Discussion · Open Science

[T]he 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. AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/27/rancid-vibe-coding/#class-war
The only thing […] that we can do about this is to puncture the AI bubble as soon as possible, to halt this before it progresses any further and to head off the accumulation of social and economic debt. To do that, we have to take aim at the material basis for the AI bubble (creating a growth story by claiming that defective AI can do your job).

This and more: https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/#subprime-intelligence

(via https://mas.to/@BruceMirken/115279614805786800 @BruceMirken)

https://pluralistic.net

Pluralistic: AI turns Amazon coders into Amazon warehouse workers (27 May 2025)

https://pluralistic.net

Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh (27 Sep 2025)

JPeck

@boscoandpeck@universeodon.com replied · 4 days ago

@chpietsch @pluralistic @BruceMirken This is so spot on, that it's almost poetry:

"The AI bubble is driven by monopolists who've conquered their markets and have no more growth potential"

Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊

@theogrin@chaosfem.tw replied · 4 days ago

@chpietsch @pluralistic @BruceMirken

One of my big takeaways here is that the workers care about the quality of their work (if they have any say in it), the middlemen care about the quality, the consumers certainly care about quality...

The only people who don't care about quality are the people who are at the top, and who never use the stuff.

And then quality suffers, and everyone on the supply chain gets blamed except the capitalist pigs making the decisions.

Scarab (Sarah)

@Configures@mindly.social replied · 4 days ago

@chpietsch @pluralistic @BruceMirken "AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations." Yep.