🫧 Is the AI boom a bubble waiting to pop? Here’s what history says // Japan Times
｢ The potential for credit risk in the AI trade is making some investors nervous. After Oracle sold $18 billion in bonds on Sept. 24, the stock plunged 5.6% the next day and it’s down 37% since then. Meta, Alphabet and Oracle will need to raise $86 billion combined in 2026 alone, according to an estimate by Societe Generale ｣
Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment's silence he said, "Now, Dwar Ev."
Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.
Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn."
"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer."
He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God?"
The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.
"Yes, now there is a God."
Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.
A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.
I was annoyed by a recent AI ethics paper claiming AI chatbots can 'gossip' and this is harmful in special ways. Of course they can't.
tl;dr - if you don't look carefully at the context, especially the prompts, before interpreting the output of an LLM, you won't know what it is simulating (and the harm comes from believing and/or sharing that output)
@Captain_Jack_Sparrow Remember Enron? Those guys thought (and really believed) that they were always the smartest guys in the room. And their #bubble eventually burst.
Remember the dotcom bubble?
Those who revel within bubbles cannot defy the laws of physics - it takes just a pinprick - and the pricks will have to #wakeup from their wet dreams.
#AIslop #AIbubble #AIhype #AI 🤔
Global equities closed 2025 strong, but the rally was narrow and uneven. Moreover, India was among the weakest major markets. As 2026 begins, can easing global headwinds and better earnings help Indian equities recover? Today’s Number Theory explores this.
Read on free HT news app: https://www.hindustantimes.com/editors-pick/what-will-the-markets-bring-in-2026-for-india-number-theory-101767327504906.html
#Markets #Sensex #BSE #AIhype #SP500 #NASDAQ #Earnings #MastIndia #India @mastodonindians
"Next year I will be finishing up my book Why Everything Stopped Working (due out in 2027), and continuing to dig into the nightmare of corporate finance I've found myself in the center of.
I have no idea what happens next. My fear - and expectation - is that many people still do not realize that there is an AI bubble or will not accept how significant and dangerous the bubble is, meaning that everybody is going to act like AI is the biggest most hugest and most special thing in the world right up until they accept that it isn't.
I will always cover tech, but I get the sense I'll be looking into other things next year - private equity, for one - that have caught my eye toward the end of the year.
I realize right now everything feels a little intense and bleak, but at this time of year it's always worth remembering to be kinder and more thoughtful toward those close to us. It's cheesy, but it's the best thing you can possibly do. It's easy to feel isolated by the amount of hogs oinking at the prospect of laying you off or replacing you - and it turns out there are far more people that are afraid or outraged than there are executives or AI boosters.
Never forget (or forgive them for) what they've done to the computer, and never forget that those scorned by the AI bubble are legion. Join me on r/Betteroffline, you are far from alone.
I intend to spend the next year becoming a better writer, analyst, broadcaster, entertainer and person. I appreciate every single one of you that reads my work, and hope you'll continue to do so in the future."
💀 AIBros working themselves to death is an acceptable outcome.
｢ Alex Cohen, a startup founder based in Austin, Texas, said he was first exposed to nicotine pouches in the workplace after seeing tins of Zyns on the desks of his software engineers. His company, Hello Patient, makes AI-powered healthcare-communication software ｣
"They are not confessing, they're bragging"
And the avalanche of simpleton arguments bashing AI continues... You should all be against the wealth concentration that capitalism allows for. Not against a tool that everyone with a 5000 dollars machine can perfectly run on their own.
"There are obvious rewards for politicians who jump on the A.I. train. These companies are spectacularly rich and preside over one of the few sectors of the economy that are growing. Amazon has announced that it will spend at least $20 billion on data centers in Pennsylvania, which Shapiro touts as the largest private sector investment in his state’s history. At a time of national stagnation, A.I. seems to promise dynamism and civic rejuvenation.
Yet a survey published in early December shows that most Pennsylvanians, like most Americans more broadly, are uneasy about A.I. The poll, conducted by Emerson College, found broad approval of Shapiro but doubt about one of his signature issues. Most respondents said they expected A.I. to reduce the number of available jobs, and pluralities thought it would harm the economy and the environment. Notably, given that health care is one of the sectors where A.I. shows the most promise, 59 percent of health care workers in the survey were pessimistic about the technology. Seventy-one percent of respondents said they thought A.I. posed a threat to humanity.
One major question, going into 2026, is which party will speak for the Americans who abhor the incursions of A.I. into their lives and want to see its reach restricted. Another is whether widespread public hostility to this technology even matters given all the money behind it. We’ll soon start to find out not just how much A.I. is going to remake our democracy, but also to what degree we still have one."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/opinion/ai-democracy.html
If this role were serious, it would involve regulation and accountability.
It is a fig leaf for exploitation and abuse.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/29/sam-altman-openai-job-search-ai-harms
Oh dear. I accidentally commented on a Hacker News story in a way that was somewhat critical of vibe coding. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46421599
A good article telling what's wrong with the current AI hype and why AI isn't necessarily that bad:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/15/1129179/generative-ai-hype-distracts-us-from-ais-more-important-breakthroughs/
AI wrecked the smart home
2025's "smart" assistants chat poetry but can't flip lights or brew coffee reliably. Alexa Plus, Gemini Home—LLMs hallucinate routines, misfire automations. Old voice tech was dumb but dependable; new ones prioritize chit-chat over control.
Georgia Tech's Mark Riedl nails it: LLMs crave fuzzy language, smart homes need precision.
"There are a few common threads between all of these stories:
- OpenAI doesn't have cash.
- The Disney licensing deal? Paid for in stock.
- The AWS contract? Amazon has to give OpenAI $10 billion to pay for it, because OpenAI doesn't have the cash.
- Broadcom's deal with OpenAI? "not much" revenue in 2026, probably because OpenAI doesn't have the cash.
- The Money For Data Centers Is Running Out.
- Blue Owl is the loosest lender in the universe, and if it’s having trouble raising money, everybody will very soon.
- Investors are aggressively dumping Oracle because it keeps trying to build more data centers for OpenAI, a company that does not have the money to pay for its compute.
- AI Is Wearing Out Its Welcome, and the AI Bubble Narrative Is Impossible To Ignore
It used to be (back in September, at least) that you could announce a big, stupid deal with OpenAI and see a 40% stock bump. Now the markets are suddenly thinking "huh, how is it gonna pay that?"
Oracle's stock also got dumped because it increased capital expenditures in its latest quarter to $12 billion, on analyst expectations of $8.4 billion.
And the other key thread is the year 2026.
Next year is meant to be the year that everything changes. It was meant to be the year that OpenAI had a gigawatt of data centers built with Broadcom and AMD, and when Stargate Abilene's 8 buildings were fully built and energized. 2026 is meant to be the year that OpenAI opened Stargate UAE, too.
Here in reality, absolutely none of this is happening, and I believe that 2026 is the year when everything begins to collapse.
In today's piece, I'm going to line up the sharp objects sitting right next to an increasingly-wobbling AI bubble, and why everything hinges on a looming cash crunch for OpenAI, AI data centers, those funding AI data centers, and venture capital itself."
https://www.wheresyoured.at/premium-how-the-ai-bubble-bursts-in-2026/
*sigh* so I frequently critique tech and LLMs/AI on my blog. Often. And yet, I still get tech companies wanting to put their sponsored posts on my blog. Not joking! Some offer $3,000 or higher! I always send them this link as a response so I don't have to type, no. Over and over and over again. https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/20250524/ #AI #LLM #ElevenLabs #AIHype #Tech
Turn off Ebay's automatic opt-in AI training on your personal data now: accountsettings.ebay.com/ai-preferences
#ai #airipoff #aiscam #aihype
Al development and training pr...
