So do I. We had our financial person take steps to limit our exposure. Still, I expect we’ll take a major hit regardless. Hopefully, we can ride it out with no major financial emergency forcing us to sell while the market is down.
I certainly hope so as I may have sold all of my (meagre) investments in anticipation.
I own a beer bar, and we work with some friends who have a catering business that does pop ups on our patio. They’ve been using AI to generate flyers and then tag us to have us share them to our larger audience. I stopped doing it because they look like trash, get low engagement, and are off brand for our art-inspired space. They got upset with me that we weren’t helping promote, and I explained my position on their AI flyers, and they sent a very lengthy email back about how AI is being utilized by small businesses in ways that we’re still scratching the surface to understand its value. I popped the email into chatgpt and asked if it wrote that email and it said it did, lol. Now I have more work on my hands to design their flyers for them, but it’s worth it.
A usual ramen spot I’ve been going to for the past few years for some reason replaced the old images of the food on their menu with AI-gen ones and it looked so weird. I saw it last time I went for my usual, but I kept looking at the art and like a Lovecraftian horror the longer I looked at it the worse the details appeared. It literally affected my appetite because psychologically I couldn’t help but think I was ordering some freak-ass food as depicted in the new ai-gen pictures, and the ramen just didn’t taste as good to me that day. And I don’t think I’ll go back anymore :(
It’s always an “it’s inevitable” argument.
it’s so bizarre to me that people who work with food don’t realize that the ai trash is producing images that are REVOLTING, do not look like food, and actively deter people from their products.
you’d be better off with a half lit shitty polaroid of actual food than putting that trash on your branding, so much of it is nightmare fuel
You’re definitely right, the food looks so phony. The thing that’s wild is half the time they make a flyer, there’s only bricks of yellow text on a black background that’s too much info to read. I’m visiting San Francisco right now and saw a pizza shop last night that their entire menu was AI garbage and was so shocked how prevalent it’s become.
AI works. But China already won the race. These prices are absolute peak and from now one will only be falling and that’s not what openai and anthropic expected.
I can just use glm 5.3or depseek 4.1 and 20$ will go the distance.Even running Qwen 3.8 locally can do 90% of what I want.
OpenAI had their little failure of a presentation recently, and they’re introducing a “fast response” tier for 6x the current subscription cost. This is their attempt to get people used to higher pricing. They are bleeding money, and they will need to raise prices sooner than later to start attempting to make it back.
Once they do, a good chunk of their customers will simply stop paying, forcing the AI companies to further raise prices, causing more customers to leave, etc.
AI companies are trying (and failing) to be indispensable, and they need that to have any hope of survival. It’s only a matter of time before they collapse, and only then might we see what’s actually beneficial about machine learning.
I saw a meme recently- WinRAR is more profitable than OpenAI. Kind of funny to think about
He may not be far off.
These bubbles usually last approximately five years. (Or at least that’s been the case historically.) We’re in year four. I’m actually keeping a portion of my portfolio in cash so when the crash comes I can take advantage, though I may move my whole retirement account into bonds and money market funds after the new year.
Trump just said in a response to a question about our $40 trillion debt (jesus, that’s a lot of zeroes), “You know, inflation, certain levels of inflation, will also pay off that debt very rapidly. Very rapidly.” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/trump-just-soft-launched-higher-inflation-as-the-new-solution-for-rebalancing-the-40-trillion-us-national-debt/ar-AA2dpocG
So I hope that cash isn’t USD. Honestly, all currencies look pretty bad right now. And if Trump triggers Iran into destroying the Middle East (and maybe triggering Israel to nuke, if Trump hasn’t already), the only thing that’s going to be worth a damn is cigarettes and penicillin.
Apparently this was covered in an article in Fortune magazine. in it they state trump called it a ‘soft default’ on usa debt.
This is basically not paying debts. it’s consistent with trump practices. Afterall, didnt he bankrupt 40 companies including 6 casinos? he’s just moving on to bigger fish by bankrupting the usa now.
Tech billionaires were late to the party showering trump with money to get him elected.
Cryptobros were there first. They want the dollar at zero.
Is there something I can do with my work 401k?
You could reallocate into bonds if you believe that it will tank the equity market as a whole. Most available options to allocate into a pretty broad so it’s not totally exposed, just expect lower returns in the mean time and be prepared to reallocate into more growth exposure if/when the broader crash happens. Difficult to time so beware.
The AI bubble is propping up the American bond market too (countering all of the other crap Trump had been doing to undermine the economy). When the bubble pops, the bond market is going to suffer massively as well.
You’re not wrong. I’m thinking of buying in post-bubble potentially, but I’m not 100% sure what I’ll do yet. I do know that, by the day, it feels more and more like a good time to take the profit that’s there and wait.
Do you mean long term bonds or do you think short term will be affected as well? If it is a riding rate environment then t-bills or MMFs probably have more to gain from the rising rates than risks from a drop in value of held bonds
T-bills and MMFs sound like something from different communities…
I had a boomer normie ask me how to use AI to develop his new “business” website telling me that he didn’t want to hire a developer if the developer would just use AI anyway.
This guy doesn’t know what a router is, and was asking me for help trying to understand what the AI was telling him, and it was the most basic shit.
When the normies are trying to invest in AI, they’re the last to invest and know to throw money at it. That was a big signal to me that the bubble is about to pop. Money is running out and the boomers are trying to get in on it.
Why would someone ask a person to explain an AI response they didn’t understand? Like, you’ve already offloaded the most important part from a human brain (getting a fucking answer)… Why wouldn’t you at least then ASK THE AI TO REPHRASE AND SUMMARIZE the response you didn’t understand? That’s the thing it’s actually good at doing ffs.
Exactly this. If you hear people talking about investments around the Thanksgiving table, its time to bail. All the smart people got in months ago and have left, they are just looking for bag holders now.
If AI is so good they should try asking it that. See where that ends up.
That’s the right strategy. They want to use ai, so let them. No need to speak to professionals who will use ai anyway.
When the normies are trying to invest in AI, they’re the last to invest and know to throw money at it
They are also the largest group by far. Doesn’t really mean much aside from the fact that adoption is now widespread.
I don’t think it’s going to add up to a trillion dollars a year though, lol.
AI and the Enshittification Era w/ Cory Doctorow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dAIJRjb-Bw
The CEO of SoftBank says they need five trillion a year.
https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/softbank-groups-ceo-says-5-112543307.html
…to “meet demand.” …
He’s saying “there is no bubble.”
You’d think he would know better…
Full disclosure, I did not read that. But I did see the headline.
Now that I have read that, I feel like it is a cry for help.
“Those who refuse to evolve are closing down their world. Those who condemn AI are themselves spitting upward,” Son added.
“If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.”
J. Paul Getty
how much skin does Softbank have in this game.
I don’t think it’s going to add up to a trillion dollars a year though, lol.
It will. The real question is - what will be the price of a loaf of bread in the multi-trillion dollar economy?
nope. their capex alone is going to destroy them, then their investors will realize they’re all fucked and the real fun will begin
That’s the real truth. Run like hell when luckless chumps show up looking all enthusiastic
I can tell you how to use AI… for money.
Oh, great, thanks! You’re a real lifesaver. [Proceeds to pay more than he would have paid for the real developer, to spend more time to create vibe-coded tech-illiterate trash.]
Is he related to Too $Short or Big Balls?
I’d probably have better luck shorting stocks if I could trigger a (rightful) panic like this guy can.
I’ve come to realize that I was assuming that there was a limit somewhere to “the market staying irrational”. I’m not so sure anymore
You could argue that a heavily debt-based business that requires years and years of more debt before becoming profitable would respond to rising interest rates quite negatively, but, yeah, the whole thing is already enitrely irrational.
I’m keeping some popcorn in reserve for OpenAI’s IPO.
I don’t get why they haven’t gone already.
If they don’t get their IPO off before the bubble pops, they might be losing out on a trillion with a capital T
- They are true believers
- They know they’ll get a bail out because they are too big to fail
- When everyone sees their S-1, it’s gonna make WeWork look like fucking Amazon
The market has never been rational.
It’s less about fundamentals and more about what investors believe about the market. That’s why Musk is so good at manipulating the market, he’s convincing enough for many investors.
If it does, it needs to pop so hard that EVERYONE involved with it can’t even afford to be heard of anymore.
God I hope so.
It’ll only hurt us. The rich will profit heavily.
Yeah, but if the bubble lasts longer it’ll hurt us more when it does collapse.
Plus we’ll have to deal with more clanker bullshit in more of our daily lives for longer if it takes a long time for it to collapse.
Are you talking about the collapse of the AI bubble hurting us? I mean, sure, but what’s the alternative? There isn’t one. The sooner it pops, the more money that will be available to develop businesses that can grow the economy. Right AI is gobbling up investment capital and driving up the interest rates and inflation of the price of tech hw is stunting consumer and business tech, contributing to overall inflation, and making actual products people want to buy more expensive, ie less sold…
I’d like to say that this economic collapse could not have come at a worse time, but I think bubbles like this are only possible when markets are no longer competitive, everyone is broke as shit, and people have to invent fantasies to make investors think line will go up.
Edit: Oh, and I just thought of a REALLY big benefit of an early pop: people’s retirements will be less exposed to AI-first and AI-only companies which are almost guaranteed to fail. If OpenAI raises 2 trillion, it’s going to be getting a lot of that from institutional investors investing other people’s money.
Good.
One can only hope…
Same, Michael Burry. Same
