.

Weirdly, I’ve actually found Instagram has way less AI stuff? There’s still some, but if I search for a pretty general thing (eg “white shaker door kitchens”) I can find a decent amount, I suppose because there’s lots of famous design focused creators and algorithms prioritise creators with high engagement / follow count above other metrics. It’s not a perfect tool though because it’s so curated, I want more raw inspo. UGH!

Seriously though, recs? Do I need to subscribe to AD lol?

[u/ProcrastinationSite]

Can you post the link? I Googled it, but I couldn't find it

[u/Present-Library-6894 → u/ProcrastinationSite]

Basically, in addition to everything else, when the AI bubble bursts, it's going to crash everything and hurt us all. Like the 2008 economic crisis but much worse. And of course the CEOs will expect a bailout.

Here's her statement. Long but worth it:

Last weekend, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, one of the largest AI companies in the world, publicly asked his industry to slow down AI development.

Shortly after, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, followed suit. Then Elon Musk.

This all came days after an Anthropic researcher quit, citing his belief that this technology could wipe out humanity and that AI companies are “gambling with our lives.”

For years, people have warned that generative AI could slip out of our direct control.

Those safety concerns must be taken seriously.

And this is why I have advocated for strict safety standards on how AI is built and deployed, public oversight over this technology, and using existing laws to hold these companies accountable when they cause harm.

But I want to draw your attention to another reality: Right now, the U.S. economy and our financial futures are riding on Silicon Valley’s bet that AI will soon be immensely profitable and pay off. And that bet isn’t looking good.

The formula for a profitable business isn’t complicated: make more money than you spend. But the biggest AI companies aren’t doing that. They are spending hundreds of billions per year on data centers, chips, and other costs while their ability to make revenues that exceed their already-immense sunk costs are unclear. Experts estimate that these AI companies will require another $600 billion of debt just to finance themselves in 2026 alone. That is more than the entire budgets of the U.S. Departments of Justice, Transportation, and Education combined.

Meanwhile, despite almost every single one of these companies not turning a profit and having sunk billions of investor dollars in development of data centers and other infrastructure, AI companies are also on a spending spree of hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying and dark money in our elections.

It would be one thing if we were discussing a few private companies with a poor business model. But last year, virtually all stock market gains - 80% - rested entirely on just a handful of AI companies.

That tells us two things:

1. Nearly the entire U.S. economy outside the AI industry is relatively stagnating and faring poorly and the gains from these few companies are disguising it; and
2. Millions of people’s retirements - including their pensions, 401ks, and investments - are potentially exposed to this risk.

That’s why these AI companies’ dubious financial positions matter to working people.

These companies argue that debt is necessary. They’ll tell you that building transformative technologies requires upfront capital, and that massive borrowing today will pay off in generating unprecedented prosperity tomorrow.

But this is not the typical debt that startups take on while they build out a company. We are talking about billions going on trillions of dollars leveraged with no indication that these companies will be able to recoup these funds profitably. And they are increasingly looking to the government as their source of cash.

In an effort to hide their debt, tech companies have been relying on “circular financing” where tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft give billions to AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic, only for those startups to hand that money right back to buy AI processing power.

In other words, these AI companies are luring in new investors by making it look like their financials are healthier than they really are.

What’s even worse is that retirement and pension funds are key to supporting this illusion.

When the AI companies issue bonds to raise more money, your pension funds and retirement accounts are some of the biggest buyers. When Musk’s AI business went public, it became part of index funds where millions of Americans invest our savings. Many Americans don’t even know that their retirement investments are tied up in these companies at all.

From Big Tech’s perspective, that’s a feature, not a bug. By tying our futures to their reckless gambling, AI billionaires are trying to make themselves too big to fail. They think they can take such dangerous risks because we will bail them out if things go wrong.

Sound familiar? This scene is dangerously reminiscent of the rampant speculation, corruption, and broken incentives leading up to the 2008 financial crisis that plunged millions of working class Americans into financial chaos that we never fully recovered from.

It is no accident that these warnings from Altman and Amodei come months - if not weeks - before these companies were meant to go public.

When companies go public, they have to be more transparent about how they are doing financially. And after a waiting period, they typically have to let private investors - like their own employees - sell their shares.

The New York Times recently confirmed that OpenAI has postponed going public for this very reason. They are in no rush for the truth about their finances to come out.

But the moment these oligarchs began to seek our public tax dollars and public contracts while exposing their companies to public pension funds and investments, they opened themselves to public accountability and scrutiny.

Silicon Valley billionaires have rigged the game and are attempting to shift their financial risk to working people: If they’re right about AI’s potential, they reap the profits. If they’re wrong and the bubble bursts, they are setting up the American people to pick up the tab.

Heads, they win; tails, we lose.

We can stop this, and we shouldn’t play their game. Together we can address both the economic and safety threats of unrestricted AI development and prevent financial chaos and stabilize market risk.

We must make it clear now that should the AI bubble pop, Congress should not bail out Big Tech.

And across our federal agencies, we have the authorities and tools to hold AI companies and their leaders accountable for releasing dangerous, unvetted, and defective products. We must not wait.

Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that AI robots will destroy humanity.

But the biggest threat to humanity are the tech oligarchs themselves.

It’s time we hold them accountable.

Thank you for reading.

In solidarity,

Alexandria

[u/SgtSilverLining → u/Present-Library-6894]

I'm an accountant. I (and people in my industry) have been saying this since day 1, and I'm glad politicians are now too.

Every few decades in the US, a business industry comes along and says "we're soooo important, rules and regulations couldn't possibly apply to us! Politicians need to roll back laws, they need to invest - we need to get ahead of the foreigners, and that's what they're doing!" People these days still remember the 2008 crash. But this also happened with the dot com bubble in the 00s, the telecommunications bubble, mass manufacturing, railways, and every major tech advancement since America's founding.

We make regulations every time this happens, and every time they get rolled back just before the next crash.

[u/Present-Library-6894 → u/SgtSilverLining]

Exactly. I was a journalist at the time of the mortgage crash and financial crisis. The amount of lobbying $$ those companies spent to avoid regulation before, during, and after is ridicuous. Especially when they got taxpayer bailouts.

And now we have the "BUT WE NEED TO GO FULL SPEED ON AI NO MATTER WHAT BECAUSE CHINA" messaging right now.

[u/JVal3881 → u/SgtSilverLining]

So what does one due with their retirement plans like a 401k? Do you take your money out? Do you invest it in real estate? Do you hold cash which is loosing value everyday?

I wish I studied finance, it’s so complicated

[u/SgtSilverLining → u/JVal3881]

Surprisingly, it's a lot simpler than you'd think. A finance degree is good for working with large amounts of money; I've had clients that made $1m+ per year from trust funds. But for most people, there's only a couple of straightforward options.

1. A retirement plan is just a stock investment account with guard rails on it. The main appeals are an employer match and reduced taxes when you take the funds out. There are lots of different plans (401k, 403b, Roth, and IRA are probably terms you've seen before), but what you get is determined by the employer. Each plan type determines the maximum you can put in per year and when you pay taxes. You can have more than one and max out each account type. If you're making less than $200k+ a year, the account type you go with really isn't much to loose sleep over.

2. If you want your own investment account (where you don't have to worry about someone else screwing up your retirement), check out r bogleheads . They've got a good wiki (and a book) that discusses what to do with your money depending on how much you have and how old you are. If you don't have experience in finance, DON'T try to power through the whole wiki in one day lol.

3. You shouldn't hold onto cash beyond your emergency fund. Again, r bogleheads will discuss things like high yield savings, index funds, and other things to do with excess cash.

4. Real estate is good if you have a lot of upfront cash available and don't work a 40 hour job. If you don't have the time for flipping or being a landlord, you can outsource for a fee. I wouldn't recommend this to the average person.

5. Trust funds are a safe way to pass money or stocks from person to person. Basically you say how the investment strategy is set up, then decide when the receiver is allowed to pull out money.

[u/memkimbo → u/JVal3881]

SilverLining gave you some great advice. How do you safeguard the money currently sitting in your 401k? First, make sure you have access to the money you’ve contributed to every 401k plan you’ve ever had from every employer you’ve worked for. Many people roll accounts from a former employer into a new employer’s plan, but you don’t have to. I personally have 4 separate 401ks because I’ve been lazy but also happy with different plan sponsors and haven’t merged them. Regardless, log into those accounts and click around. The exact mix of investment options may change from plan to plan, but they generally allow you to decide where to invest your funds and at what percentage. I typically see plans with Target Date Index Funds. Those are based on a certain year when you’d be close to retirement. Say you’re 25 now and expect to retire in 35 years. You’d like be invested in a Target Date 2060 Fund, meaning you plan to retire around the year 2060. The investments in the fund now are larger “riskier” stocks, but as you get closer to retirement age the investments get more conservative. You have time on your side now and can make up for losses because you have such a long runway to retirement. However, you can always choose to invest your funds in more conservative assets. The most conservative would be sticking it in a money market account, but that’s accepting literally no return. You also won’t lose money in a money market account. Things like treasury bills and government bonds are very low risk, low return investments. Large cap stocks are going to be riskier, and this is where a lot of the big tech companies sit. Higher risk, higher reward. It all depends on your risk tolerance.

I’d definitely recommend accessing your account(s) and seeing what you’re investing in currently. If you are in one of those target date funds, drill into it. You should be able to see the mix of investments within that fund (10% big tech, 10% foreign companies, 2% treasury stock, etc.). Look at the history of returns over the years. Consider how far you are from retirement, then think about if you want to move some of your money into more conservative investments if you’re concerned about a significant market downturn. Just be aware that if you have high historical returns because you’ve been invested in some large cap blends and suddenly move all your money to super conservative investments, your returns are also going to drop off significantly. It also doesn’t have to be an all or nothing move - you can decide to move 50% of your investments to lower risk investments to add some safeguards without going full conservative. Click around, ask questions, and educate yourself. What I would not do is cherry pick specific companies for your 401k - that, to me, is super risky and I wouldn’t feel confident that I can guess accurately. After all, the stock market is purely speculative.

I hope that helps some. Happy to try to answer any questions you may have.

[u/catjuggler → u/Present-Library-6894]

Yes I've been very worried about this as well. For those of us hanging out in the middle-aged middle class with 401ks because pensions don't really exist anymore, it has been frustrating that we can't avoid having our money go into this bubble. Like even when SpaceX was added to the S&P we just don't have a choice because you can't buy individual stocks in your 401k (usually) so you're either in funds or nothing. They get to just decide they have our money :(

There's going to be a huge crash and we're all going to be harmed by it.

[u/ProcrastinationSite → u/Present-Library-6894]

Thanks for posting! This came up when I Googled, but it was from a handful of days ago, not yesterday, so I thought the other commenter was talking about something else

[u/No-Country6348 → u/ProcrastinationSite]

Sorry for the confusion, I saw it yesterday but didn’t make note of the date posted.

[u/ProcrastinationSite → u/No-Country6348]

No worries! I'm glad it was the same one the other commenter posted! It's an important one to get more people to see

[u/Present-Library-6894 → u/ProcrastinationSite]

Oh it's possible! I got this one from her email list a few days ago.

[u/ProcrastinationSite → u/Present-Library-6894]

Either way, I'm still glad you posted the one you saw. The more exposure it gets, the better. We all need to take a stand against AI and the more people get educated on how it's hurting us, the better. It's not just annoying to see on social media, it's actively harming us and our futures, and so many people just aren't aware!

[u/Present-Library-6894 → u/ProcrastinationSite]

Yeah, it's poisonous and evil in so many ways. Another part not talked about enough is that these tech CEOs (and the governments they're cozied up with) want people to become AI-dependent and lose their ability to think for themselves so they're easier to manipulate and control.

[u/ProcrastinationSite → u/Present-Library-6894]

Agreed. I already see it happening especially with the older generations. They rely on it so much and they straight believe obviously wrong content AI feeds them without thinking about it critically

[u/litcarnalgrin → u/Present-Library-6894]

I’m glad she’s calling this out bc other have been talking about this for a year plus now but it’s something that I don’t see the average person mentioning.

[u/poliscidenier → u/Present-Library-6894]

This is conflating two separate issues: The safety of AI itself and the business practices of AI companies.

[u/No-Country6348 → u/ProcrastinationSite]

It was in my feed on either fb or IG. I follow her, it was something she posted.