Technology

"Top Economist" states the bleeding obvious.

Ponzi called, he wants his scheme back.

Funny how the "Top Economist" just parroted what Ed Zitron, also quoted on the piece, has been harping on, since... checks notes always.

Edit: Zitron, the name. Not Zitrone, The German word for lemon.

Fuck fortune, here's the link to the actual write-up: https://www.apollo.com/wealth/insights-news/insights/daily-spark/in-ai-the-41-percent-depends-on-the-59-percent

Follow-up: https://www.apollo.com/wealth/insights-news/insights/daily-spark/the-buyers-of-ai-are-still-waiting-for-the-payoff

It's a giant economic bubble in plain view.

Let's not forget that they're literally stealing from anyone who ever made anything in our entire history.

Soon™

The problem with capitalism is that morons can get filthy rich and make poor decisions.

Example 1: US president.

So he went to this website:

https://isaiprofitable.com/

The problem is two things are happening at once and they are being conflated. Financially a cannibalising house of cards is being built which is a common artifact of modern capitalism. But in the same process a means is being realistically sought, and openly expressed, to replace the human workforce. This second aspect is unique and when written plainly is far more stark than the more common financial greed fuelled idiocy half.

I feel like everyone knows it's a bubble but that people are expecting it to be like the Dot-com bubble where a small amount of companies succeed, hoping that they invest in those companies.

Why is it that almost all big financial situations in my life are Ponzi schemes?

Fancy being a top economist and therefore being privy to knowledge that is beyond the capabilities of us mortals. We thought the AI was a profitable business, and it turns out it's a giant scam, who would have thought it?

What a smart economist that is. 2 years after everybody knew how this scheme works, they came to the same conclusion. Amazing. Now the world will for sure change. Thank you.

'Profits are currently being funded by investors rather than earned from customers'

Which profits?

Ah, now I see the actual quote is: "[...] the AI boom's profits are currently being funded by investors rather than earned from customers." he means the profits of the shovel sellers, not AI profits.

CEO, "It will pay off because I'm the visionary."

The goal isn’t consumer level profits, the goal is to replace workers, this is the first time capitalists are looking farther than quarterly profits. They’re investing in R&D to replace us, not selling a product. We are not part of the plan.

Together they're on the hook for over a trillion dollars in lease payments, so far, that haven't started yet. They're counting on turning a profit before they need to start paying that back. That's why they're shoving it down our throats, they either make this shit work or they go down in flames.

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/ai-data-centre-race-builds-1-trillion-lease-burden-big-tech-2026-08-04/

I'm betting they go down in flames, base on the absolute shit-show "AI" has turned out to be. They keep claiming they have fixed it, or they will fix it, and then it shits the bed again in some public, spectacular way.

Looks a little triangle shaped.

Investors don’t create profit, they give capital, very different dynamic, I want this bubble to burst so bad

Nice to see you're finally catching up to Ed Zitron.

I think AI could have a good tool for specific purposes and also a very lucrative business if only they had not thrown all that money at it.

The extreme investments forced them to roll it out prematurely over a much larger market that it could ever supply in a meaningful way.

They're trying to force a camel through the eye of a needle.

These public-facing models are not the thing that convinces people with money to play ball.

The plan is not to have the AI eventually reach profitability through payments from the general public, or even by performing massive amounts of physical labor for companies. The plan is to have the smartest being on Earth outsmart every other living thing, in perpetuity.

Yes, this is a ponzi scheme right now. Yes, profits are being funded by investors. But the endgame was never "everyone gives us $20 a month", or even "Amazon pays us to run its robots". Those are ideas fed to the general public to keep them from destroying the data centers in terror.

The plan is for their AI to be able to buy stocks before they go up, patent things before they are needed, and run endgame around everyone's desires, including world leaders and other business men, so they can be controlled like a man controls a dog.

They are trying to make the last thing man need ever make, and that is what the big investors and the CEOs of companies passing around the same bags of money, are doing. As such, this bubble can and will continue until either they birth the sand god or the big money people and world leaders stop being convinced by the private, non public facing models, that the sand god is possible.

Fortune is part of this bubble. They helped create it by encouraging top management to ride it... And even here they still do "he said" reporting.

Investment shouldn't count as earnings. You're literally borrowing the money...

I'm not sure it matters anymore. It's like they've found a way to make it not matter.