I'm Going to Make a Huge Prediction

[MineralMan]

Most of us, like me, are being exposed to AI interfaces for customer service and support right now. They don't work for shit!

So, I think we're about to see an enormous crash in the AI business. So far, when it comes to ordinary communications, it is just a big loser. It simply does not work at all. And I haven't seen any improvements in it for the past two years.

Maybe it's worthwhile in some back of the shop applications, but it's not working with ordinary communications. That will end up being far to expensive to implement than most people have predicted. Maybe impossible.

And then there's the bogus AI slop that is filling social media. It's just a novelty. Amusing sometimes, but useless.

All those data farms? Will they actually get built and go online? Im doubting it more and more.

If you've been investing in AI stocks, I suggest getting out of them ASAP. Something bad is about to happen.

[Moostache]

1. There is unquestionably a bubble in the sector...

AI spending has been irrational and reckless and fear driven for a while now. They are not aiming at incremental improvement, they are chasing the AI White Whale - superintelligence. This is out of greed and fear that someone else is going to "get 'there' first" without even really understanding what that means entirely. Its irrational behavior that dovetails nicely with our hyper-gambling aware society and tech-bro/cyrpto-bro ethos.

When it goes belly up for never attaining profitability the way needed to pay down the reckless debt loads being taken on, there WILL be a hard crash. It is coming as surely as the housing market, dot-com and Y2K bubbles of recent vintage - which is why the billionaires are so keen to buy the government and eliminate its ability to hold them to account.

Ugly times are on the horizon.

[MineralMan]

2. Yup.

And in the consumer services sector, they have already dumped many, many human employees. What's left is a cosmic piece of crap. It simply doesn't work much at all. Rebuilding that is going to be a real challenge.

We're finding out how bad it is through personal experience now.

[bobalew]

60. Yeah, try calling the IRS...

When DOGE was done You got an AI bot that plays you along for a few minutes, then unceremoniously hangs up on your ass, instructing you to call back later... Rinse & Repeat...

[ProfessorGAC]

4. It Also Seems To Presume...

...that this is a winner takes all scenario.
I find it hard to believe that the other competitors will fold their tents and retreat.
There's competition now; there will continue to be competition.
The "potential" chased by these investors will never be at the level promised because no one company is going to be that dominant.

[Diraven]

40. This is the most nefarious part

None of them are even close to profitable. They're only being kept alive by venture capital and chip manufacturers subsidizing them as customers. They're banking on being able to impose monopoly prices in the near future.

[Ars Longa]

3. Everybody I know is somewhat skeptical/uncomfortable engaging with it....

Few are outright clamoring for it.. (outside of a few techies)..
Microsoft Co-Pilot is a bust!

[Midnight Writer]

5. A very expensive, society-wrecking solution looking for a problem.

I don't know of anybody who would prefer to deal with an AI approximation of a human rather than simply talk to a human.

The AI owners are making their product useless by insisting that the AI return answers that align with the interests of the owners. They are making their product useless by giving it trash, lies, and misinformation to learn from. AI is naive. It doesn't smell bullshit and reject it. Instead, it eats it, repackages it, and spews it out again.

Garbage in, garbage out. A simple lesson that apparently has not sunk in.

[Diraven]

47. Their only path to profitability is evil

They're going to need some extremely high paying customers to keep them afloat soon. And that's going to end up being governments controlled by oligarchs and dictators which will use them to oppress their own people through surveillance, propaganda, subversion, and extortion.

[SWBTATTReg]

6. Good advice. As an IT person, I trust you far more than many others sprouting this nonsense about AI etc. It

takes decades to bring in new tech., as a former IT guy myself, we bought in the Internet (data networks), originally for the Telcos, to save on private line expenses after breaking away from AT&T. Many got the thought that 'Hey, we got these data networks, lets sell the bandwidth'. It literally took years and years to implement, putting the infrastructure in, getting the tariffs written and implemented, etc., all back in the early 1980s. The savings were significant, the annual savings alone at SWBT (one of the Telcos split away from AT&T) estimated annual savings over $200 million in private line expenses vs. using a packet-switched data network (in effect, the ntwk sized itself, based upon demands of the ntwk on a per call basis (unless you're a PVC, perm. virtual circuit).

Be interesting to see what's coming next...

[Lovie777]

7. Drive thru fast food places like Rally's have AI taking orders..............

and it is frustrating.

[3Hotdogs]

10. "Hello. Will you be using your McDonald's ;membership today?"

[Katcat]

20. TY TY TY

I needed a giggle today.

[The Madcap]

26. No.

Simply inedible slop.

[sab390]

8. I think it's more fundamental than that

All this data they have on us, all this AI is meant to con us out of our money. What happens when everyone maxes out their credit cards? What happens when there's nothing left to con us out of? What happens when they finally have it all?

[MineralMan]

14. No doubt. I don't know what happens.

I'm just focusing on one element. That's the only way I can operate. One Thing at a Time!

However, all of my accounts and credit cards are tightly controlled by me. I don't know of any way for bad guys to get at them, and I am intensely looking for people who are looking at opening.

For example, all of my credit cards have Zero balances each month. All of my bank accounts require my new permission for any transactions over a certain amount. Period. If you're not set up that way, talk to your banks. They can do that for you, too.

[IzzaNuDay]

9. Agree, AI is a tool, not a solution.

It will take a lawsuit based on faulty AI output to help bring this AI crashing down.

[yowzayowzayowza]

11. Disagree.

Nascent use cases and outcomes are far from determinative. Bubble? Certainly, but Anthropic Mythos findings and the AI-generated C compiler are for real. My girlfriend uses it for lesson planning for language classes. Our team has had success automating project management tasks. The need is for a stable, well-defined AI Operating System that can build confidence in the stack: eg.

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2026-05-05-think-2026-ibm-delivers-the-blueprint-for-the-ai-operating-model-as-the-ai-divide-widens

Edit to add less techy discussion:

[MineralMan]

17. Thanks. I understand the technology,

It can be very useful, no doubt. But, it cannot do all the things the AI Billionaires are saying it can do. They know that intimately. Used properly, it can streamline some things and cut down on mindless coding work. It cannot create anything from scratch, however, that is useful.

It has been sold to investors as a magic pill that makes us all strong and smart. They have put huge amounts of money into the AI corps. Hundreds of billions, at least. However, the initial applications are not working. and they're the easy ones. If investment confidence wanes, out comes the money, and fast.

It's more than just a bubble, my friend. It's a potential financial disaster. If you have important money in it, get out.

[yowzayowzayowza]

18. The dot com bubble didnt kill the internet any more than this one will kill AI.

It's an extremely powerful game-changing tool despite any number of overblown claims.

[MineralMan]

23. It didn't kill, but it screwed up the economy big time for a while.

The computer magazines disappear, along with my freelance work. Real estate values were affected. I sold my CA house for way more than it was worth. I moved to Minnesota and bought twice the house for half the money. Then, even CA home prices froze for a while. I got in on the last gasp of high prices.

How many computer companies now make and sell computers? Vastly fewer than before.

Things recovered, certainly, and they will again, but not without a great deal of pain for some. And, with that, I'm done with this subthread.

Oh, and if you thought I was AI, I'm not. Instead, I keeps seeing things I wrote in AI output. Isn't that interesting? I don't write for a living now. In fact, I'm 80 years old and sitting around enjoying myself.

[ShazzieB]

12. I so hope you are right!

Some are predicting that AI is going to take over so many jobs that droves of people will be unemployed soon. I remain skeptical. Thanks for this additional bit of hope.

[slightlv]

22. I agree with you, but I do it coming from a different angle.

I don't think AI is going to directly replace mass numbers of jobs. I think those jobs will be eliminated by corporations and businesses and AI will be used as the Scapegoat. Meanwhile, anything that once resembled customer service will be lost forever, as we've been losing it in pieces ever since they came out with a way to use the robotic voice over the telephone. I was in IT since I was in my 20's. I knew where this heading way back then... and you didn't have to be a genius to see it. All you had to do was take into account the greed of (especially) millionaires, and you could make an educated guess when and where it all started.

I do NOT like AI... I don't trust AI. I don't think it'll ever take over from the human being because at issue is that AI doesn't have an intelligent, creative bone in its code. It takes all its cues from humans and human history. It's nothing unless it's fed the data already done and accumulated by humans. I think it degrades and demeans anything of beauty and creativity. And it certainly doesn't have a soul, which is some of the extremism I've seen written around these programs.

I DO believe that they can be utilized to do good things. I don't think that will be the overwhelming use of them, however. Unless someone can convince me otherwise, I don't believe they were built altruistically with a human need in mind... such as medical, etc. That is where AI could shine - in diagnostics, etc. No... I believe most fervently they are being built to put normal people out of a job and to reduce population numbers. Just look at who our "Tech Bros" are and you can see it in their upbringing... White, South African Apartheid enthusiasts and victors. They have no use for normal people. Hell, they really have no use for anyone who isn't north of being millionaire!

JMO... YMMV, obviously.

[PCB66]

13. I hate AI

However, unfortunately I think that it will be a bigger technological advancement than the computer.

We ain't seen nutin yet. Everything from much more advanced cars driven by AI to smart homes.

The best scenario would be that like the computer it will increase productivity that we will all benefit from. The worst scenario is that it puts a lot of us out of work.

We shall see.

[notinkansas]

19. 'that we will all benefit from'??

What about all the resources it will gobble up without even being required to monitor or report or meter consumption? Are we going to see electricity grids failing to deliver to households because the data centers are taking everything. And what about water resources? Aquifers/rivers across the US are running dry. Things could get pretty thirsty in many areas. Our resources are finite.

I just think we need to scale back on the expectations of benefit significantly.

[PCB66]

49. I think all the issues you quoted

have more to do with the fact that there are eight billion humans on earth (soon to be ten billion) than the effects of technological improvements.

Ten billion humans, all wanting a good standard of living, is one hellva impact on the environment.

When I was born in 1947 there were only about 40% of the humans alive then than there are now.

The point of my post was to say that right now it is really too early to determine if the impact of AI will be positive or negative in the long run.

As for me I just hope the Terminator movie premise is not what we are looking at.

[notinkansas]

56. No. The world population is not the focus here.

It's the impact data centers in the US will have on the US. It won't be pretty.

[C Moon]

15. I think humans are learning faster than AI: for example, many of us can now recognize AI fake pics /videos very quickly.

And I agree: they've improved a little, but they aren't that great.

[Joinfortmill]

16. Man, I hope your right. My techi relative thinks it's gonna take over the world

[ananda]

37. Well, you have to admit they are trying, for sure.

I believe the oligarchs think they'll rule us through AI.

There seems to be a kind of bullyish desperation in the
way they're trying to force data centers in so many places.

Here's the problem, though. Who exactly will they rule,
and where... especially if the only people left are those
like them.

[MiHale]

21. Most bubbles burst... that's all.

[highplainsdem]

24. Ed Zitron's done some of the best writing on this flawed, heavily subsidized tech and the bubble it's created.

I've posted about some of what he's written.

Two of the more recent:

Ed Zitron on AI companies having deceived users w/subsidized rates they can't afford: There's no way to right this ship
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221143649

Must-read from Ed Zitron, 4/28: AI's Economics Don't Make Sense (It's like if Uber charged users $20/mo for 100 rides)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221206291

[infullview]

25. The way I see it, AI's most prominent role

Will be to disenfranchise all low wage workers in 3rd world country call centers. They may even be able to train AI to con elderly people out of millions of dollars by having them pay IRS fines with bitcoin.

[TBF]

27. My son in college just shrugs and says it's a tool -

he's an economics major at a major public university where they are incorporating AI into their studies - in terms of "this is how we can use AI'. And they are very explicitly banning it from classes like beginning Comp Sci, where you really do need to learn to code rather than ask AI to do it for you.

I recall when it was 1999 and people were convinced things were going to blow up when the clock turned to 2000 - I feel like the same kind of hype has happened with AI. I think it will continue to improve, some will continue to use it, but it's not going to be taking over the planet anytime soon.

[Bristlecone]

28. I think you may overestimate what businesses really think about CSAT

vs paying live people. Think of the tolerance/acceptance that they had for overseas contact center engagement. That BPO model still lives and breaths and is huge business.

I work for a company, and with companies, that makes and sells AI tools, and businesses are buying. Most is designed to augment and assist human engagement, but not all. The ROI for replacing people, foreign and domestic, with AI for support or customer service is a no brainer for them(we don’t say replace btw, we say “repurpose” - as gross as that is). Most companies feign caring about improving customer satisfaction, but when “fiduciary responsibility” and “share holder value” are in play, the customer and employees are just a blip. I see it every day. And not just in customer service. CFOs don’t care about anything but the money.

And what you see on the internet is generative AI crap. There are many Agentic AI tools that work within well defined frameworks, against solid DBs and knowledge bases, with guardrails, human intervention, etc. It’s much better than most are likely being exposed to. I use it every day. Example: I am on phone calls and meetings all day. Everyone of those interactions requires note taking, action item assignment, follow up, looking up old notes for reference, etc. AI does all of that and hands it to me before, during and after. Need to talk to someone in Hungary, China, Japan, France? - which I do - no problem, it translates in real time. Etc etc.

I don’t disagree completely, there may be a revolt of some sort, and when my youngest is done with school, I’ll be giving them my 2 second notice and getting a job at Home Depot. But it is here to stay. You can take that to the bank.

[bucolic_frolic]

29. It will bankrupt the entire country

In 2026 the top AI companies will spend about $800 billion on tech infrastructure. In 2027 it will be $1.1 trillion.

They have the cash but due to competition, some won't survive, or will be unprofitable. They have bet the farm. They built a data dump and programmed it to sound human. It will automate tasks, it is faster than humans at many things. It is a tool. It can't think the way humans do.

They all need the masses to spend $50 a month for AI access. Good luck.

[bobalew]

54. It will kill a few hundred people before that and have

Last edited Thu May 14, 2026, 06:52 PM - Edit history (1)

to be shut down wholesale prior to any major release due to some stupid hallucination. Too bad that will have to happen as the price to pay for finding out just how bad it is of a "Management" decision. Funny thing, where its talents lie is in replacing management, which would be much more cost efficient than paying exorbitant salaries & bonuses.

[Racygrandma]

30. I watched a couple of videos today

That demonstrated the amount of noise they make, they are noisy. Even at 1 am

[buzzycrumbhunger]

48. Yes, saw that on FB...

"Residents living within a half-mile of new AI data centers are reporting dizziness, nausea, vertigo, and sleep disruption from sound they can't hear.The source is infrasound. Frequencies below 20 Hz sit beneath the floor of human hearing but not beneath human physiology. The body's vestibular system registers low-frequency vibration directly, triggering the same response as motion sickness. The cooling systems and gas turbines running these facilities 24/7 produce exactly this range.
"Noise ordinances were written for audible noise. Decibel measurements start at 20 Hz. Infrasound doesn't appear. A 200-megawatt data center with tens of thousands of tons of cooling equipment can run around the clock with zero measurable noise violation under any existing zoning law in the country.

The developers know this.They're not randomly selecting sites. Rural jurisdictions get targeted because they lack the legal staff, the engineering expertise, and the regulatory framework to mount any challenge. These facilities require new transmission interconnects that take 5 to 10 years to process through utilities. Building behind-the-meter with gas turbines bypasses that queue. Speed to power, zero delay, zero grid dependency.

Households who bought before the announcement have two options. Sell at a price no buyer will pay, or stay and live with symptoms their family doctor has no framework to diagnose as infrastructure-related. That cost never appears in a hyperscaler's earnings call.

The regulation will catch up eventually. It always does. But the facilities will already be running. The permits will grandfather everything in place.The turbines don't stop when the legal framework finally notices them. “

(via The Other 98%)

[Attilatheblond]

50. No worries about noise. When data centers gobble up all the water and farmers can't irrigate fields

there won't be any people to hear the noise. AI can chat among themselves, and annoy each other to oblivion.

[Racygrandma]

59. I am in KS we are in a drought

They had a story on the local news about the very poor wheat harvest this year. They usually harvest in June, but they will harvest early this year

[Attilatheblond]

61. I am in southern part of AZ. And idiot county officials STILL promote data centers

while local rural homeowners and farmers can no longer reach fossil water with their current wells and the little cities keep approving massive housing tracts because housing in Tucson is getting tight and WAY too expensive.

[Attilatheblond]

62. Used to live in 'wheat country' in Montana. Drought there too.

Food's gonna be so expensive people will be in dire straights soon.

[SCantiGOP]

31. You could read the same analysis as this post

in the past about electricity, automobiles, computers or any other major paradigm changing technological advances of the last century.
While there may be a stock market bubble for these pioneering stocks, it seems ridiculous to say that this new leap forward in computing power will not significantly be a part of humanity’s future.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

32. I also think that AI will end up being a bust

In the legal world, there are a ton of stories of lawyers getting sanctioned for AI generating bad filings with made up case citations.

[Lovie777]

34. I agree with you on that.....................

AI is a rush job that techs did, especially with Musk at the helm.

Corporations may have acted too soon, firing and laying off workers.

[pat_k]

33. If you are in the market at all, perhaps consider XMAG ETF

I don't have much. What I have is divided among cash, XMAG, a consumer goods ETF, and an emerging markets ETF.

XMAG is basically the S&P excluding the overvalued magnificent 7 (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta Platforms, Tesla). Wish it also excluded other AI related like Palantir Oracle, etc... Oh well.

Also highly recommend the article below. A grim picture: The entire U.S. economy is an all-in bet on AI. Incredibly fragile for that reason alone, but the fragility is compounded by the circular, incestuous deals artificially inflating values, and increasing concentration of wealth (e.g., economy currently being kept afloat by spending of the wealthiest, who can -- and will -- seriously cut back when things go south, unlike the rest of us).

https://www.profgalloway.com/how-does-the-end-begin/

[Ford_Prefect]

35. As I have said elsewhere this looks exactly like the excessive speculation I saw when the internet was ramping up

Many of the same speculators are driving expectations into the fantasy range because they don't have an Effing Clue what it can actually do or how much integration it will take to be genuinely useful, or safe.

Personally my experiences with AI so far have not been promising. It cannot actually think for itself, understand American grammar in all its variants (common slang usage confuses it terribly), nor can it operate effectively without editing and monitoring.

I have no doubt that mature AI apps will be useful, whether situationally or culturally appropriate, or not. But those who imagine the new music, Film, or graphics arts will be best made by AI are fooling themselves, as they often do when trying to substitute BS for actual talent, imagination, or genuine content.

[MineralMan]

53. Exactly.

Personally, in 1995, I created an experimental little app for Windows. Called FLAMER. It was a satirical AI engine. What it did was read in messages from discussion sites

Then. It looked for keywords in a specific database It held in memory.. That database was large, but fixed. I populated the data, or it could be loaded from a file.

Next, it wrote a reply to the message it had read in. The reply specifically insulted the writer of the message. That used a language module that selected the words, phrases, and structures stored in a language database, also loaded from a file. A small language model, but large enough. That, too, was flexible and new files could be created.

For speed, all data was stored in memory in matrices.

Finally, a randomized insulting reply was generated from the SLM, and could be pasted into the thread by the user. Internal checking prevented duplications and so on.

Did it work? Pretty well. Well enough that the temporary users I used to experiment were often banned from the forums I used for testing. It was a joke program. A venture into AI.
I got bored, though, so I released the coding into the public domain.

[Ol Janx Spirit]

36. Thomas Edison new well the potential of new technology even in the face of its opposition.

In an interview with the New York World published on November 17, 1895, on the topic of automobiles he said, "it is only a question of a short time when the carriages and trucks of every large city will be run by motors. The expense of keeping and feeding horses in a great city like New York is very heavy, and all this will be done away with. You must remember that every invention of this kind which is made adds to the general wealth by introducing a new system of greater economy of force. A great invention which facilitates commerce, enriches a country just as much as the discovery of vast hoards of gold.”
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americas-skepticism-toward-first-automobiles/

At the time most banks did not lend money to either consumers or manufacturers of automobiles because they were seen as luxury items rather than a productive part of commerce.

It would only take around 35 years from that point for the car to replace the horse.

Today, over 100 million Americans currently hold active auto loans.

It took just 66 years to go from the Wright Brothers' first 12-second powered flight in 1903 to Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon in 1969 despite the prediction just sixty-nine days earlier that it would take "one million to ten million years for humanity to develop an operating flying machine."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Machines_Which_Do_Not_Fly

The term "artificial intelligence" was officially coined and established as a discipline in 1956, so this is actually not as nascent a technology as many would actually believe.

What we see today is probably the equivalent of the Ford Model A 5-window Coupe.

In five years it will very likely be far beyond the equivalent of the 2026 Mustang GTD.

Minimize AI at your own peril.

[NoRethugFriends]

39. Nope

[MineralMan]

42. Good analysis and explanation.

I see your logic clearly.

[NoRethugFriends]

58. Thank you.

I hear color TV will never make it either

[ThreeNoSeep]

41. Perhaps some people do not use AI effectively

I work with AI regularly, and find it enormously helpful in many areas.

[MineralMan]

45. Most people don't use it at all.

Often, they are used by it.

[ThreeNoSeep]

51. Correction

People use it, and have been using it, for years, and daily. Even you. Google maps, translation, streaming recommendations, voice recognition, fraud detection, education and countless other areas.

The entertainment industry has been using AI, algorithms, machine learning, and predictive analytics on scripts, editing, music and graphics since the '90s.

People who proudly claim they don't use AI are just, at best, misinformed.

[RoseTrellis]

43. We fear what we don't understand

There is quite a bit of FUD going on here.
No doubt, if DU was around when cars were invented, quite a few people would be against the horseless carriage, decrying the noise they make, lamenting the loss of farriers, whip makers, and shovelers.
We are in the infancy stages of AI. It will evolve in the next few years at a rapid pace. Progress, ability and usefulness will advance at an exponential rate. Shaking your fist at the clouds isn’t going to change a thing - it’s here to stay.

[MineralMan]

44. LOL!

Sometimes we don't know what we should fear.

[nitpicked]

46. If your 401K has a stock component, you're likely exposed to AI stocks

S&P 500:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500

The S&P 500 index is a public float weighted/capitalization-weighted index. The ten largest companies on the S&P 500 index account for approximately 38% of the market capitalization of the index and the 50 largest components account for 60% of the index. As of January 2026, the 10 largest components are, in order of highest to lowest weighting: Nvidia (7.17%), Alphabet (6.39%, including both class A & C shares), Apple (5.86%), Microsoft (5.33%), Amazon (3.98%), Broadcom (2.51%), Meta Platforms (2.49%), Tesla (2.31%), Berkshire Hathaway (1.68%), and Lilly (Eli) (1.55%).[4]
(snip)

NASDAQ:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasdaq_Composite

The NASDAQ Composite (ticker symbol ^IXIC)[2] is a stock market index that includes almost all stocks listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange... The composition of the NASDAQ Composite is heavily weighted towards companies in the information technology sector.
(snip)

Dow Jones Industrial Average:

Currently includes 6 IT companies (Apple, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Salesforce) as well as Amazon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average

[Klarkashton]

52. I think that the real commercial purpose of AI

Is subscriptions to AI companions that look like impossibly beautiful models that will do whatever you command.

This is where money will be made.

[eppur_se_muova]

55. I've posted a link to this analysis before ....

Basically, he says not a crash necessarily, but a long slide to oblivion for most of the value invested, as the value of the product never approaches what was spent to bring it into being, until many, many years have passed -- if then.

https://pracap.com/global-crossing-reborn/

[CanonRay]

57. Totally agree that baloon is about to pop

It's throwing money at a phantasm.