• NekoKoneko@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    The fear is that, if the past is anything to go by, the AI boom will follow a similar arc to these other technology-driven infrastructure booms: a flood of speculative capital will flow in, leading to massive overinvestment, asset price bubbles and ultimately a crash as euphoria collides with a disappointing reality.

    Shocking.

    • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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      13 hours ago

      I’m only shocked that the “euphoria” hasn’t collided with the disappointing reality yet. At least not catastrophically.

      It seems the more abstracted the financial systems are, the more the finance industry can bullshit its way through. And at this point, money is just whatever numbers they type into their computers. Just completely made up and detached from reality.

      • NekoKoneko@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        OpenAI and Anthropic’s IPOs +2-4 weeks is my best guess for when the market starts sliding. Investor money is already drying up, but too many rich people haven’t cashed out yet, helping themselves (like SpaceX) to our index retirement funds to countersign withdrawals at the inflated valuations.

        I’m on the fence after that if it’ll happen slow or fast. Possible we’ll get a Bear Stearns/Lehman type failure that brings down the world’s markets, after a major player no longer has a blank check at multi-billion/quarter burn rates, and hits insolvency like a freight train. But also likely it could unravel more slowly like a sweater, as de-escalating levels of market access pull on the thread in turn.