Rule #1 of investing -- if you are calling the top, it is not the top, unless you have an excellent record of clairvoyance in such matters. Almost no one does. Therefore, this is probably not the top, and irrational markets can go so much higher than anybody dreams. I know a lot of prudent people who would see this article as a "BUY!" signal.
I appreciate this article and its arguments, truly. But in my 40+ years, I have seen this so often and learned that when I feel things must be over and can't go higher, then they will. This is because I am part of the herd and subject to herd mentality. It's why people buy high and sell low -- they think they can time things or know when high is high and low is low, which is pretty rare to discern when you are announcing views in public. (Also it's why Inverse Jim Cramer is a thing.)
Yes, reminds me when Warren Buffet called the top in about 1997. In all fairness, the top came only a few years later when the dot com bubble was even more "toppy." I literally have 50 years of investing experience and there is one rule that was hardest to learn: The cycle is always longer than you think it is.
This article also doesn't take into account government support/corruption. He mentioned building data centers: "Somebody else has to come up with another $1.5 trillion" and it might just be taxpayers - I really wouldn't put it past our government to do that. It seems very clear to me that our government has a vested interest in propping up certain industries, for various reasons, and due to all the strong for/against chatter around AI, folks will see it as something viable, whether it actually is or not. It's part of our current zeitgeist and hard to uncouple from rational market movement.
Thanks for making this post more widely available. When I started on Substack, I was using AI-gen images. Your work and that of others persuaded me to stop.
I did too until I began to learn just what goes on to generate those images. We are going to have to learn how to appreciate graphic designers and illustrators again.
Agree completely that this is a hopeless unsustainable bubble. There may be small portions of current LLM investment that produces products people will freely pay for, but the magnitude of proposed spending cannot happen, and this will trash the stock market at some point.
But take another step back. This is not an MBA-type business/financial problem anymore. The real question is what happen after the stock market decline, and that is a political problem. As you and your readers understand after the dot-com crash and the 2008 crisis, there was widespread popular realization that the financial world had screwed over the rest of society royally, but none of the people who most directly “caused” those crises were punished, and the broader bad behavior quickly resumed.
An AI crash would be a much bigger deal politically. Both political parties are totally beholden to not only “big tech” but the broader “number go up” ideology where the artificial inflation of the equities of a handful of companies is falsely equated with widespread economic growth. Every one of Trump’s signature programs (huge tax cuts, huge spending on immigration and defense) falls apart if those big tech stock prices collapse, along with the idea that he could serve both his big donors while protecting non-wealthy MAGA supporters. National Democrats are equally devoted to big tech and unlimited defense spending, and if the numbers stop going up the wealth of the Democrats core PMC supporters will crash.
Financial/donor interests controlled both parties in 2008 but issues like CDOs could be isolated and portrayed as one-time anomalies that didn’t fundamentally challeng “number go up” thinking. Housing was still a “real” thing but “AI” isn’t and a 2026 bust would create an existential challenge to “number go up”
If the Dow Jones collapses absolutely every political faction with any real power will fight tooth and nail to deny it is happening, to shovel massive taxpayer funds to help prop up Wall Street and Big Tech and to furiously oppose anyone demanding real changes or demanding that those factions pay a price for the destruction they unleashed.
There are thousands of people like you who have been pointing out the growing problems for years, but they have zero voice within either party and after decades in the wilderness there is no realistic possibility they could suddenly organize. Big Tech has a well developed playbook for strengthening their already massive dominance. See “Super PAC aims to drown out AI critics in midterms, with $100M and counting” (Washington Post 26 Aug).
“Might the AI stock bubble burst?” is no longer a critical question. “What will all the political factions that were cheerleaders for Number-Go-Up do after it bursts” is a much more important question
"If the Dow Jones collapses absolutely every political faction with any real power will fight tooth and nail to deny it is happening, to shovel massive taxpayer funds to help prop up Wall Street and Big Tech and to furiously oppose anyone demanding real changes or demanding that those factions pay a price for the destruction they unleashed."
Of course. Were the AI bubble to burst, Team D and Team R alike would, on the one hand frantically point the finger at the other Team, and at the same time, they would be shoveling as much money as it takes to make sure that no billionaire had to miss a payment on his next yacht.
The peons don't matter, not as consumers of AI or even as cogs to be replaced.
I agree! And books to read when the Kindles go dark! Here on the east coast they are getting rid of the buoys in the bays because "all the boats have GPS now." Yeah, until they don't, like DURING A STORM. I can't even believe the idiocy of relying on these unreliable (and expensive) systems when we have perfectly good existing technology that should AT LEAST be maintained as a backup (acoustic instruments, books, buoys, street signs, etc.)
Are they really getting rid of buoys? That's like getting rid of visual flight rules for pilots and requiring instrument landings. Still, when the weather is bad, you're probably more likely to get a GPS signal than be able to see a buoy.
They got rid of LORAN, a radio based navigational system for sailors, some years back. I don't remember a lot of protest. Very few people still had LORAN. In my area on the Strait of San Juan de Fuca, they'd call the Coast Guard on their cell phones and complain about Canadian roaming charges.
Yes, they really are. I live in a small coastal town, a historical fishing and seafaring community on the Jersey shore. I appreciate your point about buoys not being visible in a storm either, but I just think there should be redundant systems for almost everything. Shit happens. I like a Plan B.
I agree on redundant systems. You'd think buoys would be pretty basic, like "keep right" or "exit" signs. Now, I'm wondering how many people realize that you can still tell which lighthouse you are looking at by timing its light. Lighthouses might be obsolete and run by volunteers, but they're yet another backup system.
Whether we like it or not, we still live in a global world. How can antagonizing Canada, Mexico, Europe, India, Brazil and even Greenland possibly create economic confidence?
Hit the "been-there, done that" Wayback Machine, Sherman. Binge on Elizabeth Warren & US Senate Banking Committee Hearings greatest hits in cross-examining bailed-out billionaire personal compensation packagers: Here are the search words on U. of Tube I use to get best archives:
"Elizabeth Warren Grills CEOs over bank bailouts" Other than our fellow citizens of both Duopoly Big Biz corporate-captured partners according to TV Ratings choosing fiction over the real and rare drama of watching the Big Bank Corp Execs sweat and stammer on air in face of Elizabeth Warren's clarity of cross-examination & hard docs, this has been brewing for past half-century of the homicide of Working Class D-I-G-N-I-T-Y:
CEO of Wells Fargo Confronted on Prime Time TV During Banking Bail-Out Crisis
Wall to Wall Coverage that Omitted the Executive Bail-Outs Using Tax-Payer Funds.
"Senator Elizabeth Warren questions Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf at Banking Committee Hearing" (18 minutes)
4,651,835 views Sep 20, 2016
"Senator Elizabeth Warren's two rounds of questions for Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf at the September 20, 2016 Senate Banking Committee hearing entitled: "An Examination of Wells Fargo’s Unauthorized Accounts and the Regulatory Response." For more information on the hearing, click here...: Plenty of the kind of viewing Americans of all the most Patriotic Persuasion Have No Stomach To Consider...
Yeah, no doubt there’s a special class of financial bloodsuckers who are sandbagged, insulated, protected, from the personal results of their scheming, self-aggrandizing “free market” bull shit!
I can only take comfort that there may also be a special circle of hell for them!
Cold Comfort compounded down in humid H-E-double hockey sticks...
Anyone alert and still tracking the 2008 US Banking Bail-out keeping a scorecard on the largesse of Executives First compensation sucked out of US tax-payer bailed out and remaining destabilized banking system (waiting to happen again)? Scary enough to have its own Wiki page but not yet a Wes Craven horror direct-to-DVD or Download....
Here are some top corporate-captured mainstream news media scorecards from ever name-changing US BANK BAIL-OUT OF 2008 (Executive Compensation v. Shareholder gains....)
"...So how did Mr. Stumpf make out? His salary for 2009 included $900,000 in cash plus $4.7 million in annual stock grants. He later received 108,528 restricted share rights valued at $2.8 million based on the closing stock price on the day of the grant. Those shares will begin to vest in 2011 and were awarded in August prior to Wells Fargo’s repayment of the government bailout money."
"Then on New Year’s Eve, Wells Fargo slipped out a statement saying Mr. Stumpf and three other executives would receive huge stock bonuses for the year, despite the tough year the bank had in sifting through all those bad loans, much of which it inherited after acquiring Wachovia. Mr. Stumpf received 379,600 “retention performance shares,” worth approximately $10 million, which will vest after three years of service if he stays with the bank and meets certain performance goals."
"Wells Fargo defended its compensation practices, noting that Mr. Stumpf is now in charge of a much larger company following its acquisition of Wachovia. “John Stumpf is now leading a company that is twice as big as it was a year ago and the company continued to earn record profits in the first three quarters of 2009,” a Wells Fargo spokeswoman told DealBook. “Our board values stable leadership and our senior executive compensation reflects this.”
"Mr. Stumpf is not the only one who is making out so well at Wells. Dave Hoyt, senior executive vice president and head of wholesale banking; Mark Oman, senior executive vice president and head of mortgage banking; and Howard Atkins, chief financial officer, each received an 11th-hour bonus as well of 189,800 shares, which have a current value of approximately $5 million. Adding up their salary and other stock options means that Mr. Hoyt and Mr. Oman stand to make a little under $9 million each this year while Mr. Atkins will take home a little over $8 million."
"In contrast, over at Citigroup, John Havens, the head of investment banking, was that bank’s highest-paid employee in 2009, taking home a compensation package worth a little more than $9 million. Vikram S. Pandit, Citi’s chief executive, received just $1 for 2009."
"The Wells Fargo board said it chose to give its top executives the extra cash and stock after considering the Treasury Department‘s recent guidance on executive pay and the developing pay practices over at its peers. So it appears that the government signed off on the payout even though Wells Fargo insists that it did not need government approval."
"The board also said it paid out the retention bonuses to keep the men around long enough to help see Wells Fargo through in its integration of Wachovia, which the bank agreed to buy in late 2008 at the height of the financial crisis."
— Cyrus Sanati
Here's LA TIMES wrap-up on Stumpf and baby execs bailed out by US from the surely chastened Wall Street tranche warfare is all fair on US:
Mitch Ritter\(Former highly commended Wells Fargo Card Services Executive Office Case Worker and Business Letter Correspondent liaising between Wells Fargo Card Services & Consumer Lending Execs and the laughing stock US regulator of such institutional corruption the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency dba OCC)
#5 - ABSOLUTEY - Water & Power consumption & the total harm to us all. For what ? One of the Largest scams ever perpetrated on the human race just to make yet ONE more buck. And that is one of the reasons for the coming popping of this Humongous Bubble.
The Lust for Money (& Power) has become SO acute ,so Sick & overwhelming - so scraping the Barrel for every last penny it is the Only reason for existence for SO many. It is a sickness that has swept the world. Nuff Said
Having lived through several bubbles (and having the insular property of being a relatively poor working stiff through each of them), I can imagine the bubble bursting in the next 6-18 months but there's gonna be a LOT of push-back from the "Magnificent Seven" on the optics, each trying to spin it their own way.
The net result is that your average Ma and Pa Kettle really don't "NEED" AI (and, in fact, AI does indeed damage human skills like reading comprehension and general human cognition) but the pro-AI crowd are going to push it hard anyway. But there aren't as many "customers" as the pro-AI crowd thinks there are. By a lot. And I mean A LOT of a lot.
Look, the 100th through 94th-ish percentile probably don't "need" AI and don't want it. They value the intellect that they've build up over time on their own and they're very proud of it (raises hand). -- The 93rd through, let's say, the 60th percentile might be able to leverage it to their advantage (and I'm being really generous there), but beyond some certain threshold there are people who don't want AI, are afraid of it, and would even seek to destroy it because it threatens their humanity. -- Then beneath let's say the 60th percentile (in terms of cognition) you have the easily automated tasks. Do the uneducated and under-educated find AI a revolting concept or do they even know or care? THAT's a huge quandary. "Great, their jobs can be automated!", you say. -- You've just made them mad and scared and now they're buying torches and pitchforks and hopefully coming for the Magnificent Seven. That would be a great optic for a bursting bubble....
So while I "put people in boxes" and social strata in the above paragraph the point is ...you can't and probably shouldn't do that. Oh sure, you can "teach kids to code", and some of them are going to be good at it, or good at STEM careers in general, or finance, or medicine, but - you're still going to have an average statistical distribution in any graduating class of STEM and professional occupations and you're going to have your statistical average of post-hole diggers as well. (There, I just did it again. Be mad at me for mentioning it.) And AI tends to sharpen the focus on that subject (and some will call me out for even mentioning it here, ...again) and the social scientists will have a field day with it because it's still a very touchy subject.
But the real bottom line comes down to two things in my opinion; 1.) How much does the concept of "Artificial Intelligence" cost to run? To operate? To generate meaningful output?, ...when IA can't carry a book or a nail or a folder, nor any physical thing really, across a room or from office to office, to interact with multiple humans at once, right now?; and 2.) What sort of agency does AI really have at the moment? AI will ONLY, REALLY, have agency (in my book) when it has the power to make monetary decisions (like giving you your money back in cases of fraud or mistakes in financial transactions) devoid of any control or safe guards wielded by its corporate masters. And it's definitely NOT THERE yet.
Large Language Models are a poor substitute for "artificial intelligence". In the past we've generally left that to the Large Corporate C-Suites like Fox Programming executives.
As soon as the big 5 and others have to turn to equity or debt-financing their data centers buildouts or ongoing compute costs, that's when the street will demand more clarity on expected near-term returns. Because they're mostly financing their GenAI bets through cashflow, and can tell a compelling story or two about AI investments "beginning to pay off" every quarter, their investors will probably keep giving them leash. Expect a slow, jagged deflation — not a burst.
Ultimately, GenAI value will come down to the basic unit economics. Right now the revenues, while decent, are simply dwarfed by the costs. You can have a valuable product that just isn't profitable. The unit economics will only pencil if you get to the point of massive enterprise adoption, which is starting to look increasingly unlikely given the persistent unreliability issues that are inherent in LLMs.
Most businesses I know that want to automate rule-based workflows would be better off just buying standard RPA software that's been around for years.
there is an engineering term called " a single point of failure" i did not start following you for your financial acumen but i should have. While we dont have a single point of failure, we do have incredible concentration. The S&P 500 is really 10 stocks that matter and then 490 "other". in the hedge fund or proprietary trading world when everyone is putting on the same trade it usually ends badly. the big bet is AI and the full stack including a bazillion data centers that among other things will consume so much energy and water..... and then all the Trump chaos is just starting to kick into the economy. grab your headphones.
Italy, Land of Mussolini and Scamming Dreams....."Always Be Closing" like the grifting tele-sales staff says over and over to each other in David Mamet's Wall Street speculative stage mirror of the American scheming mind (actually shared by humanity, no ethnicity owns that desire to grift and scam our fellow "failing human Wage Slaves..")
BEWARE THIS CLASSIC THEATRICAL QUOTE COMES FROM TRIPLE X RATED DIALOGUE now considered perhaps the philosophical essence of USA rise to top of global heap of ....
"Elizabeth Warren confronts JPMorgan CEO during heated testimony" (9 minutes 39 seconds) Busting the Big 6 monopolists of western world's retail banking & High Fi(nance) binge-ing on Executive Compensation Bail-Outs in Prime Time television circa 2008-2010. Now, down the Orwellian Memory Hole!
Any network user of US broadcast news air waves lay out the situ for vast majority of US citizens any more clearly or concisely in confronting the Big Winners of sagging Working Class?
CNN
18.6M subscribers
243,763 views May 26, 2021 #News #CNNBusiness
"Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) slammed Jamie Dimon during a Senate hearing for the $1.5 billion in overdraft fees that JPMorgan Chase collected from consumers last year during the pandemic"
Maybe they're preparing for war: The U.S. empire is at the precipice and maybe they need cover to build out massive data centers for autonomous military drone swarms which might be the only chance against Russia/China/Iran/NK/etc. since U.S./Western manufacturing is so hollowed out.
They certainly are. We're already at war with Russia via proxy; enabling a genocide via Israel; there are gunboats outside Venezuela's waters; Sudan is being bombed. The big one in the works of course is China.
Disappointing that there's no one here even trying to understand the other side of this.
I disagree with both the very-pro-ai people and the very-anti-ai people right now.
1. There's no mention of demand in the post. The general public is using a *lot* of ChatGPT/etc and usage is still going up. No matter how much they build data centers, all GPUs are still occupied. Are we assuming all this usage is temporary, and the general public will just go back to using Google instead of ChatGPT in a few months? Outside of online discourse, people love using ai. (software developers are indeed more skeptical of ai doing their work unassisted, but they're still using ai drastically more and more as a supporting tool of work)
2. The companies are definitely losing money. But there's nuance: they're making AI ~10x cheaper to run per year, but instead of the efficiencies giving them profitability, users move up to the bigger/smarter models and use them more. It's a (so far) endless ladder climb because people seem to have an insatiable appetite to use more.
This is the same as the computing environment I grew up in, where computers got so much faster every 18-months, but didn't get cheaper because everyone wanted the newer, faster ones with more capabilities.
It's not such a bad business to be in where your users have an insatiable appetite for your product -- the problem is the extreme competition between businesses, and no one wants to give up user adoption, because that could be absurdly valuable in the future. (see, eg, Amazon, who made no money for a very long time of its existence because it invested all money into growing. It was very successful.)
3. Yes, only a smaller percentage of people are paying for it, but the free version is completely unmonetised right now and ads will almost certainly be added once the land grab for users has settled. No one pays for Facebook yet it's a good business model (in terms of profitability, which is Ted's main concern in this post).
4. I love you Ted, but this is an *incredibly* incorrect statement: "There’s no industry on the planet with such an ugly environmental impact.". Do I even have to name them?
I'd also mention that the water that is used is completely unadulterated. Compare that most industries, like garment manufacturing where the washing puts chemicals in the water. Water per-user is not high by most standards. (Look at the water in one extra almond in your salad, or being in the shower for one extra second, both of which are higher than a month of your free ChatGPT queries). High power usage is definitely a thing, but we have the ability to make clean power if we can only allow ourselves to build it. I want them to continue improving environmental issues, but I think anyone claiming this is significantly higher than other industries is looking at some pretty one-sided comparisons?
---
This situation will end up like the dot-com bubble. There's so much (stupid) hype in some parts of investment that a lot of companies will clearly go bust. It's usually the less technical people who seem to invest in anything with the current buzzword ("crypto!", "ai!") regardless of quality that I suspect will be hurt.
But the dot-com bust didn't mean that the internet was a useless technology -- many of the largest companies today thrived through the crash. Google, Amazon etc. All the companies pumping money into AI believe they'll be the one that comes out of it well, because a product used this often by users, someone will be the one that servers them.
The bubble will continue because it's not based anything will real value or even valuations based on real assumptions: it's built, just like the first internet bubble, on FOMO. No one wants to miss the next Google or Facebook. And now these five companies are in so deep, they have to keep fill the pool with rocks to give them a place to stand even as the water rises with them and covers their mouths.
Rule #1 of investing -- if you are calling the top, it is not the top, unless you have an excellent record of clairvoyance in such matters. Almost no one does. Therefore, this is probably not the top, and irrational markets can go so much higher than anybody dreams. I know a lot of prudent people who would see this article as a "BUY!" signal.
I appreciate this article and its arguments, truly. But in my 40+ years, I have seen this so often and learned that when I feel things must be over and can't go higher, then they will. This is because I am part of the herd and subject to herd mentality. It's why people buy high and sell low -- they think they can time things or know when high is high and low is low, which is pretty rare to discern when you are announcing views in public. (Also it's why Inverse Jim Cramer is a thing.)
yep! Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent
Yes, reminds me when Warren Buffet called the top in about 1997. In all fairness, the top came only a few years later when the dot com bubble was even more "toppy." I literally have 50 years of investing experience and there is one rule that was hardest to learn: The cycle is always longer than you think it is.
This article also doesn't take into account government support/corruption. He mentioned building data centers: "Somebody else has to come up with another $1.5 trillion" and it might just be taxpayers - I really wouldn't put it past our government to do that. It seems very clear to me that our government has a vested interest in propping up certain industries, for various reasons, and due to all the strong for/against chatter around AI, folks will see it as something viable, whether it actually is or not. It's part of our current zeitgeist and hard to uncouple from rational market movement.
Thanks for making this post more widely available. When I started on Substack, I was using AI-gen images. Your work and that of others persuaded me to stop.
Good call.
I like the ai generated images for substack.
I did too until I began to learn just what goes on to generate those images. We are going to have to learn how to appreciate graphic designers and illustrators again.
Yes please!
Agree completely that this is a hopeless unsustainable bubble. There may be small portions of current LLM investment that produces products people will freely pay for, but the magnitude of proposed spending cannot happen, and this will trash the stock market at some point.
But take another step back. This is not an MBA-type business/financial problem anymore. The real question is what happen after the stock market decline, and that is a political problem. As you and your readers understand after the dot-com crash and the 2008 crisis, there was widespread popular realization that the financial world had screwed over the rest of society royally, but none of the people who most directly “caused” those crises were punished, and the broader bad behavior quickly resumed.
An AI crash would be a much bigger deal politically. Both political parties are totally beholden to not only “big tech” but the broader “number go up” ideology where the artificial inflation of the equities of a handful of companies is falsely equated with widespread economic growth. Every one of Trump’s signature programs (huge tax cuts, huge spending on immigration and defense) falls apart if those big tech stock prices collapse, along with the idea that he could serve both his big donors while protecting non-wealthy MAGA supporters. National Democrats are equally devoted to big tech and unlimited defense spending, and if the numbers stop going up the wealth of the Democrats core PMC supporters will crash.
Financial/donor interests controlled both parties in 2008 but issues like CDOs could be isolated and portrayed as one-time anomalies that didn’t fundamentally challeng “number go up” thinking. Housing was still a “real” thing but “AI” isn’t and a 2026 bust would create an existential challenge to “number go up”
If the Dow Jones collapses absolutely every political faction with any real power will fight tooth and nail to deny it is happening, to shovel massive taxpayer funds to help prop up Wall Street and Big Tech and to furiously oppose anyone demanding real changes or demanding that those factions pay a price for the destruction they unleashed.
There are thousands of people like you who have been pointing out the growing problems for years, but they have zero voice within either party and after decades in the wilderness there is no realistic possibility they could suddenly organize. Big Tech has a well developed playbook for strengthening their already massive dominance. See “Super PAC aims to drown out AI critics in midterms, with $100M and counting” (Washington Post 26 Aug).
“Might the AI stock bubble burst?” is no longer a critical question. “What will all the political factions that were cheerleaders for Number-Go-Up do after it bursts” is a much more important question
"If the Dow Jones collapses absolutely every political faction with any real power will fight tooth and nail to deny it is happening, to shovel massive taxpayer funds to help prop up Wall Street and Big Tech and to furiously oppose anyone demanding real changes or demanding that those factions pay a price for the destruction they unleashed."
Of course. Were the AI bubble to burst, Team D and Team R alike would, on the one hand frantically point the finger at the other Team, and at the same time, they would be shoveling as much money as it takes to make sure that no billionaire had to miss a payment on his next yacht.
The peons don't matter, not as consumers of AI or even as cogs to be replaced.
Billionaires buy their yachts cash nowadays. If you have to take out a loan, you're only a millionaire, one of the hoi polloi.
That's why it's important that there are a few acoustic instruments still around so we can entertain each other when there's no power left for us.
I agree! And books to read when the Kindles go dark! Here on the east coast they are getting rid of the buoys in the bays because "all the boats have GPS now." Yeah, until they don't, like DURING A STORM. I can't even believe the idiocy of relying on these unreliable (and expensive) systems when we have perfectly good existing technology that should AT LEAST be maintained as a backup (acoustic instruments, books, buoys, street signs, etc.)
Are they really getting rid of buoys? That's like getting rid of visual flight rules for pilots and requiring instrument landings. Still, when the weather is bad, you're probably more likely to get a GPS signal than be able to see a buoy.
They got rid of LORAN, a radio based navigational system for sailors, some years back. I don't remember a lot of protest. Very few people still had LORAN. In my area on the Strait of San Juan de Fuca, they'd call the Coast Guard on their cell phones and complain about Canadian roaming charges.
Yes, they really are. I live in a small coastal town, a historical fishing and seafaring community on the Jersey shore. I appreciate your point about buoys not being visible in a storm either, but I just think there should be redundant systems for almost everything. Shit happens. I like a Plan B.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/us/new-england-boaters-protest-buoys-removal.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jE8.eG0A.FRYGKvoEVsYa&smid=url-share
I agree on redundant systems. You'd think buoys would be pretty basic, like "keep right" or "exit" signs. Now, I'm wondering how many people realize that you can still tell which lighthouse you are looking at by timing its light. Lighthouses might be obsolete and run by volunteers, but they're yet another backup system.
Thank you for opening this up to all readers.
Whether we like it or not, we still live in a global world. How can antagonizing Canada, Mexico, Europe, India, Brazil and even Greenland possibly create economic confidence?
I imagine their goal is to make it "too big to fail" and have the infrastructure all paid and sustained by bailout money.
Hit the "been-there, done that" Wayback Machine, Sherman. Binge on Elizabeth Warren & US Senate Banking Committee Hearings greatest hits in cross-examining bailed-out billionaire personal compensation packagers: Here are the search words on U. of Tube I use to get best archives:
"Elizabeth Warren Grills CEOs over bank bailouts" Other than our fellow citizens of both Duopoly Big Biz corporate-captured partners according to TV Ratings choosing fiction over the real and rare drama of watching the Big Bank Corp Execs sweat and stammer on air in face of Elizabeth Warren's clarity of cross-examination & hard docs, this has been brewing for past half-century of the homicide of Working Class D-I-G-N-I-T-Y:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFw1OWbvPIw
"Elizabeth Warren HUMILIATES Bank CEO, Wells for Taking a Taxpayer Bailout While Pushing Deregulation"
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"Elizabeth Warren HUMILIATES/DESTROYS Bank CEO, Wells Fargo for Taking a Taxpayer Bailout While Pushing Deregulation."
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJhkX74D10M&t=389s
CEO of Wells Fargo Confronted on Prime Time TV During Banking Bail-Out Crisis
Wall to Wall Coverage that Omitted the Executive Bail-Outs Using Tax-Payer Funds.
"Senator Elizabeth Warren questions Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf at Banking Committee Hearing" (18 minutes)
4,651,835 views Sep 20, 2016
"Senator Elizabeth Warren's two rounds of questions for Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf at the September 20, 2016 Senate Banking Committee hearing entitled: "An Examination of Wells Fargo’s Unauthorized Accounts and the Regulatory Response." For more information on the hearing, click here...: Plenty of the kind of viewing Americans of all the most Patriotic Persuasion Have No Stomach To Consider...
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of A-Tone-ment Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee
So, what happened to Stumpf? He got a tongue-lashing from Warren? A small price to pay for his criminality.
Yeah, no doubt there’s a special class of financial bloodsuckers who are sandbagged, insulated, protected, from the personal results of their scheming, self-aggrandizing “free market” bull shit!
I can only take comfort that there may also be a special circle of hell for them!
Cold Comfort compounded down in humid H-E-double hockey sticks...
Anyone alert and still tracking the 2008 US Banking Bail-out keeping a scorecard on the largesse of Executives First compensation sucked out of US tax-payer bailed out and remaining destabilized banking system (waiting to happen again)? Scary enough to have its own Wiki page but not yet a Wes Craven horror direct-to-DVD or Download....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Economic_Stabilization_Act_of_2008
Here are some top corporate-captured mainstream news media scorecards from ever name-changing US BANK BAIL-OUT OF 2008 (Executive Compensation v. Shareholder gains....)
https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/wells-fargos-big-payday-for-top-executives/
"...So how did Mr. Stumpf make out? His salary for 2009 included $900,000 in cash plus $4.7 million in annual stock grants. He later received 108,528 restricted share rights valued at $2.8 million based on the closing stock price on the day of the grant. Those shares will begin to vest in 2011 and were awarded in August prior to Wells Fargo’s repayment of the government bailout money."
"Then on New Year’s Eve, Wells Fargo slipped out a statement saying Mr. Stumpf and three other executives would receive huge stock bonuses for the year, despite the tough year the bank had in sifting through all those bad loans, much of which it inherited after acquiring Wachovia. Mr. Stumpf received 379,600 “retention performance shares,” worth approximately $10 million, which will vest after three years of service if he stays with the bank and meets certain performance goals."
"Wells Fargo defended its compensation practices, noting that Mr. Stumpf is now in charge of a much larger company following its acquisition of Wachovia. “John Stumpf is now leading a company that is twice as big as it was a year ago and the company continued to earn record profits in the first three quarters of 2009,” a Wells Fargo spokeswoman told DealBook. “Our board values stable leadership and our senior executive compensation reflects this.”
"Mr. Stumpf is not the only one who is making out so well at Wells. Dave Hoyt, senior executive vice president and head of wholesale banking; Mark Oman, senior executive vice president and head of mortgage banking; and Howard Atkins, chief financial officer, each received an 11th-hour bonus as well of 189,800 shares, which have a current value of approximately $5 million. Adding up their salary and other stock options means that Mr. Hoyt and Mr. Oman stand to make a little under $9 million each this year while Mr. Atkins will take home a little over $8 million."
"In contrast, over at Citigroup, John Havens, the head of investment banking, was that bank’s highest-paid employee in 2009, taking home a compensation package worth a little more than $9 million. Vikram S. Pandit, Citi’s chief executive, received just $1 for 2009."
"The Wells Fargo board said it chose to give its top executives the extra cash and stock after considering the Treasury Department‘s recent guidance on executive pay and the developing pay practices over at its peers. So it appears that the government signed off on the payout even though Wells Fargo insists that it did not need government approval."
"The board also said it paid out the retention bonuses to keep the men around long enough to help see Wells Fargo through in its integration of Wachovia, which the bank agreed to buy in late 2008 at the height of the financial crisis."
— Cyrus Sanati
Here's LA TIMES wrap-up on Stumpf and baby execs bailed out by US from the surely chastened Wall Street tranche warfare is all fair on US:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-mar-11-fi-wells11-story.html
via
Mitch Ritter\(Former highly commended Wells Fargo Card Services Executive Office Case Worker and Business Letter Correspondent liaising between Wells Fargo Card Services & Consumer Lending Execs and the laughing stock US regulator of such institutional corruption the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency dba OCC)
Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of A-Tone-ment Seekers)
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#5 - ABSOLUTEY - Water & Power consumption & the total harm to us all. For what ? One of the Largest scams ever perpetrated on the human race just to make yet ONE more buck. And that is one of the reasons for the coming popping of this Humongous Bubble.
The Lust for Money (& Power) has become SO acute ,so Sick & overwhelming - so scraping the Barrel for every last penny it is the Only reason for existence for SO many. It is a sickness that has swept the world. Nuff Said
Sorry ,I hate bad Spelling - I mean Absolutely
Don't give your bad puctuation a pass.
Give it a month, at least. October is the cruelest month on Wall Street.
Technically and historically it is actually September, closely followed by October.
Having lived through several bubbles (and having the insular property of being a relatively poor working stiff through each of them), I can imagine the bubble bursting in the next 6-18 months but there's gonna be a LOT of push-back from the "Magnificent Seven" on the optics, each trying to spin it their own way.
The net result is that your average Ma and Pa Kettle really don't "NEED" AI (and, in fact, AI does indeed damage human skills like reading comprehension and general human cognition) but the pro-AI crowd are going to push it hard anyway. But there aren't as many "customers" as the pro-AI crowd thinks there are. By a lot. And I mean A LOT of a lot.
Look, the 100th through 94th-ish percentile probably don't "need" AI and don't want it. They value the intellect that they've build up over time on their own and they're very proud of it (raises hand). -- The 93rd through, let's say, the 60th percentile might be able to leverage it to their advantage (and I'm being really generous there), but beyond some certain threshold there are people who don't want AI, are afraid of it, and would even seek to destroy it because it threatens their humanity. -- Then beneath let's say the 60th percentile (in terms of cognition) you have the easily automated tasks. Do the uneducated and under-educated find AI a revolting concept or do they even know or care? THAT's a huge quandary. "Great, their jobs can be automated!", you say. -- You've just made them mad and scared and now they're buying torches and pitchforks and hopefully coming for the Magnificent Seven. That would be a great optic for a bursting bubble....
So while I "put people in boxes" and social strata in the above paragraph the point is ...you can't and probably shouldn't do that. Oh sure, you can "teach kids to code", and some of them are going to be good at it, or good at STEM careers in general, or finance, or medicine, but - you're still going to have an average statistical distribution in any graduating class of STEM and professional occupations and you're going to have your statistical average of post-hole diggers as well. (There, I just did it again. Be mad at me for mentioning it.) And AI tends to sharpen the focus on that subject (and some will call me out for even mentioning it here, ...again) and the social scientists will have a field day with it because it's still a very touchy subject.
But the real bottom line comes down to two things in my opinion; 1.) How much does the concept of "Artificial Intelligence" cost to run? To operate? To generate meaningful output?, ...when IA can't carry a book or a nail or a folder, nor any physical thing really, across a room or from office to office, to interact with multiple humans at once, right now?; and 2.) What sort of agency does AI really have at the moment? AI will ONLY, REALLY, have agency (in my book) when it has the power to make monetary decisions (like giving you your money back in cases of fraud or mistakes in financial transactions) devoid of any control or safe guards wielded by its corporate masters. And it's definitely NOT THERE yet.
Large Language Models are a poor substitute for "artificial intelligence". In the past we've generally left that to the Large Corporate C-Suites like Fox Programming executives.
Can I like this two or three times? Computer says, “NO!”
As soon as the big 5 and others have to turn to equity or debt-financing their data centers buildouts or ongoing compute costs, that's when the street will demand more clarity on expected near-term returns. Because they're mostly financing their GenAI bets through cashflow, and can tell a compelling story or two about AI investments "beginning to pay off" every quarter, their investors will probably keep giving them leash. Expect a slow, jagged deflation — not a burst.
Ultimately, GenAI value will come down to the basic unit economics. Right now the revenues, while decent, are simply dwarfed by the costs. You can have a valuable product that just isn't profitable. The unit economics will only pencil if you get to the point of massive enterprise adoption, which is starting to look increasingly unlikely given the persistent unreliability issues that are inherent in LLMs.
Most businesses I know that want to automate rule-based workflows would be better off just buying standard RPA software that's been around for years.
On the other hand, I recall clearly when “nobody’s making any money on the internet.” I wish it were still true.
there is an engineering term called " a single point of failure" i did not start following you for your financial acumen but i should have. While we dont have a single point of failure, we do have incredible concentration. The S&P 500 is really 10 stocks that matter and then 490 "other". in the hedge fund or proprietary trading world when everyone is putting on the same trade it usually ends badly. the big bet is AI and the full stack including a bazillion data centers that among other things will consume so much energy and water..... and then all the Trump chaos is just starting to kick into the economy. grab your headphones.
What are the headphones for? I think earplugs might be better.
Ted, thank you for this article.
And in answer to your bubble question, as they say in Italy 'Chi sa!' (Who knows!).
Italy, Land of Mussolini and Scamming Dreams....."Always Be Closing" like the grifting tele-sales staff says over and over to each other in David Mamet's Wall Street speculative stage mirror of the American scheming mind (actually shared by humanity, no ethnicity owns that desire to grift and scam our fellow "failing human Wage Slaves..")
BEWARE THIS CLASSIC THEATRICAL QUOTE COMES FROM TRIPLE X RATED DIALOGUE now considered perhaps the philosophical essence of USA rise to top of global heap of ....
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Glengarry_Glen_Ross_(film)#:~:text=Always%20be%20closing%21%20A%E2%80%93I%E2%80%93D%E2%80%93A.%20Attention%2C%20Interest%2C%20Decision%2C%20Action.,for%20Christ%3F%20And%20action.%20A%E2%80%93I%E2%80%93D%E2%80%93A.%20Get%20out%20there%21
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBCrm5N7uRg
"Elizabeth Warren confronts JPMorgan CEO during heated testimony" (9 minutes 39 seconds) Busting the Big 6 monopolists of western world's retail banking & High Fi(nance) binge-ing on Executive Compensation Bail-Outs in Prime Time television circa 2008-2010. Now, down the Orwellian Memory Hole!
Any network user of US broadcast news air waves lay out the situ for vast majority of US citizens any more clearly or concisely in confronting the Big Winners of sagging Working Class?
CNN
18.6M subscribers
243,763 views May 26, 2021 #News #CNNBusiness
"Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) slammed Jamie Dimon during a Senate hearing for the $1.5 billion in overdraft fees that JPMorgan Chase collected from consumers last year during the pandemic"
#CNNBusiness #News
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios,, Ore-Wa (Refuge of A-Tone-ment Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee
Maybe they're preparing for war: The U.S. empire is at the precipice and maybe they need cover to build out massive data centers for autonomous military drone swarms which might be the only chance against Russia/China/Iran/NK/etc. since U.S./Western manufacturing is so hollowed out.
Or against Americans who disagree with their policies.
They certainly are. We're already at war with Russia via proxy; enabling a genocide via Israel; there are gunboats outside Venezuela's waters; Sudan is being bombed. The big one in the works of course is China.
No, I don’t like that, but war is on the horizon, no doubt about it. Some would say it’s already here. We are beyond fucked toast.
Disappointing that there's no one here even trying to understand the other side of this.
I disagree with both the very-pro-ai people and the very-anti-ai people right now.
1. There's no mention of demand in the post. The general public is using a *lot* of ChatGPT/etc and usage is still going up. No matter how much they build data centers, all GPUs are still occupied. Are we assuming all this usage is temporary, and the general public will just go back to using Google instead of ChatGPT in a few months? Outside of online discourse, people love using ai. (software developers are indeed more skeptical of ai doing their work unassisted, but they're still using ai drastically more and more as a supporting tool of work)
2. The companies are definitely losing money. But there's nuance: they're making AI ~10x cheaper to run per year, but instead of the efficiencies giving them profitability, users move up to the bigger/smarter models and use them more. It's a (so far) endless ladder climb because people seem to have an insatiable appetite to use more.
This is the same as the computing environment I grew up in, where computers got so much faster every 18-months, but didn't get cheaper because everyone wanted the newer, faster ones with more capabilities.
It's not such a bad business to be in where your users have an insatiable appetite for your product -- the problem is the extreme competition between businesses, and no one wants to give up user adoption, because that could be absurdly valuable in the future. (see, eg, Amazon, who made no money for a very long time of its existence because it invested all money into growing. It was very successful.)
3. Yes, only a smaller percentage of people are paying for it, but the free version is completely unmonetised right now and ads will almost certainly be added once the land grab for users has settled. No one pays for Facebook yet it's a good business model (in terms of profitability, which is Ted's main concern in this post).
4. I love you Ted, but this is an *incredibly* incorrect statement: "There’s no industry on the planet with such an ugly environmental impact.". Do I even have to name them?
I'd also mention that the water that is used is completely unadulterated. Compare that most industries, like garment manufacturing where the washing puts chemicals in the water. Water per-user is not high by most standards. (Look at the water in one extra almond in your salad, or being in the shower for one extra second, both of which are higher than a month of your free ChatGPT queries). High power usage is definitely a thing, but we have the ability to make clean power if we can only allow ourselves to build it. I want them to continue improving environmental issues, but I think anyone claiming this is significantly higher than other industries is looking at some pretty one-sided comparisons?
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This situation will end up like the dot-com bubble. There's so much (stupid) hype in some parts of investment that a lot of companies will clearly go bust. It's usually the less technical people who seem to invest in anything with the current buzzword ("crypto!", "ai!") regardless of quality that I suspect will be hurt.
But the dot-com bust didn't mean that the internet was a useless technology -- many of the largest companies today thrived through the crash. Google, Amazon etc. All the companies pumping money into AI believe they'll be the one that comes out of it well, because a product used this often by users, someone will be the one that servers them.
The bulk of the users seem to be students with free accounts trying to get a good grade without learning anything.
The bubble will continue because it's not based anything will real value or even valuations based on real assumptions: it's built, just like the first internet bubble, on FOMO. No one wants to miss the next Google or Facebook. And now these five companies are in so deep, they have to keep fill the pool with rocks to give them a place to stand even as the water rises with them and covers their mouths.