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AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All

wired.com

21–30 of 83 posts

Re: AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All

#21
post #3

During most of the dot-com boom, there was not a broad consensus that a bubble existed, whereas today’s AI boom is widely accompanied by media warnings about an AI bubble, making public awareness much higher than it was in the late 1990s. I don't think a single person hasn't heard the "circular financing" talking points from multiple people who think they're being insightful. Or Burry who thinks a GPU should be trash…

There is better awareness of everything bc of the internet, you are just in the disbelief phase even though markets have already peaked and insiders are heading for the exits.

Re: AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All

#22
post #8

There's a lot of manipulation going on. Attempts to pop the bubble artificially, prematurely. There's a lot of impatience and illusion of control out there. You can bet that when a real bubble bursts, we won't be seeing articles about it on Wired in the run up.

You're in the disbelief phase, it sounds like you are overinvested and defensive about your position. The Nasdaq and crypto already peaked, housing is peaking as well, we're in the middle of the crash.

Nope.

Is this the same crash that happened when tariffs were announced? What about the 2022 crash? What sort of crash are we talking about?

IMO the AI incumbents want to provoke smaller pullbacks on the way up to A) kill competitors who can't handle it and B) prevent a catastrophic crash that would actually hurt them.

That's why we see stuff like Thiel selling his NVDA holdings. He's just going to buy back in later.

Re: AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All

#23

Its silly to talk about a bubble when all of the major AI companies just recieved 3-5yrs runway in VC. I normally hate the term FUD, bit in this case it's proveably true. Even if these companies collapse in 5 years, thats a lifetime away in tech years, not an immediate bubble.

Could you show me proof of the 3-5 year runway thing? I’m not saying it’s outlandish but I’m skeptical.

Re: AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All

#24
post #17

Some have realized that LLMs don’t really reason and that LLMs may not be as amazing as the claims. However, I think LLMs plus agents, plus advances that are likely to come may very well prove to be more valuable than anyone can foresee. It’s very difficult to predict the future profitability of tech.

> LLMs don’t really reason Do you have a test for this? Or is it based on the presumption that reasoning skills cannot evolve, it can only be the result of "intelligent design"?

I have been spent many hours with them on coding tasks. As things currently stand once context or complexity reaches a certain point they become completely incapable of solving problems and that point occurs on very simple things. They appear completely brain dead at times although they are magnificent liars at making you think they understand the problem. Although, I recently got chatGPT 5 to solve a problem in a couple hours that Claude Sonnet 4 was simply never going to solve. So they are improving. I don’t know the limits. I’m more hopeful that a feedback loop with specialized agents will take things much further. I’m extremely skeptical that getting bigger context windows and larger models is going to get us reasoning. The skepticism comes from observations. Clearly no one knows how thinking actually works. I don’t know how to address the evolve part. LLMs don’t directly mutate and have selective pressure like living organisms. Maybe a simulation could be made to do that.

Re: AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All

#25
post #3

During most of the dot-com boom, there was not a broad consensus that a bubble existed, whereas today’s AI boom is widely accompanied by media warnings about an AI bubble, making public awareness much higher than it was in the late 1990s. I don't think a single person hasn't heard the "circular financing" talking points from multiple people who think they're being insightful. Or Burry who thinks a GPU should be trash…

Greenspan warned about irrational exuberance, the newspapers were full of articles like the Guardian one: https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/a... https://www.theguardian.com/business/1999/dec/20/nasdaq.efin... This time, "AI" has been hyped up more than tech in 1999 by the media. The media has just reversed course in 2025 because they found out that most people hate "AI". in 2023-2024 it was m…

The thing that got me most about Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan's warning about "irrational exuberance" of the markets was that the warning was in 1996, and it seemed to me and many others already obvious by then, and that Greenspan was cautious and late in his warning.

Yet, the markets continued rapidly upward for another FOUR years. Shorting the high-flying stocks with negligible income in 1997 or 1998 would have been completely sensible. And it would have wiped you out, as you would have been years too early.

It just proves the adage: "The markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

Today, the levels of (over-)investment compared to investment are even more extreme. But when is the time to call it?

Re: AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All

#26
post #8

There's a lot of manipulation going on. Attempts to pop the bubble artificially, prematurely. There's a lot of impatience and illusion of control out there. You can bet that when a real bubble bursts, we won't be seeing articles about it on Wired in the run up.

You're in the disbelief phase, it sounds like you are overinvested and defensive about your position. The Nasdaq and crypto already peaked, housing is peaking as well, we're in the middle of the crash.

If we're already in the middle, this will be a soft landing indeed

Re: AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All

#27
post #18
post #12

I am split on this, this is definitely a bubble but I don’t know if it’s going to crash or wipe out countries. The problem here is the tech is real and has great promise. This is not AGI but llms can make the promise of robots real, by it may take a long time for it to materialize just like with self driving cars. So the hype can subside but it needs an impetus to slide. It may or may not happen and even if it does,…

> the tech is real and has great promise. This was very true of the dotcom bubble. The entire "web" was new, and the promise was everything you use it for today . Pets.com was a laughing stock for years as an example of dotcom excess, and now we have chewy.com, successfully running the same model. Webvan.com, was a similar example of "excess" and now we have Instacart and others. I looked up webvan just now--the post…

Isn't openAI already profitable on inference?

I understand training is still costly, but it's not unimaginable for it to turn profitable as well if you think believe they'll generate trillions in value by eliminating millions of jobs.

Re: AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All

#28
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the tech is real and has great promise. This was very true of the dotcom bubble. The entire "web" was new, and the promise was everything you use it for today . Pets.com was a laughing stock for years as an example of dotcom excess, and now we have chewy.com, successfully running the same model. Webvan.com, was a similar example of "excess" and now we have Instacart and others. I looked up webvan just now--the post…

Isn't openAI already profitable on inference? I understand training is still costly, but it's not unimaginable for it to turn profitable as well if you think believe they'll generate trillions in value by eliminating millions of jobs.

No, inference is actually pointing to them being economically unviable.

https://www.ft.com/content/fce77ba4-6231-4920-9e99-693a6c38e...

Re: AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All

#29
post #12

I am split on this, this is definitely a bubble but I don’t know if it’s going to crash or wipe out countries. The problem here is the tech is real and has great promise. This is not AGI but llms can make the promise of robots real, by it may take a long time for it to materialize just like with self driving cars. So the hype can subside but it needs an impetus to slide. It may or may not happen and even if it does,…

The impetus is that 90% of our country is in recession and the rest are soon to follow. Delinquencies are rising fast and not just in subprime. Layoffs are at levels not seen since 2008. Crypto, tech stocks and many housing markets have already peaked or are already in bear markets. The crash is here and it's inevitably going to get worse.

all true - but none of this is actually “ai bubble”

Re: AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All

#30
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's particularly silly when the rest of the economy is by all indications in a deep recession. If the tech market is literally the only thing holding up the market then you have to ask how and why.

I suspect that isn't true

We're at a record number of subprime borrowers falling behind on car loans, which historically is a really bad economical sign, consumer sentiment is at an all time low and the labor market isn't looking great either. Anecdotally, prices have risen sharply and people are getting sharply priced out of basic necessities due to rising costs.
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