I like that the articles main image looks like a giant gold turd.
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2026
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I presume it's supposed to be a (golden) snake eating itself. Could also be a mom protecting her eggs.
Fingers crossed! Let it burn.
"grim"
Every bubble has created something we use every day. AI isn't going anywhere.
You use tulips every day?
Don't forget the AI bubble is also a ram and SSD bubble.
That is not a bubble, it's a shortage caused by a bubble.
You bundle and sell subprime mortgages every day?
You use the world wide web every day?
Mortgages are used everyday.
Railroad are used everyday
The interest is used everyday
Amazon is used everyday
Those are the big bubbles in recent history.
I will happy when this bubble bursts. OpenAI, Grok and several other companies offer nothing substantive and if they're burning cash and disrupting economies then just die already.
offer nothing substantive
Like industrial farming, there is nothing new, but now everybody can create memes and create software. Society will change.
Let's accelerate the the process. What's the AI query version of DDOS?
Yes, they could just set more limits.. but itll still shave the time sooner.
I'm really disappointed in this thread.
There are a number of people who are recommending buying their cheapest plan under the premise that it will put them under since it is a loss leader. Despite the popular fantasy, the rich and powerful are not stupid. You don't know more about a company or market from passively consuming headlines than the leadership of that company. So, I'll state the obvious: If you don't like a company or industry, the last thing you should do is give them your money.
I'm sure a bunch of people with excel sheets to monitor their credit card points will show up in the replies to argue about how it's theoretically possible, but I will reiterate: The leaders of the companies are not stupid. If they started seeing a net loss from their sales strategy, they'd change strategies.
The leaders of the companies are not stupid. If they started seeing a net loss from their sales strategy, they'd change strategies.
Unless money is not the goal. Not the sole goal at least. As you said, they're not stupid. It's entirely within reason to assume they may be aiming for more than just money.
Who knows what they're planning. Nothing good for us - that's for sure.
While I agree with not buying being better that giving them money. I can't agree with leadership being smart.
This thing was never going to be profitable. So they either:
a) they're actively malicious — they were never planning on profiting which means this is basically a pump and dump scheme capable of triggering some form of recession;
b) they're fucking morons for believing their own fantasies, which judging by their public appearances would track.
Former seems just as plausible, but my bet is on the latter. These AI bro CEOs seem to be woefully average at best.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor
I assume you're operating off this principle, and I understand the point, but it's ill conceived for our purposes. Where malice and stupidity are functionally identical, preparing for malice is equivalent to preparing for stupidity. Where malice and stupidity differ, malice is more dangerous and requires greater preparation. Hanlon's Razor is a good perspective to prevent escalation in cycles of revenge, but it's bad perspective for strategy.
It's safe to assume some portion of highly educated and entrenched powers are willing to undermine the public good for their own gain. We shouldn't allow our selves or our peers to dismiss potential adversaries as stupid. Even if the leadership was composed entirely of nepo-nitwits, there are competent people working for them, advising them, and benefiting from their success.
I want this response to be higher. This is an excellent take.
I've worked too many places where "b" is absolutely the answer. Even small companies that you've probably never heard of where management is drinking the koolaid. They usually don't like being asked why someone would actually pay for whatever bullshit they're selling. The answer, almost without exception, is because one of their CEO buddies told them it was a good idea.
Counterpoint:
They already are losing money. They themselves do not project that they will be profitable until 2030. The idea that "smart people with spreadsheets won't let them lose money" is obviously wrong because they have done nothing except lose money, ever.
They get thier operating capital from funding, not sales.
Now, I agree that the gambit is wrong. So you're right. You're just right for the wrong reason.
Funding is just the cash value of market optimism for the future of your product. High usage props up optimism. Social media IPOs were valued very much based on active users, the idea being that more users meant more opportunity for profit.
The more people actively using these tools, even if they're just maliciously burning tokens, just add to the "active users" metric. Which makes funding easier. And funding is the ACTUAL way these companies "make thier money".
Sure, they're in the business of selling shares not AI-tokens. Standard bubble stuff. Doesn't change the overall point.
Yeah, I conceded that your call to action was correct.
Just wanted to add colour so people understand the mechanics at play. When you understand them, it lets people evaluate other things, without needing you to tell them what to do.
For example, if your comprehension of these companies is that the companies are acting with the goal of profitability l, they would see something like a fast-track onto an index post IPO as a bid for legitimacy, some kind of ego play.
If you comprehend it as a beast that can only subsist on funding with no viable product, it entirely changes how you comprehend the post IPO index listing desire.
Despite the popular fantasy, the rich and powerful are not stupid.
Uh... famously untrue. Mental illness has plagued monarchs, pharaohs, and caesers for millennia. That's long before you get to all the quirked up white boys and trad rad girl bosses currently running things.
You don’t know more about a company or market from passively consuming headlines than the leadership of that company.
Okay, but you can review their balance sheets and their primary lines of credit. Case in point, Sam Altman is heavily reliant on three big financial partners - Softbank, Oracle, and NVIDIA. Two of these are - themselves - hemorrhaging money thanks to large capital outlays that have failed to produce substantive returns.
There are finance journalists who get out ahead of this and report their own analysis. And you can find that in a thousand different private journals, substacks, and podcasts. But you can also go do the grunt work yourself if you're ambitious.
OpenAI's financials have been disclosed already (although the official SEC filing is still upcoming). So... just read them if you doubt what you're reading in the news. But it's not some kind of secret that the business is operating at a loss, with a fixation on debt-fueled growth. The argument is over future projected revenue, which isn't something business leadership can be any more certain of than a passive media consumer.
I definitely get the knee-jerk impulse to announce "business professionals know more about business than internet idiots". Because, sure. True. But the idea that business professionals don't routinely make bad decisions has some pretty historic well-established counterpoints.
"The business people know more" line is akin to saying "This used car dealer must know more about the vehicles on his lot than I do, so I can trust him".
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Any chance of a bunch of used gpus getting sold off from this?
No, they're going to use the data centers for surveillance
Unfortunately they would broadly be systems that need about 15kw, and as part of a board that won't work as discrete parts.
So you get it, but you'll need a couple of 60 amp circuits to dedicate to it... Also you have no viable video out
I hope so
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Doesn’t matter. The regime got what they wanted out of this. The data centers are up, the tech is there, they will just snap it up cheap for use in surveillance and fabricating evidence of dissenters.
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