The "bubble" will burst if it turns out that the demand for OpenAI/Anthropic's services is primarily driven by investment-dollars (i.e. VC money) rather than revenue-dollars.

If OpenAI/Anthropic's customers are themselves generating real revenue with reasonable margins, then it's not a bubble at all.

Reminds me of the obscene valuations of larger tech companies like Microsoft, Cisco, and Amazon during the dotcom bubble. The companies were overvalued by any reasonable measure.

Cisco Systems

- Peak: $555-579B market cap, March 2000 ($80/share)

- Low: $8.12/share, late 2002 (down ~90%)

- Recovery: Never fully recovered; still below peak as of Nov 2025 ($308B market cap)

Microsoft

- Peak: $614B market cap, December 1999

- Low: Down ~60% to below $250B by December 2000

- Recovery: October 2016 (17 years to recover)

Amazon

- Peak: $113/share, December 1999

- Low: $5.51/share, late 2001 (down ~95%)

- Recovery: Late 2009 (10 years), though briefly recovered in 2007 before 2008 crash set it back to full recovery in 2010

It will be interesting to see which companies survive and which implode.

Interesting. A more dystopian take is that human interaction will be limited to a privileged class. The unprivileged will ”have to do” with machine interaction. It’s not really something new. Automation lowers cost. But it the perpetual growth economy there also needs to be more profit, which leaves charging more and/or lowering cost even more as the only viable options. See where this is going? As with food, the unprivileged will have to do with energy rich, low quality, mass produced interaction. Music is the next/current frontier. The privileged will seek out in person events, while the unprivileged will ”have to do” with energy rich, low quality, mass produced machine made culture.

a hugely rambling article, and I don't see how it's final thesis relates to its argument at all

> Because the AI business model relies on reducing social connections between human beings, it is not sustainable. Thus, there is the AI bubble, and it will burst.

"Because it relies on reducing social connections, i ts, not sustainable" isn't a logical argument. There's plenty of cases where reducing social connections have been sustainable enough to generate immense profits. If anything, social connections are completely antithetical to generating profit. Actual 'social' professions are often the least paid and most overworked jobs with little ability to scale.

And author says social media companies was a positive thing. Sheeeesh.

One day I looked around me and was amazed at how many things around me got there because I clicked on buttons in online shops (vs leaving the house, going to the store, purchasing it and taking it home). Buying plane tickets? Clicks. Go to the airport, scan boarding pass (also obtained digitally), all the way to the gate where on domestic flights no one even checks for ID, no "social connection" needed.

that 95% of AI projects by corporate is so over repeated, whenever I see it I get turned off by the lack of originality of thought

Also author cites Google and FB time to profit, they are outliers and things are different now with companies staying private longer. Uber took 15 years to get cash flow positive

> Do you know of a restaurant that’s been losing money for an entire first decade of its operations, and yet remained open? Or any small business in such a situation?

I stopped reading here, which is at the very start of the article, because unlike restaurants there are plenty of examples of companies that remained unprofitable for a decade and then turned a profit.

It also ignores the fact that up until 2022ish, OpenAI wasn't even trying to be a for profit company.

I fully agree that it's a bubble and I think it already has started popping, but this article is low quality and honestly full of basic errors.