Ask HN: What if no AIpocalypse, no AI bubble, what if it just keeps advancing?

The two mainstream arguments are the extremes, because that's how our modern society rolls. It's either that there is an AI bubble that will crash, or that a rogue ASI will kill us all.What about the third possibility? What if GPT 3.5 -> Sonnet 3.5 -> Opus 4.5 -> Astra / Opus 5.5 just keeps going over the next few years? Based on my experience, that will eat all software and software-related meetings. Once lab researchers focus on fields other than software, they will eat those nearly as quickly.This feels like the real contrarian position in 2026. What does the US economy, which is >70% service-based, look like in the next 3 to 5 years if this happens?Does a couple labs having control of that percentage of the GDP make an economy? What if it happens too quickly? Is this the real reason as to why they are talking about "pacing the frontier" all of a sudden? Maybe due to the fact that the labs' own economists pointed out that collapsing your country's economy might not be a good idea?What does unemployment look like in the next few years in this scenario, in the USA?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50020096

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