I'm hoping for the AI bubble to pop. I want to see Nvidia and X and Tesla and Microslop and OpenAI all crash and burn.
But there's another part of me that knows there's a good historical precedent for what happens in these situations. My brain is zapped but Larry Fink was the architect of the previous market crash that led to BlackRock profiteering wildly and becoming the immense beast that it is today.
I know that the big AI companies/AI affiliated companies are what is keeping the US economy afloat at the moment and I know the US will play the "too big to fail" card to do yet-another immense transfer of wealth from the proles directly to these companies in the form of bailouts.
I don't think AI-only companies are gonna survive this. I think OpenAI might be the first domino to fall. But Google commands a vast amount of diversified income sources, unlike OpenAI, and I wonder if almost every other big player in AI will get swept under but, with big bailouts and the power that Google commands, it feels like they will be poised to gobble up all the smaller fish and expand their monopoly to integrate themselves into every level of government administration as the government cuts back on expenditures to weather the fallout from the bubble popping plus the immense cost of bailouts, so I can see it being a Faustian bargain where money goes into Google (either directly or indirectly), Google vacuums up all the business and especially the data centers, then Google offers the insolvent US government the "solution" of selling them terminals for every citizen interfacing role that runs on AI and embedding AI in all sorts of bureaucratic processes that occur mostly behind the scenes. For a "small" fee, of course. (Or maybe Palantir or some scumfuck company like Larry Ellison's swoops in and profiteers from the fire sale as the market burns.)
(I'd explain all the fuckery with Larry Fink and BlackRock and how I anticipate the parallels to play out this time around but there's a lot of threads and I'd have to have the brain power available to brush up on the sources and weave the narrative together but that's not gonna happen for me today. Has TrueAnon covered BlackRock yet?)
Strange to think that the scenario of the AI bubble popping and causing all sorts of economic catastrophe for the working class people around the world while the US starts to crumble and descend into fascism and civil war is my optimistic take and that my doomer take is that AI collapses but it doesn't take the market with it and instead AI gets monopolized, bailed out, and forcibly integrated into all levels of society while the US descends into fascism and civil war.
Funny you should mention that. I had one where the MC's magic was primarily based around "fae chatter". Essentially they had twitch chat follow them around. It made them semi-clairvoyant. So they'd notice if they missed something on the ground, they could invalidate exams at school because they got too famous too quick, and they gave advice when they had to fight. The downside is that their advice isn't always accurate, they always had an opinion about love & other sensitive topics, and to become more powerful you must be more entertaining to the fae.
I absolutely piloted the narrative into the dirt and didn't look back. I wanted the warlock to be a novella, but I've been having so much fun that I'm having trouble with brevity. I need the practice to learn the critical concepts of character development, framing the most important concepts, and the narrative salience of events. So I made this silly guy who ruins everything.
excerpt where the MC does his sales routine for a warlock's soul (CW: description of gore esp for a child)
“You waste my time, trickster! I need a new pact. I need more power now. There is a child whose life hangs in the balance! There is no expense too great for me.”“I hear you, I totally hear you.” I comforted him, quickly realizing the limits of my script. “That’s actually why I’m here. I have healing powers I can grant via a pact, I just need to know about the terms - what’s wrong with the child and what kind of expense you are capable of spending so I can actually be of service.”
I saw his eyes soften. Sucker. Loser. I caught him hook, line, and sinker. All I had to do was putt him into the hole.
“The child snuck into the battlefield. She is the orphaned daughter of the woman I loved, wed to another. If you can put her ribcage back together you can take me in her stead.”
“Gotcha. So it sounds like you have an immediate need for power. Would it be helpful if I went over the terms of the pact?”
“Please…” He spat through his clenched jaw. His eyes were red with tears and desperation. “If I cannot find Ifrit I will take what I can.”
You never want to be desperate during a negotiation. He had remarkably bad form.