It seems plausible that we’ll experience massive economic growth within the next decade due to advances in AI. How are you all taking advantage of this? What companies are you investing in, what assets are you holding onto? Are you not investing in some orgs as you think it would be counterproductive? Why?
[Question] What is your financial portfolio?
I’m not at all confident that “We’ll see lots of economic growth acceleration from AI” implies “The value of publicly traded company stocks or bonds I can currently buy will increase.” So I haven’t shifted where my investments go.
I have increased my savings rate in the past few years, but that’s mostly because of a better paying job and a change in lifestyle (sold my house, became a full-time RVing nomad living in a way that reduced my expenses).
In the process I increased my adaptability to some kinds of risks and disruptions. Nothing that would protect me from a truly bad AI outcome, obviously, but now I have my own electricity supply from solar+batteries+inverter; I typically have ~2 weeks of fresh water in storage at any one time; I can easily move all my belongings (as long as there’s gas) for any reason; and I’ve learned to be slightly more handy and am continuing to work on increasing that.
Fruit fly doubling time servitor shoggoth economy doesn’t bother going public? I worry everything in legacy economy turns worthless, the months between the first AGI and completion of the first compute manufacturing megaproject involve shortages of basic necessities, even if eventually humans get their virtual pens. A portfolio of food, water, and fuel seems prudent, once AGI is deployed.
I’m concerned with being in a good place before the Anthropocene is over. After that, I think financial portfolio’s are mostly useless. Except for the situation were we’re not all dead but we don’t get utopia. Instead, we get our property rights respected but lose control over the future. But right now, I’m just interested in being wealthy for the rest of my life.
I’m gesturing at possible chaos in the transitional period, when human orgs still manage legacy resources, but their actions in response to the general upset result in some humanitarian issues. (So it’s an argument that a hoard of food and water is a way of being in a good place for the last few months before the Anthropocene is over.) I think this is plausible with the sort of minimally aligned AGI that doesn’t killeveryone, unless large scale compute manufacturing is feasible literally without any delay, or strong superintelligence doesn’t require it.
FWIW, here’s how my “investment” strategy has been changing (“investment” considered broadly, in a time=money sense).
I’m weighting foreign language acquisition less than I used to, in part because advances in AI are making that a somewhat less-valuable skill than I had originally anticipated.
I’m googling for websites a lot less than I used to. This is partially because Google’s web search has declined in quality (and while its competitors can roughly match it, none have really leapfrogged it) and partially because the web itself has become such a morass of crap. I’m correspondingly increasing my investment in particular sources of web content (these seem vulnerable as well, so I’m keeping my options open, but by the time AI starts writing LW content on the regular it might be worth reading). I’m long on the wisdom of the ancients, short on anything expressed in an op-ed.
I’ve given up on Twitter/Facebook, and am finding my long-shot investment of time in Mastodon to be paying off better than I’d hoped. I’m tentatively exploring other fediverse options.
I’ve been divesting from politics / political arguments broadly for a while, and shifting to a more-local focus on political action (meaning not just action involving governments & elections, but any organized efforts for social goals). This is I think in part motivated by an inchoate hunch that our ability to rationally observe and engage in useful discourse about events outside of our own back yards is going to be terribly disrupted by AI/bot-fueled disinformation.
My retirement portfolio is slightly more tech-heavy now, but I otherwise don’t feel confident picking winners & losers among public companies or sectors and haven’t made any galaxy-brained I-think-I’m-smarter-than-the-market moves.
So far, my policy of frugality has paid good dividends. My spending has been largely in sectors less-affected by inflation, and I have accumulated enough buffer savings that if my job gets automated away I’ll have some time to pivot gracefully.
I continue to be long on health, and take steps to secure a vigorous longevity to the extent fortune allows. Whatever happens in the coming decades, I don’t want to miss it.
Biggest positions (in order):
NVDA (NVidia)
SPLX(3x S&P)
TQQQ(3x tech)
VT (total world shares)
XOM (Exxon Mobil)
MSFT (Microsoft)
AAPL (Apple)
I wasn’t initially so heavy in NVDA, but graphics cards go brrr.
Why XOM?
With reinvested dividends and rising price, it simply grew to become one of my bigger positions. I invested in a variety of industries and this is how it ended up. I did consciously increase my positions in NVDA, MSFT, TQQQ, and GOOG (Google) in light of recent AI advances though.
Large cap tech stocks with leverage
Doesn’t that reduce your portfolio’s volatility, and hence potential upside? Note: I know very little about investing.
It’s risky. Don’t know about reducing potential upside but it’s not a huge amount of leverage. I mathematically can’t get wiped out of my positions. Don’t know if it’s a maximal EV play but I am up a lot.