So about 70% of Nvidia’s earnings this last couple years has been from selling specialized GPUs to data centers. And their valuation has grown significantly more than that under the assumption that those data center sales will continue to grow.

So say, it turns out, that these big models that need data centers to run fail to ever be profitable. And all these companies have massively overbuilt the infrastructure for a demand that fails to materialize and Nvidia’s sales crater as everyone ceases to expand the data centers. Their stock value will crater in turn. Nvidia is about 8% of the value of the S&P 500, and other companies heavily invested in such data centers account for another 10%. S&P 500 index funds are the most performant index funds, and thus the ones most heavily invested in.

Right now, the wealthiest 10% of the US population accounts for the majority of consumer spending, this a weird situation that’s been going on since the end of the pandemic. A significant portion of the wealth they can easily draw on to fund that spending is in index funds based on the S&P 500. If 10% of their portfolios was to just poof over the corse of a month, and then… not shoot back up. Think they might start… cutting back on spending? And then all those companies they stoped spending on start letting people go…

… and we’re already in a low hire no fire kind of jobs market with high unemployment (the U-6 rate is at about 8 percent and that’s probably an underestimate) and record breaking underemployment (people who are employed but not working full time, or working a job they are overqualified for) .

Yah, probably not a 2008 kind of situation, but maybe an early 1990s kind of situation. This is gonna fucking suck. Hey at least we have an incredibly stable and well run federal government right now that will handle such a situation with the grace and care needed, definitely won’t panic, have a stroke and shit their pants the moment they have to deal with a real situation.

I mean, kinda?

When Wall Street finally says “Okay, enough stalling, let’s see what we got with our trillion-dollar investment” and sees that the answer is “bupkis”, lots of innocent people will definitely lose their jobs.

Probably not 97M though. That’s more than half of the total jobs out there.

A bunch of companies have laid off employees either 1) because they are pivoting to AI and are shedding other costs (see: Microsoft) or 2) in anticipation that AI will let a smaller workforce get the same amount of work done (see: the gaming industry). AI hasn’t actually done a good job of replacing those workers, but it definitely has had an impact in certain industries.

I don’t think we’ve seen the whole thing unfold yet. Shit has not yet hit the proverbial fan, bubble or no bubble, we’re in for a ride.

Those who benefit from using it as an excuse to lay off people will continue to do so while it is convenient. Number must go up. Shareholders must be kept happy.

I just wonder if the water tastes like frog yet.

Hallucination vs reality

The Yale study

second one belongs in c/nottheonion

That study is very interesting and a recommended read.

AI, interest rates, tax regime, WFH and RTO, nothing has recently impact IT in any way that doesn’t apply to the general economy.