"I know it's tempting to write the bubble story," Mr Altman told me as he sat flanked by his top lieutenants. "In fact, there are many parts of AI that I think are kind of bubbly right now."
Last week, while touring one of OpenAI's mammoth data centers being built in Abilene, Texas, Altman had a pretty casual outlook when he was asked about a bubble that could financially decimate the entire industry. "Between the ten years we've already been operating and the many decades ahead of us, there will be booms and busts," Altman ruminated, as quoted by The Associated Press. "People will overinvest and lose money, and underinvest and lose a lot of revenue."
His far-sighted blend of tech criticism and class analysis has found Doctorow time and again at the bleeding edge of commentary on our techno-capitalist society. In many ways, his screeds on topics like tech broligarchs and enshittification broke the mold to allow room for the kind of tech-critical reporting being done by media projects like Tech Policy Press and , or the podcasts" Tech Won't Save Us," and " Better Offline."
"When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth," Altman recently told reporters, per The Verge. Altman said this describes the state of play. "Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes," he said.
Big names in Silicon Valley collectively seem to be saying the same thing abut the AI boom lately, namely that it is looking more and more like a bubble, and that the rush to AGI (artificial general intelligence) may be very misguided. The Wall Street Journal has a report today that Meta's widely buzzed-about AI hiring spree is coming to an abrupt halt, likely due to scrutiny by high-profile investors who are balking at the massive sums being thrown at poached AI researchers and engineers.
The top 10 stocks contribute 54% of market returns since January 2021, with the Magnificent Seven driving significant risk exposure for investors.
