Baldur Bjarnason“Opinion | I Predicted the 2008 Financial Crisis. What Is Coming May Be Worse. - The New York Times”
If anything, this downplays the risks as it seems to assume that there has to be something to "AI" to warrant calling it a "boom".
Not a financial analyst or professional predictor of things but it strikes me that there are quite a few things lining up to potentially make up a Very Bad Time™ for all of us:
- Energy crisis
- Gas crisis
- Fertiliser crisis
- Semiconductor shortage (because of the energy and Helium shortages)
- Plastics shortage
- Food price inflation
- Drugs shortage
- Private debt crisis
- "AI" stock market bubble
- Housing bubble leading to crisis
...
...
- Too Big to Fail institutions collapsing due to above crises
- Weather phenomena caused by the global climate crisis (heatwaves and hurricanes)
- Shortage of all sorts of important goods due to energy, gas, plastics, semiconductor, or food shortages
- Tungsten and rare earths shortage (China likes to cut exports of resources when other crises happen)
- Rise of authoritarianism pretty everywhere. Escalates because of other crises
...
- Too Big to Fail institutions collapsing due to above crises
- Weather phenomena caused by the global climate crisis (heatwaves and hurricanes)
- Shortage of all sorts of important goods due to energy, gas, plastics, semiconductor, or food shortages
- Tungsten and rare earths shortage (China likes to cut exports of resources when other crises happen)
- Rise of authoritarianism pretty everywhere. Escalates because of other crises
...
...
- US munitions depletion leading to all sorts of actors trying their luck.
- The deterioration of the reliability and security of the software holding the world together because the industry went all in on YOLO vibe coding.
- Ongoing tariff war (that's still a thing)
- Ongoing Cuba crisis
- A recurrence of the Greenland crisis
- Taiwan
- The entire middle east is a mess that's getting messier
...
- US munitions depletion leading to all sorts of actors trying their luck.
- The deterioration of the reliability and security of the software holding the world together because the industry went all in on YOLO vibe coding.
- Ongoing tariff war (that's still a thing)
- Ongoing Cuba crisis
- A recurrence of the Greenland crisis
- Taiwan
- The entire middle east is a mess that's getting messier
...
...
- The Ukraine war is still a thing. If Ukraine wins, that means Russia has collapsed or is about to and a bunch of nukes come into play. If Russia wins, they're emboldened to continue.
All of that is just off the top of my head. If even half of these things come to a head over the next year or so, we're in for an extraordinary bad time
Like, worst in decades. So bad that we pretty much have to hope that we simply get lucky and things dissipate safely somehow.
And I haven't even outlined any of the actual worst case scenarios – nuclear escalation in the middle east, a new global pandemic, a heatwave with sustained high (35°C) wet-bulb temps – because there's no real point in scaring yourself with shit you can't do anything about
(Forgot to put a content warning when I first posted this. Apologies.)
Peter@baldur The curse* of being able to perceive and think the world systematically, eh?
*I actually think it's great, but my brain just works that way naturally, sooo. It sometimes leads to very frustrating conversations with people who can't do it, though. Or worse, refuse. Especially on climate and the rise of fascism!