Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic) has some... *concerning* news about the "AI" industry.
Okay, it's bad news. Like, *really* bad news.
The problem is that it won't just affect the siloed techbros and their megacorps.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/#subprime-intelligence
@ScottMGS @pluralistic Off-topic, but I'm convinced that Cory has found some sort of hack in the space time continuum. There's no way we have the same 24 hrs in a day with all that he does.
@Gina @pluralistic I know, right?!
@ScottMGS @pluralistic In 5 years we'll see teenagers walking through hundreds of dead data centres like they walk through dead shopping malls today.
Sep 28, 2025, 7:06 AMWorth reading, excerpt from the article:
"the AI bubble is driven by monopolists who've conquered their markets and have no more growth potential, who are desperate to convince investors that they can continue to grow by moving into some other sector, e.g. "pivot to video," crypto, blockchain, NFTs, AI, and now "super-intelligence." Further: the topline growth that AI companies are selling comes from replacing most workers with AI, and re-tasking the surviving workers as AI babysitters ("humans in the loop"), which won't work. Finally: AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100% convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job, and when the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging "foundation models" will be shut off and we'll lose the AI that can't do your job, and you will be long gone, retrained or retired or "discouraged" and out of the labor market, and no one will do your job."
Sep 28, 2025, 7:10 AMand further down:
"The WSJ writers compare the AI bubble to other bubbles, like Worldcom's fraud-soaked fiber optic bonanza (...), and conclude that the AI bubble is vastly larger than any other bubble in recent history."
@ScottMGS @pluralistic Yep, it's very good. This is exactly what I think is coming
@ScottMGS @pluralistic Loved this piece!
@ScottMGS @pluralistic “AI isn't going to wake up, become superintelligent and turn you into paperclips – but rich people with AI investor psychosis are almost certainly going to make you much, much poorer.” Frightening.
I have quit using AI for this very reason. I have an instance of ollama with a couple of 'open source' models that I can run locally. I rarely use them, because I have come to find that they format and colorize code FAR better than they generate it.
I discovered these economic valuation issues (I say discovered, I heard someone discussing them on the youtube) about a year ago.
I'm glad Cory Doctorow wrote this book, he reaches a hell of a lot more ears, and arguably with a hell of a lot more credibility than I.
@ScottMGS @pluralistic Wait, I've heard this kind of thing before, from Michael Burry. Time for a "Short AI" fund...
I guess I don't quite see a line from "billions of fictitious dollars stop bouncing among tech bros" and "bad things happen to me", and this article doesn't elucidate.
"What should we do" may be a dumb question if the second half is "to help the poor billionaires?", which seems to be how Cory answered it. If it's "to help ourselves" it is not a dumb question. We'll still be here with whatever skills we had (and apparently also a pile of cheap GPUs), able to do creativity, start businesses etc.
How exactly is that the end of our world? Not saying it isn't, but I haven't yet heard how it is.
@ScottMGS @bathsheba @pluralistic I like your optimism, but my experience is that economic crashes are worse for normal people than for billionaires.