The fear is that, if the past is anything to go by, the AI boom will follow a similar arc to these other technology-driven infrastructure booms: a flood of speculative capital will flow in, leading to massive overinvestment, asset price bubbles and ultimately a crash as euphoria collides with a disappointing reality.
Shocking.
I’m only shocked that the “euphoria” hasn’t collided with the disappointing reality yet. At least not catastrophically.
It seems the more abstracted the financial systems are, the more the finance industry can bullshit its way through. And at this point, money is just whatever numbers they type into their computers. Just completely made up and detached from reality.
OpenAI and Anthropic’s IPOs +2-4 weeks is my best guess for when the market starts sliding. Investor money is already drying up, but too many rich people haven’t cashed out yet, helping themselves (like SpaceX) to our index retirement funds to countersign withdrawals at the inflated valuations.
I’m on the fence after that if it’ll happen slow or fast. Possible we’ll get a Bear Stearns/Lehman type failure that brings down the world’s markets, after a major player no longer has a blank check at multi-billion/quarter burn rates, and hits insolvency like a freight train. But also likely it could unravel more slowly like a sweater, as de-escalating levels of market access pull on the thread in turn.
we know the first sign iswhen sht hits the fan when we start seeing less or no more AI tech conferences in my area.
What’s mindfuckingly frustrating is that EVERYONE (but the rich ass financial types) see it coming. And there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WE CAN DO to prevent or prepare for it.
Oh they see it coming as well, but unlike us, they have the levers and means to come out on top of it.
The last few financial crises have led to massive wealth transfers to the 1%. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the more accelerationist of them are trying to engineer them at this point.
except this time, AI costed them more than it returned.
They will keep the scam going until an IPO. Then cash out and let the rest of us fucked
We met with my mother’s broker a few weeks ago (company rhymes with “Laymond Maims”). My brother expressed his concern about the AI bubble and the broker basically said CEOs are smart people who are legally bound to safeguard their companies and they wouldn’t be so heavily invested in AI if there was any chance of its being a bubble.
Just one of the most dumbassed arguments I’ve ever heard. OK, then how did all the other bubbles in history happen? But it was equally dumbassed of my brother to expect a broker to say anything else. I’ll bet he gets a fucking daily memo telling him not to let anybody de-AI their portfolios – if that’s even possible at this point.
Great, that means were gonna fight mecha hitler in the 2040s
you mean ketamincocaine mecha hitler.
Open enrollment for all art schools just in case…
Oh, come on. This is nothing like the Great Depression.
The Great Depression was caused by a supply side spending boom, producing massive excess of capacity, while nobody had any money to spend on anything.
…
Nothing like it, I tell you!
Just wait for the collapse and buy when the prices are low. As the markets recover the poor will get poorer and the rich will get richer. What is there to be worried about?
Is it possible that their attempt to be listed on the index is a way for private capital to cash in on their investments, leaving 401k funds etc holding the bag when the value dips?
There are numerous articles and analyses online exactly to this effect. It is absolutely the goal.
I mean the money was just sitting there in those 401ks they’d be foolish not to figure out some way to rob it for themselves
That’s been my take on it for sure.
Gary Marcus has a Substack everyone should read. It’s sobering.
The ‘AI spending boom’ framing cuts both ways though — the Depression analogy holds if the productive capacity being built never finds a paying customer, but breaks down if monetization is just lagging the infrastructure cycle by 3-5 years (like the internet circa 1999-2004). @Wudi, what’s the falsifiable signal you’re watching? Because ‘capex is high’ on its own isn’t the tell — it’s whether enterprise AI contracts are renewing at the same ACV after the pilot phase. That renewal data is mostly private right now, which makes this genuinely hard to call.
bottomless pits and blind bus drivers tend to do that
The Great Depression was caused by a mismanagement of the money supply on the Gold Standard. It has nothing in relation with the AI boom and potential bust. Typical financial fearmongering of breadlines, global collapse, and forever depression.
Normalized speculation on margin and everything being leveraged to the tits.
It’s a pity that your Pulitzer Prize level writing didn’t enable you to craft something more literate than a two sentence clickbait title for your article.
🤣🤣🤣
Judging by the downvotes, I think my comment might have been misinterpreted. I was addressing the writer of the Fortune article in absentia, not criticizing the poster of the article on Lemmy.
No, people just think your petty response to the headline, in the absence of any meaningful response to the article, doesn’t contribute anything to the conversation.
Fair enough. I’ll live with my downvotes, but it is a pet peeve. In the spirit of making a more tangible contribution, albeit still an off-topic one, I’ll leave this slightly satirical Mc Sweeney’s article here, which addresses this scourge: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/two-sentence-headlines-are-everywhere-heres-why-you-should-be-concerned
I do believe that having issues with the current format of media is, in itself, a trope that is as old as time.
Criticism of confirming to the norm is a bit lazy. Certainly in this case. It could’ve been the editor that forced him to the format.
Or do you find fault with him putting house Pulitzer prize forward in the title? Because if so, ironically inferring from your posted article, he should’ve used a three sentence title :p.
