I guess but is it better for an investor to own 2 shares of Google or 1 share of OpenAI and 1 share of TSMC?
Like I have no doubt that being vertically integrated as a single company has lot of benefits but one can also create a trust that invests vertically as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_marginalization?wprov=s...
That's a reduction of complexity, of course, but the core of the lesson is there. We have actually kept on with all the practices that led to the housing crash (MBS, predatory lending, Mixing investment and traditional banking).
I know financially it will be bad because number not go up and number need go up.
But do we actually depend on generative/agentic AI at all in meaningful ways? I’m pretty sure all LLMs could be Thanos snapped away and there would be near zero material impact. If the studies are at all reliable all the programmers will be more efficient. Maybe we’d be better off because there wouldn’t be so much AI slop.
It is very far from clear that there is any real value being extracted from this technology.
The government should let it burn.
Edit: I forgot about “country girls make do”. Maybe gen AI is a critical pillar of the economy after all.
It all depends on whether MAGA survives as a single community. One of the few things MAGA understands correctly is that AI is a job-killer.
Trump going all out to rescue OpenAI or Anthropic doesn't feel likely. Who actually needs it, as a dependency? Who can't live without it? Why bail out entities you can afford to let go to the wall (and maybe then corruptly buy out in a fire sale)?
Similarly, can you actually see him agreeing to bail out Microsoft without taking an absurd stake in the business? MAGA won't like it. But MS could be broken up and sold; every single piece of that business has potential buyers.
Nvidia, now that I can see. Because Trump is surrounded by crypto grifters and is dependent on crypto for his wealth. GPUs are at least real solid products and Nvidia still, I think, make the ones the crypto guys want.
Google, you can see, are getting themselves ready to not be bailed out.
I am shocked at the part they know it is a bubble and they are doing nothing to amortize it. Which means they expect the government to step in and save their butts.
... Well, not that shocked.
finally, some rational thought into the AI insanity. The entire 'fake it til you make it' aspect of this is ridiculous. sadly, the world we live in means that you can't build a product and hold its release until it works. you have to be first to release even if it's not working as advertised. you can keep brushing off critiques with "it's on the road map". those that are not as tuned in will just think it is working and nothing nefarious is going on. with as long as we've had paid for LLM apps, I'm still amazed at the number of people that do not know that the output is still not 100% accurate. there are also people that use phrases as thinking when referring to getting a response. there's also the misleading terms like "searching the web..." when on this forum we all know it's not a live search.
This time they'll be gifted 70 trillion to make up for the shortfall, and life shall continue on for the rich.
It's win-win for them, there's no risk at all
But as I try to sort of narrative the ideas behind bubbles and bursts, one thing I realize, is that I think in order for a bubble to burst, people essentially have to want it to burst(or the opposite have to want to not keep it going).
But like Bernie Madoff got caught because he couldn't keep paying dividends in his ponzi scheme, and people started withdrawing money. But in theory, even if everyone knew, if no one withdrew their money (and told the FCC) and he was able to use the current deposits to pay dividends a few years. The ponzi scheme didn't _have_ to end, the bubble didn't have to pop.
So I've been wondering, like if everyone knows AI is a bubble, what has to happen to have it collapse? Like if a price is what people are willing to pay, in order for Tesla to collapse, people have to decide they no longer want to pay $400 for Tesla shares. If they keep paying $400 for tesla shares, then it will continue to be worth $400.
So I've been trying to think, in the most simple terms, what would have to happen to have the AI bubble pop, and basically, as long as people perceive AI companies to have the biggest returns, and they don't want to move their money to another place with higher returns (similar to TSLA bulls) then the bubble won't pop.
And I guess that can keep happening as long as the economy keeps growing. And if circular deals are causing the stock market to keep rising, can they just go on like this forever?
The downside of course being, the starvation of investments in other parts of the economy, and giving up what may be better gains. It's game theory, as long as no one decides to stop playing the game, and say pull out all their money and put it into I dunno, bonds or GME, the music keeps playing?
They can't, not firever. Bubbles pop.
Nvidia also makes up ~7% of the S&P 500 so if their stock price falls substantially, that's a big chunk of capital just... gone for a lot of people.
If they’ve securitized and sold their data center buildout, will the big clouds and AI labs actually face any severe impact? While the sums are huge, most of these companies have the cash on hand to pay down the debt. The big AI labs have said their models earn enough to cover the cost to train themselves, just not the next one. This means they could at any time walk away from the compute spend for training.
With the heavy securitization of all these deals, will the “bubble pop” just hurt the financial industry?
If a company like CoreWeaver sees their SPV for a Microsoft-specific data center go bankrupt, that means MSFT decided to walk away from the deal. Red flag for the industry, but also a sign of fiscal restraint. Someone else can swoop in and buy the DC for cheap, while MSFT avoids the Opex hit. Seems like the losers will be whoever bought that SPV debt, which probably isn’t a tech company.
I wonder who’s writing the script.
My biggest worry is that what will be left standing after all of this is the organizations that are quietly all the AI slop everywhere, be it the normal web or YouTube.
If you're young and invested for the long term, just leave all your junk in broad index securities. You can't do better than that, you just have to ride the bumps.
On the other hand, I'm approaching retirement and looking seriously at when to pull the trigger. The aggregate downside to me of a large market drop or whatever is much higher than it is to a 20-something, because losing out on (to make a number up) an extra 30% of net worth is minor when compared to "now you have to work another three years before retiring" (or alternate framings like "you have to retire in Houston and not Miami", etc...).
So most of my assets are moving out of volatiles entirely.
Personally speaking, as somebody that was 100% in equities until earlier this year (I'm in my early 40s and had most of my wealth in VOO), I shifted to a 60-40 portfolio - there are ETFs that maintain the balance for you. I did this knowing full well that this could attenuate my upside, but I figured it's worth it than being so concentrated in a single part of an industry (AI within tech) and so much upside was already acquired up until that point. Also, I figured the chances of the 2nd Trump term adding to volatility weren't going to help tamper volatility. On top of that, my income is tied to tech, so diversifying away further from it is sensible (especially the equity parts of my compensation).
But if you're in your 20s, your nest egg is likely small enough that I'd just continue plugging away in automatic contributions. Investing at all is far more important than anything else at that stage.
For example, stock from war profiteering companies (lockheed, raytheon).
Note that investing in war profiteers is a proven way to build wealth. I just don't want to do that.
This argument not only applies to evil companies, but also dumb ones. For example, I have no interest in investing in IBM or Oracle even those both of those are also money makers.
https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/smart-money/magnifi...
There are other index funds which are equal weighted rather than market weighted. Those have underperformed lately but might be less volatile if the AI bubble pops.
And the sentiment that goes around is more: reduce the amount of people needed to do the same amount of work:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/09/mckinsey_ai_monetizat...
> McKinsey says, while quoting an HR executive at a Fortune 100 company griping: "All of these copilots are supposed to make work more efficient with fewer people, but my business leaders are also saying they can't reduce head count yet."
The problem becomes that eventually all these people who are laid off are not going to find new roles.
Who is going to be buying the products and services if no-one has money to throw around?
clickety_clack•1h ago
project2501a•1h ago
SpicyLemonZest•42m ago
pixl97•1h ago
lo_zamoyski•1h ago
jordanb•46m ago
Makes one think that this was the plan all along. I think they saw how SVB went down and realize that if they're reckless and irresponsible at a big enough scale they can get the government to just transfer money to them. It's almost like this is their new business model "we're selling exposure to the $XX trillion dollar bailout industry."
ignoramous•23m ago
Not really. Sundar is still pretty bullish on GenAI, just not the investor excitement around it (bubble).
estimator7292•22m ago
Current admin really, really wants the number going up, and is also incapable of considering or is ignorant to any notion of consequence for any actions of any kind.
zdragnar•45m ago
To pile on, there's hardly a product being developed that doesn't integrate "ai" in some way. I was trying to figure out why my brand new laptop was running slowly, and (among other things) noticed 3 different services running- microsoft copilot, microsoft 365 copilot (not the same as the first, naturally) and the laptop manufacturer's "chat" service. That same day, I had no fewer than 5 other programs all begging me to try their AI integrations.
Job boards for startups are all filled with "using AI" fluff because that's the only thing investors seem to want to put money into.
We really are all dirty here.