The Argument for Letting AI Burn It All Down
Suddenly, and not long ago, our beloved tech industry leaders began to suggest caution. Sam Altman said that AI is “definitely” in a bubble, albeit one formed around “a kernel of truth.” Mark Zuckerberg said that an AI bubble is “quite possible,” although “if the models continue to grow in capability year after year and the demand continues to grow, then there might not be a collapse, or anything like that.” Even Eric Schmidt says to calm down about artificial general intelligence and focus on competing with China.
The question that everyone wants an answer to is: How will the bubble doll? Are we going to wake up and realize we don't really want to talk to LLMs anymore? Will someone find a way to build AI tools for one thousandth of the price, and allow a thousand ChatGPTs to flourish? Will we check the news one day and see those pictures of traders yelling at each other on the floor of the stock exchange while the stock prices of tech companies flash bright red? My answer is: I have no earthly idea. But I really hope that, someday soon, AI becomes… normal.
I like normal technologies. They come with manuals. They change periodically, but you can build craft and professional skills around them. Bubble technologies are constantly changing, and there is always a threat that they will destroy society (bad) or make everyone next to you rich (worse). There are many ways to predict when a technology will become normal – price-to-earnings and other boring stuff. The metric I use is the C/B ratio: conferences to blogging. If people gradually attend conferences on a topic, it is still not normal. If they mostly blog about it, that's it. I made this up, but I assure you it is predictive.
I work with AI all day, and right now there are so many conferences and meetings and not so many good, boring technical blog posts. The tech industry love conferences because our product is so abstract that it's hard for us to figure out where we sit in the nerd-chimp hierarchy. This is why VC firms sponsor meetings so often; they allow pheromonal exchange and dominance displays, usually set up with PowerPoint. Invoke the Chatham House Rule if you're feeling naughty.
People sometimes talk about the golden age of blogging, but less about why people blog: Nobody had money, and nothing is cheaper than putting words online. When the money flies to the money sky, and the startups become enddowns, the conference budgets are often the first thing to go. Nerds still want to talk their nerd talk. That's when they start posting – it's the only way to find out who you are. Eventually, the C/B ratio of AI will begin to tip towards blog.
Not yet. We may have a way to go. The globalized economy has become, out of utility and greed, a world-spanning suspension bridge, hung from a few giant anchors like OpenAI and Nvidia and Google, bolstered by promises of planetary AI transformation – and if any of those anchors were to falter, just a little, and the promises failed to materialize, maybe the bridge would sag, and the bridge would sag all AI startups (including mine) would fall into the sea. Constantly anticipating this is just one of the many things that has made 2025 so much fun.
