{"id":5241,"date":"2025-10-24T09:16:04","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T16:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/?p=5241"},"modified":"2025-10-24T09:16:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T16:16:05","slug":"no-ai-isnt-the-next-enron-its-the-next-electricity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/2025\/10\/24\/no-ai-isnt-the-next-enron-its-the-next-electricity\/","title":{"rendered":"No, AI Isn\u2019t the Next Enron\u2014It\u2019s the Next Electricity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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GeekWire\u2019s October 23, 2025, article, \u201cWhat will happen when the AI bubble bursts?,\u201d argues that the artificial intelligence industry is following the same destructive pattern Cory Doctorow calls \u201censhittification\u201d \u2014 a predictable corporate decay where platforms prioritize users, then advertisers, and finally profit extraction, leading to systemic decline. The piece draws a direct line from the current AI boom to tech bubbles like the dot-com crash, warning that as costs soar and returns stagnate, the industry\u2019s value proposition could implode under its own hype.<\/p>\n

Geekwire: What will happen when the AI bubble bursts? Tech prognosticators weigh in with ensnarkification<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

How will the companies that have invested tens of billions of dollars in the infrastructure for artificial intelligence fare when the enshittification hits the fan? That question came in for a lot of attention \u2014 and snark \u2014 when tech pundits Cory Doctorow and Ed Zitron sat down in Seattle to muse about what\u2019s happening in the world of AI.<\/p>\n

Both men know a thing or two about enshittification, the process by which tech offerings gradually turn to crap due to the hunger for profits.<\/p>\n

The way they see it, the bursting of the AI investment bubble is a given. And that\u2019s not by any means a contrarian view. Even Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have acknowledged that the AI tech sector seems likely to go through some retrenchment, while insisting it will be followed by a resurgence that will bring huge benefits to society.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where Doctorow and Zitron part ways with Nadella and Bezos.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis cannot succeed,\u201d Zitron said. \u201cOn top of the fact that everyone\u2019s unprofitable, it\u2019s not actually that popular, either. ChatGPT is very popular because a lot of people love being driven insane. \u2026 People will tell you AI\u2019s coming, you must learn AI. The reason it\u2019s not able to do your job is, it\u2019s shit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doctorow passed along the advice he said he gave to his daughter. \u201cIf you don\u2019t know what you want to do at university, don\u2019t go to university. Go to college and become an electrician,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s so much work for electricians, and we are going to be solarizing for the next 40 years. \u2026 It\u2019s like being a plumber, but you don\u2019t have to touch poo.\u201d<\/p>\n

He noted that the benefits extended beyond the money. \u201cIf you want to learn more, and you like it, you can become an e-eng [electrical engineer],\u201d Doctorow said. \u201cAnd if you don\u2019t, you can put yourself through college by being an electrician \u2014 and learn finance.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Context and Core Claims<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

The GeekWire article, authored by Alan Boyle, synthesizes the views of several technologists and economists who foresee AI\u2019s investment frenzy as unsustainable. It suggests that massive capital outlays \u2014 data centers, chip supply, and escalating compute demands \u2014 create the same structural fragility that collapsed earlier tech booms. By invoking the \u201censhittification\u201d trope, the piece portrays AI\u2019s market behavior as both ethically and economically self-defeating: quality erodes as monetization pressures mount.<\/p>\n

Counterargument: Innovation Cycles, Not Collapse<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

The first flaw in this reasoning lies in its mischaracterization of technological maturity. As Reuters<\/em> and Bloomberg<\/em> analyses point out, while overvaluation exists, there\u2019s a critical distinction between speculative inflation and systemic rot. Unlike the dot-com bubble, AI is not merely a promise\u2014it\u2019s a deployed infrastructure underpinning logistics, cybersecurity, healthcare diagnostics, and energy optimization. Even if valuations are correct, these applications will not vanish, much as cloud computing endured after 2008.bloomberg<\/span>+1<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span>\u200b<\/p>\n

Moreover, labeling this phase as \u201censhittification\u201d oversimplifies the dynamics of infrastructure innovation. Wired<\/em>\u2019s own exploration of the same theme concedes that AI may still be in the \u201cgood to the users\u201d phase, and that economic compression will likely lead to tiered pricing models rather than outright degradation. The existence of open-source foundations such as Hugging Face and Stability AI \u2014 driven by community governance \u2014 demonstrates an architectural resilience absent in prior centralized platforms.webpronews<\/span>+1<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span>\u200b<\/p>\n

Data Economics and Market Elasticity<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

The assumption that AI\u2019s rising costs will precipitate decline misunderstands elasticity in compute economics. Hardware evolution, particularly in inference efficiency, continuously reduces per-token costs. Analysts from Economic Times<\/em> estimate that despite macroeconomic caution, AI\u2019s aggregate bubble remains driven more by investor psychology than by exhausted technological limits. As optimization improves and competitive ecosystems (Cloudflare, Groq, Anthropic) introduce leaner inference pipelines, the \u201cbubble\u201d narrative loses predictive validity.economictimes<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span>\u200b<\/p>\n

Ethical and Regulatory Evolution<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

A deeper oversight in the GeekWire piece is its moral fatalism. The \u201censhittification\u201d thesis assumes corporations cannot self-regulate or adapt under scrutiny. Yet, emerging regulatory mechanisms \u2014 from the EU AI Act to U.S. standards under the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) \u2014 are explicitly designed to intervene before enshittification sets in. Doctorow\u2019s framework was conceived in the absence of such oversight. Today\u2019s AI firms operate under unprecedented transparency mandates, publishing model cards and ethics reports precisely to stave off the opaque value extraction that doomed ad platforms of the 2010s.wired<\/span>+1<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span>\u200b<\/p>\n

Investor and Public Policy Outlook<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

While AI venture capital behavior reflects exuberance, historical analogies misfire. In prior bubbles, the underlying technologies (telecom, rail, and dot-com infrastructure) survived and ultimately drove decades of productivity growth. The \u201cAI bubble\u201d may deflate, but its substrate \u2014 multimodal reasoning systems, agentic automation, and cognitive APIs \u2014 will represent industrial scaffolding, not speculative residue.<\/p>\n

In essence, GeekWire\u2019s essay captures the zeitgeist of skepticism but conflates cyclical correction with systemic collapse. The reality is more complex: a recalibration rather than an implosion. AI\u2019s trajectory, buffered by regulatory oversight, open innovation, and infrastructural necessity, positions it not as a narrative of technological decay, but as the next durable layer of the digital economy.bloomberg<\/span>+2<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Sources:\u200b<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
    \n
  1. https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2025-10-09\/why-experts-are-warning-the-ai-boom-could-be-a-bubble<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/finance\/opinions-split-over-ai-bubble-after-billions-invested-2025-10-16\/<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. https:\/\/www.webpronews.com\/avoiding-ai-enshittification-lessons-from-tech-platforms\/<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/can-ai-escape-enshittification-trap\/<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. https:\/\/economictimes.com\/news\/international\/us\/ai-bubble-2025-analysts-warn-of-an-impending-financial-crisis\/articleshow\/124340039.cms<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. https:\/\/www.geekwire.com\/2025\/ai-bubble-enshittification\/<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. https:\/\/www.geekwire.com\/2025\/is-ai-hype-out-of-control-assessing-ai-related-marketing-tactics-on-the-geekwire-200\/<\/a><\/li>\n
  8. https:\/\/cosmiclog.com<\/a><\/li>\n
  9. https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DN1dJXb3COq\/<\/a><\/li>\n
  10. https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/geekwire\/<\/a><\/li>\n
  11. https:\/\/www.techbrew.com\/stories\/2025\/10\/02\/what-history-tells-us-about-an-ai-bubble<\/a><\/li>\n
  12. https:\/\/cosmiclog.com\/tag\/books\/<\/a><\/li>\n
  13. https:\/\/www.geekwire.com\/2025\/the-agentic-entrepreneur-how-the-next-wave-of-ai-is-changing-the-startup-playbook\/<\/a><\/li>\n
  14. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hwoWerHTn7A<\/a><\/li>\n
  15. https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/Cyberpunk\/comments\/1ml7rrw\/ai_industry_nervous_about_small_detail_theyre_not\/<\/a><\/li>\n
  16. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ezhAGq9qD4o<\/a><\/li>\n
  17. https:\/\/www.techmeme.com\/251016\/p33<\/a><\/li>\n
  18. https:\/\/www.geekwire.com\/contributor-content\/ai-tools-are-changing-how-news-gets-made\/<\/a><\/li>\n
  19. https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/uncanny-valley-podcast-wired-roundup-are-we-in-an-ai-bubble\/<\/a><\/li>\n
  20. https:\/\/www.exponentialview.co\/p\/is-ai-a-bubble<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    GeekWire\u2019s October 23, 2025, article, \u201cWhat will happen when the AI bubble bursts?,\u201d argues that the artificial intelligence industry is following the same destructive pattern Cory Doctorow calls \u201censhittification\u201d \u2014 a predictable corporate decay where platforms prioritize users, then advertisers, and finally profit extraction, leading to systemic decline. The piece draws a direct line from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[153],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}