AI Is a Winner: The Viewpoint of an AI Believer
November 13, 2025
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Bubble, bubble, bubble. This is the Silicon Valley version of epstein, epstein, epstein. If you are worn out from the doom and gloom of smart software’s penchant for burning cash and ignoring the realities of generating electric power quickly, you will want to read “AI Is Probably Not a Bubble: AI Companies Have Revenue, Demand, and Paths to Immense Value.” [Note: You may encounter a paywall when you attempt to view this article. Don’t hassle me. Contact those charming visionaries at Substack, the new new media outfit.]
The predictive impact of the analysis has been undercut by a single word in the title “Probably.” A weasel word appears because the author’s enthusiasm for AI is a bit of contrarian thinking presented in thought leader style. Probably a pig can fly somewhere at some time. Yep, confidence.
Here’s a passage I found interesting:
… unlike dot-com companies, the AI companies have reasonable unit economics absent large investments in infrastructure and do have paths to revenue. OpenAI is demonstrating actual revenue growth and product-market fit that Pets.com and Webvan never had. The question isn’t whether customers will pay for AI capabilities — they demonstrably are — but whether revenue growth can match required infrastructure investment. If AI is a bubble and it pops, it’s likely due to different fundamentals than the dot-com bust.
Ah, ha, another weasel word: “Whether.” Is this AI bubble going to expand infinitely or will it become a Pets.com?
The write up says:
Instead, if the AI bubble is a bubble, it’s more likely an infrastructure bubble.
I think the ground beneath the argument has shifted. The “AI” is a technology like “the Internet.” The “Internet” became a big deal. AI is not “infrastructure.” That’s a data center with fungible objects like machines and connections to cables. Plus, the infrastructure gets “utilized immediately upon completion.” But what if [a] demand decreases due to lousy AI value, [b] AI becomes a net inflater of ancillary costs like a Microsoft subscription to Word, or [c] electrical power is either not available or too costly to make a couple of football fields of servers to run 24×7?
I liked this statement, although I am not sure some of the millions of people who cannot find jobs will agree:
As weird as it sounds, an AI eventually automating the entire economy seems actually plausible, if current trends keep continuing and current lines keep going up.
Weird. Cost cutting is a standard operating tactic. AI is an excuse to dump expensive and hard-to-manage humans. Whether AI can do the work is another question. Shifting from AI delivering value to server infrastructure shows one weakness in the argument. Ignoring the societal impact of unhappy workers seems to me illustrative of taking finance classes, not 18th century history classes.
Okay, here’s the wind up of the analysis:
Unfortunately, forecasting is not the same as having a magic crystal ball and being a strong forecaster doesn’t give me magical insight into what the market will do. So honestly, I don’t know if AI is a bubble or not.
The statement is a combination of weasel words, crawfishing away from the thesis of the essay, and an admission that this is a marketing thought leader play. That’s okay. LinkedIn is stuffed full of essays like this big insight:
So why are industry leaders calling AI a bubble while spending hundreds of billions on infrastructure? Because they’re not actually contradicting themselves. They’re acknowledging legitimate timing risk while betting the technology fundamentals are sound and that the upside is worth the risk.
The AI giants are savvy cats, are they not?
Stephen E Arnold, November 13, 2025
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