Daily Lab: “A balloon that has been punctured”

Short summary:

• Bubbles always burst, and it’s always sudden.
• AI speculation is leading to a bubble of investment.
• Which means we shouldn’t rely on AI in its current form.

Why read the rest:

• Insights from the 1929 stock market crash we can apply to the AI bubble.

There’s a lot of talk about whether the “AI bubble” will burst at some point.

And I think it’s missing the point. Because, as far as I can tell, of course it will.

That’s just the nature of bubbles.

As John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in 1955, in reference to the 1929 market crash, “a balloon that has been punctured does not deflate in an orderly way.”

So what does this have to do with entrepreneurs and marketers?

Just a reminder that the AI tools, apps, workflows, and processes that are free or cheap today probably won’t be (or won’t even exist) tomorrow.

I believe AI is a fundamentally transformative technology—that’s why I also believe that there will be speculative over-investment in it.

Which makes a crash inevitable.

As Galbraith wrote, “The descent is always more sudden than the increase.”

So, while I recommend trying out, getting used to, and understanding AI and large language models, I advise not to depend on them.

Because the descent will be more sudden than the increase.