Big Tech uses guarantees to keep $300B AI exposure off balance sheets

ssbulaev about 4 hours ago 52 commentsRead Article on ft.com

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

75% Positive

Analyzed from 1403 words in the discussion.

Discussion (52 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

andsoitis•about 3 hours ago

The headline invites the reader to think these liabilities are concealed from investors, but they're not. Deeper in the article it talks about how credit-rating agencies explicitly includes in their modeling.

The guarantee allows lenders to behave partly as though they're lending to NVIDIA, Meta or Broadcom rather than to an AI startup or single-purpose data-center company.

The interesting question isn't "Is the debt hidden?" (it isn't), but is who ultimately owns the downside risk of the AI infra boom?

More interesting headline would be "Big Tech is using its creditworthiness to finance the AI boom without taking on equivalent amounts of direct debt."

delfinom•34 minutes ago

> but is who ultimately owns the downside risk of the AI infra boom?

The US taxpayer for the inevitable corporate bailouts.

andsoitis•6 minutes ago

> The US taxpayer for the inevitable corporate bailouts.

what informs your prediction?

peri-cl•25 minutes ago

https://archive.is/a4uct

aurareturn•about 2 hours ago

Why are people such big opponents of the AI buildout?

I generally don't see many cons to it.

1. Big tech was just using profits to buy back shares before AI build out. Would you rather they buy back shares with their profits or finance the AI build out?

2. If there is an AI bubble, great, when it pops, we'll all have ultra cheap tokens and we'll have all these amazing AI infrastructure built for the next wave of innovation.

3. Even if AI progress stops here and models hit a wall in intelligence, we'll still have AI good enough to solve millennium problems.

My theories on why people are so anti-AI:

1. It threatens their jobs.

2. They want AI stocks to drop so they can buy the dip.

3. Their identity is being challenged because AI makes what they do easier.

carlm42•about 2 hours ago

We don't have enough energy production for massive AI buildouts. New energy capacity will not come online fast. National and regional grids will be stressed contributing to impacts on populations and industries. New energy capacity will be expensive and if carbon-intensive will accelerate climate breakdown. Additionally at current fossil fuel prices, energy prices (will) rise dramatically. Currently planned locations for buildouts are suboptimal at best, horrible at worst and vehemently opposed by local populations. That could be NIMBYISM, but in this case it's probably justified: who would want a noisy, ugly-looking grey cube raising electricity prices near their house? And that's just one angle. There are many more. Nothing to do with "AI will take our jobs", that's a pretty low-effort justification/theory.

aurareturn•about 1 hour ago

We are building more energy now than ever. AI has forced that. If this AI bubble collapses, we will have plenty of cheap electricity.

blactuary•16 minutes ago

We are building more dirty fossil fuel energy to keep up with AI demands. When the solar build out is further along, and the grid is updated, it will be more acceptable to be using so much energy. Spinning up a bunch of new gas powered plants because they want to move too fast is terrible

andriy_koval•44 minutes ago

is it gas turbines energy?

carlm42•25 minutes ago

That on its own would be a good incentive for the AI bubble to pop ;-) As others have pointed out though, I'd be keen to see how much of it is gas turbines. I'm also not convinced that energy buildouts are seeing as much interest and by the time they come online prices will already have skyrocketed (that is, after the current skyrocketing).

blactuary•14 minutes ago

They are getting too big and too cozy with federal govt, making a bailout more likely

They are moving too fast and using too much dirty energy

They are committing crimes to trick people into thinking they've created god

None of your three theories are correct at all

aurareturn•10 minutes ago

Did the federal government bail out dotcom burst? Why and how do you think the government can bail out an AI burst?

Too fast? So it’s getting too smart too fast to you. But at the same time, they are going to need a bailout to you.

I don’t think they’re tricking anyone at all. Most normal people don’t care. They just use AI when it’s helpful to them. It’s only people who are on HN or X who care.

blactuary•7 minutes ago

The dotcom burst wasn't concentrated in a a couple of well-connected companies. The better comparison is the financial crisis, and yes, they did bail them out.

No, it is not getting too smart. Moving too fast means exactly the opposite, they are doing idiotic and destructive things because the models are not as smart as they want us to think

It's clear from reading your posts in this thread you are just trolling and not trying to have good faith discussion

andriy_koval•about 1 hour ago

To me its not just about AI, but how they utilize all this financial scenarios to push things absolutely over the top, e.g. fast inclusion into indexes and essentially funding bubble from people's 401k.

aurareturn•about 1 hour ago

You mean SpaceX? That’s just one. And it’s Elon. He’s been doing that before AI.

andriy_koval•about 1 hour ago

index thing happened this year, and now investors are obviously lining up before openai and anthropic to get a cut too during IPO.

monegator•about 1 hour ago

1) i write code for a living. Without the tool. I have never been impressed by the tools and don't want to use them for work because i know my brain will rot pretty fast, pretty soon. Amused, sure, but they are still stupid by large. Useful idiot remain a useful idiot even if it appears smarte. My boss shows me some cool shit he experimented with all the time, only to have the thing redone from scratch every other week. Still useful, still a mess, still requiring competent people to keep the castle from crumbling. And you can't get competent people without having them do the hard work.

2) i want them to fail and disappear forever. Let open models stay. Let the VC fuckers starve to death before they use MY retirement fund without my consent because they bribe regulator to include them in protected indexes even if they have not followed the process, just because they are the future and too big, trust me bro

3) fuck me if i identify myself with my job, and only my job.

aurareturn•39 minutes ago

So basically all 3 reason I listed.

blactuary•13 minutes ago

You're just trolling. Nothing he said aligns with your reasons

tliltocatl•24 minutes ago

1. Because resources (land and water) are limited and build-out crawls the resources from the more important (even vital) affairs.

2. Because there is still no convincing way how AI giants would make profit. Whatever impressive and useful tricks the stochastic parrot is able to do will never pay back enough to make a breakeven.

3. Because AI giant CEOs are a bunch of galactic-scale douchebags who keep saying "this is far too powerful for a mere mortal, but as long as we hold this power it's okay" with a straight face while presenting us with the stochastic parrot. No, seriously, I'm very impressed. Someone actively subverting the tech narrative couldn't do a better job.

aurareturn•14 minutes ago

1. We waste a lot of land and water on many less productive things. For example, building massive golf courses that need acres of land and water. What is the threshold for you?

2. Personally, I think the people who say LLMs are stochastic parrots are themselves stochastic parrots. They heard this term from someone online once and now they keep repeating it. Anyways, I’d love to see your math on why you think AI can’t make a profit.

3. You must be new to tech if you think it’s only AI. Many tech CEOs have always been out of touch. I personally don’t care too much about the CEOs. If AI CEOs had better PR, would you be less anti AI?

whatevaa•about 2 hours ago

What are the benefits to actual people? What you are gonna replace lost jobs with? All electronics with ram or storage is now way more expensive due to AI gobling up everything. And then there are local power grid impact concerns.

Why would you be suprised there is opposition?

aurareturn•43 minutes ago

I’m not surprised there is. I even spelled out why I think there are so many who are opposed.

There is something very contradictory about these posts.

For example, you seem to suggest that it doesn’t benefit people but AI is can also replace workers. So which is it? AI is very useful to people to a point that one person can do the job of many? Or AI is useless?

Do we have mass unemployment because of AI? No. Our unemployment rate has been very low since ChatGPT.

tyyye•about 1 hour ago

What about the people who have already lost jobs due to false expectations set via over hyping the tech?

That poster is so clueless.

aurareturn•about 1 hour ago

If this is true, then you can just hire them and beat out the businesses that erroneously laid off valuable workers.

unrented7977•42 minutes ago

You don't see the cons because you refuse to see or hear. You refuse to actually engage with any of the complaints and examples people show you. You're deluding yourself and thinking that somehow everyone else is the problem and you're the only sane one in the room.

You should really reevaluate your perspectives .

aurareturn•36 minutes ago

I’ve been engaging with every single reply.

But instead of attacking me, why don’t you engage with me.

alpinisme•about 2 hours ago

People whose retirement funds might be impacted by a bubble burst, or who might lose their jobs (or struggle to get a first/next job) in a post crash economy.

You seem to be neglecting the economic impact question and assuming only the ai companies themselves are impacted in a burst.

aurareturn•about 1 hour ago

That’s only if they buy in now. If they don’t believe in AI, they wouldn’t buy in now.

blactuary•11 minutes ago

They do not have a choice of whether to buy in if they are doing the sound strategy of index funds through their 401k, funds which are now inflated by the bubble

monegator•43 minutes ago

do you remember, how spacex was trying to bribe.. ehr.. convince.. regulators to be fast tracked into S&P 500?

And they said no.

Why do you think anthropic is postponing their IPO?

alpinisme•about 1 hour ago

Large index funds that most people’s portfolio inevitably includes substantially invest in AI-adjacent stocks. Not to mention the fact that bubble bursting is not by any means guaranteed to have its effects limited to one sector.

delfinom•32 minutes ago

The entire stock market is being held up by AI. Any company that is not AI for the last 5 years has been declining or flat. But are retirement funds really impacted by the bubbling bursting, or are they simply correcting back to the real economic condition for the majority of the country.

alpinisme•30 minutes ago

You assume that the money that was invested in AI wouldn’t have been invested elsewhere.

tyyye•about 1 hour ago

Your posts have been interesting to watch.

You’re progressively entering the delusional territory.