I expect that, just like the Dot-Com bubble, the AI bubble is likely to burst. But this is mainly a market phenomenon that results from a race for dominance (and monopoly/oligarchy) and the consequent overinvestment. After the bubble bursts, if it does, I expect AI use and impacts to keep growing just like the Internet's use and impacts kept growing unimpeded after the Dot-Com bubble burst and many investors (and players of various sizes) bit the dust.

I expect that, just like the Dot-Com bubble, the AI bubble is likely to burst. — Pierre-Normand

I agree A.I. is a bubble, but I think the situation in the market today is more like the late 1960’s than the late ‘90’s. The dot.com era was the beginning of a tech revolution, and now, almost 30 years later, I think we’re nearing the end of that same era. Similarly, the industrial revolution, which was still in its formative years at we entered the 20th century, was long in the tooth by the 1960’s. In the late ‘60’s, just as today, the market was buoyed by well-established tech companies ( Kodak, Xerox, G.E., IBM, GM and Ford) which formed part of the Nifty Fifty, the ‘60’s version of today’s Magnificent Seven. And , like today’s tech companies, the companies of the Nifty Fifty were solid dividend-producing, profit-making entities. Also like today’s high-flying companies, they had become fat, lazy and complacent, focusing more on pleasing shareholders, walling themselves off from competition and getting government favors than creative nimbleness and innovation. This process of internal decay has recently been called ‘enshitification’ ( examples of it include Google’s once praised but now almost unusable search engine). In contrast to both the mature 1960’s tech companies and those of today, the young dot.com firms made no profits and offered no dividends , so their stock valuations were based entirely on speculation.

Some argue that today’s a.i. has inaugurated a tech revolution, but I suggest that, for all its seemingly dazzling capabilities, it represents the tail end of the previous tech era rather than a fresh revolution. I think we’re about 10 years away from that next tech era, and just as with the stale and complacent companies of the late ‘60’s, a bubble has formed driven by lazy expectations drawn from two previous decades of innovation and stock performance rather than accurate assessment of future profit potential. And just like the late ‘60’s , we are likely on our way to a long transition period till the next wave of tech innovation is launched in some 20-something’s garage. Until then I think we will see a lost decade for the market.

Yes, I agree, although the article claims that the bubble is propping up a weak and unstable economy. One being abused by a tyrant wielding king like powers. Changing his mind from day to day with an ideology based around a misunderstanding of the market effect of tariffs. The instability is off the charts and if it does all go off the rails there is a real risk that Trump will impose emergency, or plenary powers to postpone the midterm elections. Not to mention the damage being done to international trade. He may even impose martial law and precipitate a civil war.

Even if the stock market somehow rides all these waves, it will alienate international partners and erode the reserve currency status of the dollar and the unipolar status of the U.S. will be squandered. Indeed this last point may already have been squandered, due to the withdrawal of USAID programmes around the world leaving a void for China to fill.

Yes, I agree, although the article claims that the bubble is propping up a weak and unstable economy. One being abused by a tyrant wielding king like powers. Changing his mind from day to day with an ideology based around a misunderstanding of the market effect of tariffs. The instability is off the charts and if it does all go off the rails there is a real risk that Trump will impose emergency, or plenary powers to postpone the midterm elections. Not to mention the damage being done to international trade. He may even impose martial law and precipitate a civil war.

Even if the stock market somehow rides all these waves, it will alienate international partners and erode the reserve currency status of the dollar and the unipolar status of the U.S. will be squandered. Indeed this last point may already have been squandered, due to the withdrawal of USAID programmes around the world leaving a void for China to fill. — Punshhh

I very mush share this general sentiment but I'd like to highlight also one commonality and one difference between the AI tech and the Trump. (Artificial "Intelligence" meets "natural" stupidity?) The salient commonality, it seems to me, is them both, or the most damaging effects of them, being enabled by, and the manifestation of, capitalism and the neoliberal world order. The liberal media focusing on Trump's awful decisions and their damaging consequences shields from blame the social and economic structures that Trump rides on, and that would be responsible for nearly as much damage without him.

The salient difference between the Trump and AI tech phenomena is that apart from the effects ascribable to the underlying socioeconomic structures, Trump himself, as a political leader, has no discernible redeeming value. The technological progress of AI, on the other hand, can be made a boon or a bane depending what we do with it, either personally or collectively. Capitalism stands in the way of making good collective decisions about this technology, while neoliberal ideology produces the consumerist/individualistic frames of mind that prevents individuals from making use of AI productively and responsibly.

:up:

I mentioned that I beleive we will soon enter a lost decade for the stock market. My thesis is that a closer look at ‘lost decades’ reveals them to tie together economics, domestic and international politics, technological rhythms, and counter- culture in general. What do Coolidge, Hoover and the Weimar republic have in common, or Roosevelt and Hitler? What do the Iranian Revolution, Thatcher, Reagan, hippie counterculture, Steve Jobs and the fall of the Soviet Union have in common? What do Trump, Le Pen, Orban, Farage, Brexit, Truss, Netanyahu and Putin have in common?

They have in common the fact that culture develops via eras consisting of phases of cycles marking incipient innovation, stabilization of that innovation, complacency, backsliding ( see Hyman Minsky on the ‘Minsky cycle and Minsky moment’) and destabilization reflecting transition to a new era of innovation. For instance, the progressive era between 1900 and 1920 stabilized the innovating industrial economy through trust busting and the formation of a Treaury, but complacency and backsliding ( tariffs, anti-immigration) froze its gains into place between 1920 and 1932, while the economy was innovating into a phase (assembly- line mass production) where a more aggressive labor-focused progressivism (and elimination of tariffs) was necessary.

The new deal in the U.S. jumped immediately into this new era, whereas the transition to social democracy in Europe required an initial bout of backsliding into fascism. This labor-focused safety net became complacent and clogged with red tape by the time of Johnson and Nixon, and needed to become more flexible and supportive of new technology with the advent of the digital revolution. The neo-liberal philosophical underpinnings of this revolution are exemplified by the hippie persona of Steve Jobs, born about 10 years later than most of the hippie community.

The hippie tech genius was to bundle together a multitute of algorithmically fixed packets of information ( Leary’s consciousness expansion opening up new circuits of reality). This transformation wasn’t reflected politically until the transition from Carter to Reagan (and Thatcher). This neo-liberal libertarian move eventually became complacent under Clinton (first baby boomer) and Bush II, and needed to be supplemented by a new safety net, this time focused not on welfare for labor but for corporations, in the formation of rock-bottom interest rates, tax cuts and Q.E. This took place under Obama, Trump I and Biden, where it began to reach a peak of complacency in parallel with stagnating tech corporations.

And it is now becoming in need of supplementation and reform as the welfare-for-corporations model reaches its extreme with Trump’s backsliding into extreme corporate welfare protectionism, walling business and American culture off from anything alien. Excessive immigration has led to mass deportations, uncontrolled free trade has led to tariffs. The new tech era arising from the ashes of the current one will be more liberal and communitarian than libertarian in its inspiration, focused less on algorithmic data training than on integrating data frames with qualitatively different human perspectives. Instead of bundling together multitudes of arbitrary , fixed packets of information, which is all that today’s A.I. does, it will insert reciprocal causation into its fixed algorithmic causation.

Like Jobs in the 1970’s and the hippie counterculture ( and Edison, Ford, Tesla and the Transcendental-Romantic movement of the 19th century), it will be exemplified by those belatedly tapping into today’s counterculture of progressive wokeness. Trump is clearing the decks, dismantling the old political structures, leaving a vacuum out of which the new generation of ‘woke’ techies and progressives can erect a supplement to corporate-welfare neo-liberalism. Look for this tech revolution to emerge around 2035.

The technological language of this new business liberalism will be that of complex dynamical systems theory, which is already used in reservoir computing. This will bring tech into the world of Hegelian dialectics, the front doorstep of wokism.

i think there are two ways to look at this...

yes) NVIDIA's stock has been the poster child of A.I. stocks, and the hype around artificial intelligence inflated this one then deflated it because investors realized the price of it was obscenely high. For those of you who don't know, NVIDIA was the target of such massive hype because quality GPUs are one of the main components for A.I.

no) the dot-com bubble occurred during a radically different time period. It was pretty recent (if i had to guess, i'd say most of the people on here at least were alive during the dot-com bubble), but technologically speaking, the internet infrastructure was way behind what it is now. Now, we live in an era of constant network connection. This, in a way, has stabilized the stock market by making it much larger with much larger volumes of buyer activity. Much of the buyer/seller activity has also been replaced with artificial intelligence, so immediate, catastrophic events of total "SELL, SELL, SELL!" are harder to come by.

However, i think a bigger question to ask is how long can the stock market last? Will it get wiped out in a heartbeat, or will the destruction be slow over long periods of time? I don't think it can last forever, since scientists agree that the sun will no longer be able to support life on earth in the future, but all estimates exceed 1 billion years as to when this is going to happen.

general. What do Coolidge, Hoover and the Weimar republic have in common, or Roosevelt and Hitler? What do the Iranian Revolution, Thatcher, Reagan, hippie counterculture, Steve Jobs and the fall of the Soviet Union have in common? What do Trump, Le Pen, Orban, Farage, Brexit, Truss, Netanyahu and Putin have in common?

Agreed, there is a churning going on here. The forces of authoritarian backsliding are strong this time due to developments in social media in which electorates become captured by culture war narratives. Alternative facts reign and toxic forms of capitalism can thrive in an environment where international agreements are shaky and can’t anymore be enforced. Money laundering is reaching massive proportions. Crypto currencies are creating hidden uncontrolled markets. Oligarchs are dominating the media landscape. There seems to be a massive effort by capital to fend off any form of socialism. The problem now being that they know that all they have to do to achieve it is cause division, chaos and conflict and if that doesn’t work, then they will bring about economic collapse and usher in rule by oligarch and widespread slavery, or bonded labour.

The counter to this is China who will quickly become the world superpower. Fill the void left by the collapse of the West and bring stability. People will begin to see an authoritarian communism as preferable to the corrupted Western order. So it will be the Chinese who will likely bring about your predictions around 2025.

Capitalism stands in the way of making good collective decisions about this technology, while neoliberal ideology produces the consumerist/individualistic frames of mind that prevents individuals from making use of AI productively and responsibly.

Agreed, we somehow have wrestle capitalism back out of the hands of the fascists and populists.

Now, we live in an era of constant network connection. This, in a way, has stabilized the stock market by making it much larger with much larger volumes of buyer activity. Much of the buyer/seller activity has also been replaced with artificial intelligence, so immediate, catastrophic events of total "SELL, SELL, SELL!" are harder to come by.

Yes, but people like Trump can destabilise the global trade flows we rely for competitive growth at the stroke of a pen. Just in time supply lines have fine tuned production and consumerism. This can collapse like a house of cards. Causing stock market collapse and depression.

Changing his mind from day to day with an ideology based around a misunderstanding of the market effect of tariffs. The instability is off the charts and if it does all go off the rails there is a real risk that Trump will impose emergency, or plenary powers to postpone the midterm elections. — Punshhh

Instability makes money for people. So it's questionable whether the cause of that is "misunderstanding" or intent.

Yes, but people like Trump can destabilise the global trade flows we rely for competitive growth at the stroke of a pen. Just in time supply lines have fine tuned production and consumerism. This can collapse like a house of cards. Causing stock market collapse and depression. — Punshhh

I don't think you are giving the stock market credit for the massive size and power it has: the net worth of the stock market is about 68 trillion dollars. Trillion...with a T. That's more than twice the debt of the U.S. government. The stock market itself is a force to be reckoned with.

And sure, a powerful person like Trump could theoretically do all sorts of horrible things, but i'd recommend that until you have a clear line of thought (you can confidently say that a particular executive action will cause a stock market crash because of a clear reason) about a particular thing he is looking to do, that you don't act on these kinds of existential fears.

Trump doesn't have a personal/political reason for crashing the entire stock market: he was causing miniature crashes with his tariff policies, but he must have known that it wouldn't cause any large scale harm to rich people's wealth...as he is one of them, and many of his friends are wealthy people.

Also, there's a lot in your quote that doesn't appear to have a clear meaning to it, I would maybe adjust your arguments so it's possible for us to read them and understand them:

Yes, but people like Trump can destabilise the global trade flows we rely for competitive growth at the stroke of a pen. Just in time supply lines have fine tuned production and consumerism.

I don't think you are giving the stock market credit for the massive size and power it has: the net worth of the stock market is about 68 trillion dollars. Trillion...with a T. That's more than twice the debt of the U.S. government. The stock market itself is a force to be reckoned with.

Yes, I know the size of the stock market. But it can crash in seconds, it doesn’t have a head, it relies on the fears, or lack thereof of the investors. Indeed it nearly crashed on Trump’s Independence Day, resulting in Trump having to rapidly row back on his pronouncements.

Instability makes money for people. So it's questionable whether the cause of that is "misunderstanding" or intent.

The man’s a moron. But I accept there are clever people behind the scenes playing him for a fool.

I appreciate this thread. As I ponder about and am involved in this line of thinking in my daily life. I would like to share my perspective on this important question,

Do we just hold our breath, or run for the hills? — Punshhh

My answer is to do neither as both are unnecessary. I suggest the ideal response to the rise of AI in modern life is to take a step back, pause and look for more evidence.

Please allow me to explain.

Throughout the 70+ year history of computerized AI there have been numerous summers and winters of AI hype and investment. Those periods of time (as best I understand my computer history) were ultimately made possible by an inability to deliver on suitable results. Factors such as technological/hardware limitations, over-promising outcomes and greed all contributed to swings in the adoption and evolution of AI over time.

To be fair, these problems still exist to one degree or another, but a key difference is at play here; that being the wide accessibility and relative affordability of hardware/platforms that can house or operate sufficiently advanced AI models. Governments, businesses and individuals are each able to run powerful AI models both in the cloud and locally. AI models capable of helping to automate and augment a large portion of human brain work are within reach for fewer resources than you might expect.

It is my opinion that this "AI bubble" is not going to pop, and will continue to grow exponentially for at least the next 5-10 years. Unless there is a catastrophic change to the way our world works. Which is certainly possible.

I work in and build with AI every day. I speak as an experienced developer. What we are all now participating in is the beginning of an indescribable economic transformation. One way or another, the world and technologies we accept as normal today, will not be by 2030 because of passing a certain critical mass. Poignantly contributed to by the ascendance of AI. I am confident of this much.

There are of course fine nuances to this period of time we are living in. Including larger trends, many being convergences of smaller trends (such as AI) into mega-trends. AI is not the big picture. But it is an echo or reflection or KPI of it.

When I learned that industrial, economic, social and leadership thinkers have been anticipating the exact events are walking through since the 1950s, I took a deep breath and relaxed a little bit. Sure, it is a wild ride, that's the fun.

Powell says AI is not like the dot.com bubble.

Powell says AI is not like the dot.com bubble. — frank

That's a great resource, thank you for sharing. I wasn't aware Powell had said as much, and so recently.

The value of investments in AI being made by industries across the global economy right now are unspeakably vast. I just don't think most people are paying attention to the scale of decisions being made in the upper echelons of society.

We live in epic times.

Yes. It's hard to keep up and sort truth from fiction. There's this:

IBM did let go of about 8,000 HR workers in early 2023, replacing many routine tasks with its proprietary AskHR system that automates about 94% of standard HR. That part did happen—and shows just how far enterprise GenAI has come.

But then came the next phase: investing the cost savings into high-value roles. As CEO Arvind Krishna told The Wall Street Journal, “Our total employment has actually gone up… it’s allowed us to invest more in other areas—software engineering, marketing, sales, critical‑thinking client-facing roles”

Put simply: IBM didn’t backtrack on AI—they reallocated budgets into future-ready talent. — Fabio Molioli

In other words, kids coming out of school need to focus on things that only humans can do.

It is my opinion that this "AI bubble" is not going to pop, and will continue to grow exponentially for at least the next 5-10 years. Unless there is a catastrophic change to the way our world works. Which is certainly possible.

Hi, and thanks for your input.
You do sound like an insider who is very excited about developments within a bubble. I’m holding my breath, I just don’t know what will happen, but all the warning signs are there. They might just fade away rather than cause a pop.
You say exponential growth for 5-10 years, well that is bound to pop because it’s so top heavy. What I mean is that when there is a bubble forming in a new technology, there are always some startups that fall by the wayside. While the general trend continues. It’s like a fizzing of excitement with little side bubbles popping. The problem is when it is on such a vast scale that those little side bubbles are large compared to other critical sectors of the economy and can cause disruption in other sectors. If this happens too much, a cascade can begin and there’s no way to stop the pop by then.

Take the sub-prime mortgage bubble in 2008. There was insider trading going on daily with amounts in the trillions being bet everyday on dodgy debt based investments. The froth was on such a scale that it dwarfed the real economy. By the time people began to realise, it was too late.

I take on board the idea that a lot of the growth is in real hardware and on a more sound footing. But this just means that if the bubble does bursts it will be much more devastating. Which introduces the idea of too big to fail. When people start saying something is too big to fail, then people stop being cautious and pump even more money into things that haven’t been carefully considered, because it’s “too big to fail”. Then we have an unpoppable bubble.

In other words, kids coming out of school need to focus on things that only humans can do.

Yes, exactly. Although one of my kids who’s 35 and has been working in IT his whole life. Lost his job last year and can’t find work anywhere.

Sorry to hear that. That's rough.

Per Investing.com,

Passive investing has grown from a niche strategy into the dominant force in equity markets. Index funds and ETFs now account for over half of U.S. equity ownership. These vehicles allocate capital based on market capitalization, not valuation, fundamentals, or business quality. As more money flows into these funds, the largest companies receive the lion’s share of new capital. That’s created a powerful feedback loop, where price drives flows, and flows drive price. — above

So all it takes is a pause in momentum, and we'll fall a lot further than we would have normally. If we do go into crash mode, it won't be Trump's fault, or anybody's really. It's just something capitalism is prone to, and automated trading amplifies it.

In other words, kids coming out of school need to focus on things that only humans can do. — frank

That is good advice.

It's all about orchestration and augmentation these days.

You say exponential growth for 5-10 years, well that is bound to pop because it’s so top heavy. — Punshhh

In 5-10 years humanity will have developed multiple instances of artificial general intelligence. The AI bubble (which doesn't exist) will not only not burst, but the growth and novelty to come out of these machines is (in my best understanding) destined to populate the entire universe with extra-sentient life.

We (IOW, our economies, institutions, societies and tools) are evolving beyond the cycles of boom and bust. In our current moment we are, humanity is participating in something rather special. The approach to infinite wealth. Think space colonization and resource harvest on the scale of entire planets. Such thoughts tend to dwarf our concepts of what is possible today.

But that future of inexhaustible total abundance is within reach.

A set of circumstances obviously unprecedented in the history of our entire species regarding artificial intelligence and other converging tech, environmental, scientific and social trends. Though the most important "trend among trends" to appreciate is that everything is accelerating.

...this just means that if the bubble does bursts it will be much more devastating. Which introduces the idea of too big to fail. — Punshhh

I agree. If this next jump in human life fails, we will not get another chance. A failure at that scale would be much more devastating than 2008, as you say.

Nonetheless, I have spent the last decade of my life studying the trajectory of computerized society. And what is happening, however deceptively, is in perfect harmony with top-level expectations. That is comforting to some degree.