https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/#subprime-intelligence
“Like you, I'm sick to the back teeth of talking about AI. Like you, I keep
getting dragged into discussions of AI. Unlike you‡, I spent the summer writing
a book about why I'm sick of writing about AI⹋, which Farrar, Straus and Giroux
will publish in 2026.
‡probably
⹋"The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI"
A week ago, I turned that book into a speech, which I delivered as the annual
Nordlander Memorial Lecture at Cornell, where I'm an AD White
Professor-at-Large. This was my first-ever speech about AI and I wasn't sure
how it would go over, but thankfully, it went great and sparked a lively Q&A.
One of those questions came from a young man who said something like "So,
you're saying a third of the stock market is tied up in seven AI companies that
have no way to become profitable and that this is a bubble that's going to
burst and take the whole economy with it?"
I said, "Yes, that's right."
He said, "OK, but what can we do about that?"
So I re-iterated the book's thesis: that the AI bubble is driven by monopolists
who've conquered their markets and have no more growth potential, who are
desperate to convince investors that they can continue to grow by moving into
some other sector, e.g. "pivot to video," crypto, blockchain, NFTs, AI, and now
"super-intelligence." Further: the topline growth that AI companies are selling
comes from replacing most workers with AI, and re-tasking the surviving workers
as AI babysitters ("humans in the loop"), which won't work. Finally: AI
cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100% convince your boss to fire
you and replace you with an AI that
can't do your job, and when the bubble
bursts, the money-hemorrhaging "foundation models" will be shut off and we'll
lose the AI that can't do your job,
and you will be long gone, retrained or
retired or "discouraged" and out of the labor market, and
no one will do your
job. AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our
descendants will be digging it out for generations:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/27/rancid-vibe-coding/#class-war
The only thing (I said) that we can do about this is to puncture the AI bubble
as soon as possible, to halt this before it progresses any further and to
head off the accumulation of social and economic debt. To do that, we have to
take aim at the
material basis for the AI bubble (creating a growth story by
claiming that defective AI can do your job).”
Via David.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
