This is how the AI bubble bursts: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/917380/ai-monetization-anthropic-openai-token-economics-revenue

There is no conceivable way to break even for the AI industry—let alone to repay an investment that requires $2Tn a year from now to the end of the decade. That's about 3% of the entire planetary GNP. Just to break even.

@cstross

I'm guessing that the bubble will pop in 12 to 18 months.

I can see them generating this level revenue.

I wonder whatbthats going to look like for the rest of the economy? 🥺

@simonzerafa No, it'll burst sooner than that. Once SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI have IPO'd the big hypemongers will take their loot and run away, very fast, leaving the shareholders holding the bag.

Back in '99-00, the dot com bust followed a wave of IPOs as founders cashed out …

@cstross

I only have vague memories of the Dot Com bubble and crash but it seem serious at the time.

I was working for CompuServe when we were acquired by AOL and things went downhill after that.

@simonzerafa @cstross not a great bit of data, but from living through the dot com era, this is likely 100x the money and even more concentrated risk. I cannot see how we get out of this without major economic impact.

Not to the people who caused it, of course. We wouldn’t want consequences to befall the Chosen Ones.

@petrillic

Also the capital expenditure in compute is orders of magnitude higher. There's going to be billions of dollars in silicon just creating carbon dioxide.

@simonzerafa @cstross

@petrillic @simonzerafa @cstross

It is literally the ultimate (final and greatest) grift of all time.

@petrillic @simonzerafa @cstross what freaks me out is apparently NASDAQ is changing rules so these IPOs will be bought up by retirement funds. So they'll get the rug pull AND the too large to fail government bailout.
@simonzerafa @cstross Oh .. that brings back memories of reading about new CompuServe members from AOL flooding the formerly pastoral forums, then being the first to turn around and bash the even newer AOL members who were arriving.