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65% Positive

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#money#companies#debt#lot#more#where#investors#inning#don#immune

Discussion (90 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

missedthecueabout 2 hours ago
As a bystander directly immune to the fortunes of AI going up or down, it does feel like there are a lot more people thinking this is inning 9 of the LLM story than there are people thinking it's inning 3. Which makes it tempting to believe it's probably closer to inning 3.
darth_avocadoabout 1 hour ago
> As a bystander directly immune to the fortunes of AI going up or down

Sorry to break it to you but you are neither immune nor a bystander to the fortunes of AI going down. You are part of it all whether you like it or not.

missedthecue24 minutes ago
You're not breaking anything to me. I deliberately phrased it as "directly immune" because I have no financial stake in AI-related companies. Obviously a debt-bomb of any type imploding reverberates across the economy.
esseph13 minutes ago
[delayed]
bdangubic41 minutes ago
you can 100% and totally be immune to it
msandford36 minutes ago
How do I get zero direct and indirect stock market exposure, no electricity price impact, no RAM or GPU price impact, etc?

I'd love to live in a world where AI firms bidding these things up doesn't affect me but I'm really struggling to understand how they aren't impacting the market.

boelboel37 minutes ago
Which type of person is immune to it and where do they live?
kube-systemabout 1 hour ago
I think it's the magnitude of the situation that is more concerning than how close we are. We might not know when it pops but when it does, the dominos are in a pretty precarious position.
XenophileJKOabout 1 hour ago
It is like being in a city where Edison wired up lights.. and people are like..well I guess electricity has played out!

We have only begun to extract the value of commoditized intelligence. Sure there are arguments on local models and pricing power.. but I think we will be compute constrained for the near future.

scarlehoffabout 1 hour ago
Internet didn't disappear after the dotcom crash, but a lot of money did. This is what could happen here I think.
echelonabout 1 hour ago
The internet remains the biggest singular development of my entire life. The most valuable companies in the world are internet companies.

Journalists have been eager to call AI "over" since 2022, and yet:

- Models just got good at writing code this year

- Models just got good at editing images last year

- Models just got good at cinematic video this year

This hasn't even played out. It hasn't even started.

Why on earth would this be the end?

The robotics story is just getting started, too.

I literally do not write code anymore.

cyanydeezabout 1 hour ago
unfortunately, the dotcom ate just money; the housing crash ate money and people. This will be some combination of the two; I wouldn't doubt a few pension funds in the deep red states get crushed if it takes money and property with it.
goatloverabout 1 hour ago
That doesn't preclude something like a dot-com crash. It also doesn't mean everything in the current hype cycle will come true either. Plenty of people still shop at physical stores, read printed materials, and actually don't like being stuck at home if they can help it.

Similarly, majority of people still don't 3D-print stuff they can get cheaply at Walmart or from Amazon. Or use VR/AR as their primary form of interaction.

WarmWashabout 1 hour ago
>Plenty of people still shop at physical stores, read printed materials, and actually don't like being stuck at home if they can help it.

I too would use "plenty" rather than look at the horribly depressing stats.

Razenganabout 1 hour ago
It's more likely that we're seeing the limitations of discrete/digital binary computing architectures, and this will speed up the birth of new or the resurgence of hitherto-"exotic" architectures, like ternary, analog, etcetera

One thing's for certain: There's no way anyone who's come close to Sauron's Ring (made actual use of AI) wants to part with it :')

pydryabout 1 hour ago
It's like having a bunch of walmart sized pets.coms.
xyzsparetimexyzabout 1 hour ago
Can you convert that analogy to European?
whall6about 1 hour ago
first FIFA water break
techblueberryabout 1 hour ago
Maybe inning 9 game 1 of the series.
rybosworldabout 1 hour ago
Right - black swans are by definition things that the majority didn't see coming.

Ever since the 2008 housing crisis, people have been predicting the next bubble-burst/black-swan event.

The one that really crushed the markets was the one almost body saw coming: Covid-19.

kube-systemabout 1 hour ago
Not every crash is due to a black-swan event. Many crashes are due to causes with predictable reasons, but unpredictable timing.
rybosworldabout 1 hour ago
You have any examples? Because all of the biggest and most famous crashes were events that only a very small minority of people ever saw coming.

Tulips, 1929, Dotcom, Great Recession, 2010's Flash Crash - none of these were in the public discussion before they happened.

chasd00about 1 hour ago
inning 9 of the money/hype train, i think it's still inning 3 of the overall technology.
ninkendoabout 1 hour ago
Indeed, the internet is absolutely gonna be with us forever, but I’d hate to be the guy who bought Cisco stock in August of 2000. (It took 25 years to recover.)

Although at its peak, CSCO was up ~2500% in a 5-year period, whereas NVDA is “only” up ~1000% in a similar timeframe.

tehjokerabout 1 hour ago
That feels more right to me. Maybe inning 8 on money/hype.
mapping36541 minutes ago
The people who made money on fiber and railroads were the inheritors after the timeline mismatch bankrupted the original players who did the investment. Even if AI turns out to be everything it promises, you can mistime the investment and lose everything.
afry138 minutes ago
Fiber and railroads don't depreciate after 3 years of use like AI chips.

Fiber and railroads don't need tens of billions of dollars in continuing yearly maintenance expenses to keep them from going stale.

defgeneric27 minutes ago
The "3 years" figure has been repeated endlessly and yet the same H100s are making today roughly what they did in Jan 2024...
bobanrockyabout 1 hour ago
Hopefully the general public doesn’t get stuck with the ‘too big to fail’ bill .. again :(
sweetjuly44 minutes ago
I worry that all this talk about "China can't be allowed to beat the West on LLMs" is a setup to saddle the public with a bailout in the name of national security.
utternerdabout 1 hour ago
this would be the real travesty
bravetravelerabout 2 hours ago
https://archive.ph/Lek29

For those without accounts, given faded body

buredoranna38 minutes ago
I get the sentiment, but providing an actual number stretches the word "hidden" beyond its breaking point.

Now if the number was ?? and labeled "undisclosed"... that would present a more serious problem.

WarmWashabout 1 hour ago
Raise your hand if you wouldn't pay $60/mo for SOTA LLM access/couldn't get $60 of value out of it monthly.
bix6about 1 hour ago
Has anyone seen a definitive mathematical proof of this? I have seen countless articles and exposes about the hidden debt. These are incredibly sophisticated companies so presumably they wouldn’t let themselves get into a company ending bind. But what are the chances this is actually an MBS type situation where the system is truly overloaded and a few sacrificial lambs are needed?
WarmWashabout 1 hour ago
A lot of people want to see AI fail/collapse.

A lot of publications pay attention to that.

A lot of people love reading things (often only reading things) that make then feel right/correct/justified.

A lot of publications live or die on ad views.

And just like that we have a viable media business model!

functionmouseabout 1 hour ago
Also, the most popular bear case being invalid helps the bulls, who largely control the discourse.
billywhizz36 minutes ago
the fact fortune magazine is the one ringing the alarm bell here is arguably more useful information than any attempt at a "mathematical proof".
dgellowabout 1 hour ago
I mean, it is. Coreweave for example is very clearly a sacrificial lamb.

FWIW Enron was also a „sophisticated company“ at the time

mschuster91about 1 hour ago
> Has anyone seen a definitive mathematical proof of this? I have seen countless articles and exposes about the hidden debt.

There's an old WSB saying: the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. The AI craze is that but on 'roids.

> These are incredibly sophisticated companies so presumably they wouldn’t let themselves get into a company ending bind.

The problem is, company C-levels don't care about the long term health of the company. They only think about next quarter (in a misguided interpretation of "shareholder duty/fiduciary duty") and their bonuses tied to their KPIs.

> But what are the chances this is actually an MBS type situation where the system is truly overloaded and a few sacrificial lambs are needed?

The system definitely is overloaded to hell and beyond after well over a decade of ZIRP. That money never got deflated out of the system in a healthy way and now everything is looking to fall apart.

Unfortunately, such events are already "priced in". VC essentially is built on 1 of 100 investments striking it big and 99 going bust. A market correction won't hurt the big guys, but it will definitely hurt all the small guys.

gradus_adabout 1 hour ago
That saying goes back long before WSB
coliveiraabout 1 hour ago
> incredibly sophisticated companies

We need to stop thinking that just because they have money they're incredibly sophisticated. We have a few examples like Mark Zuckerberg, who had early success with FB, but he seems to be incapable of investing in profitable products. E. Musk: great at selling his companies, but laughably bad at making profits at the same level of expenses. Sam Altman: never had a real job he did well other than raising money. This is the kind of people that control these companies.

kzzzznotabout 1 hour ago
WSB? Keynes said that…
cavemandaveman41 minutes ago
That's cynical nonsense that executives don't look past the next quarter. There would be none of this AI investment if that were true. It's all a long-term play with huge investments and minimal revenue by comparison in the short run.

NVDA had the foresight two decades ago to invest in CUDA. That's not next quarter thinking.

chasd00about 1 hour ago
> I have seen countless articles and exposes about the hidden debt.

eh trolling for clicks. It's just not on the balance sheet (if i have my terms correct) so you have to look in a different report to find the numbers. If it was truly hidden then discovery of the debt would trigger lawsuits from investors. Major investors know about it already that's why no one is getting upset over it except for laymen. btw, laymen in the stock market (retail investors) just serve as red meat or cannon fodder for actual traders with real money and real information.

edit: there will def. be significant winners and losers, the stakes are very high and the dollar amounts are very large.

runarbergabout 1 hour ago
People were saying this about the Lehman Brothers and the entire financial sector at the time, right up until their bankruptcy and the great recession. Some predictions turn out to be correct. And with the benefit of hindsight, obviously so, though how much of a hindsight is needed to make it obvious is up for debate. I would argue for the AI bubble, very little indeed.
seizethecheeseabout 1 hour ago
> AI’s insatiable need for debt has so far been matched by investors’ appetite for it, but they may turn nauseous on the belly-busting volumes coming from tech giants.

Headline doesn't really match the facts in the article. The article seems to say "hyperscalers are borrowing an enormous amount and so far people are lending to them. Other people are worried that this will stop".

billywhizz34 minutes ago
"people are lending to them" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. e.g. https://prospect.org/2026/08/03/ai-bailout-could-be-baked-in...
kube-systemabout 1 hour ago
> "hyperscalers are borrowing an enormous amount and so far people are lending to them. Other people are worried that this will stop"

You say this as if when "lending stops", it isn't a big deal. What you're describing is a concern for a collapse in finance markets.

bigbuppoabout 1 hour ago
Historically speaking, when the lending spigot is turned off it happens suddenly. But hey, it will be different this time.

My future's so bright I gotta' wear million dollar shades.

cmiles8about 1 hour ago
It completely unclear where this 1.65T is going to come from to pay the bill. Revenue from people buying AI doesn’t even come close to covering it, even with crazy aggressive assumptions about the cashflow that could be generated from that.

The Wall St vs Silicon Valley showdown that’s setting up here looks like it will be quite epic. If last week was any preview, get your popcorn ready.

nemothekid41 minutes ago
The number is large - but I'm not quite sure it's existential. The hyperscalers have been making a ton of money and I'm not quite convinced that 200B of debt for Amazon is "world ending".
cmiles833 minutes ago
Amazon is setting itself up to get bruised a bit, but it has a sufficiently diverse business and cash flow from non AI things that it will be fine.

Pure play companies, startups, and investors are looking a lot less safe. For example there are other pure plays where debt service alone is like 25-30% of revenue, which is just insane numbers. There are also many investors and funds with extremely precarious positions in AI that are at risk of unraveling with a bang like we saw last week.

qaq34 minutes ago
AWS made 46B profit last year and will make prob close to 70B this yea so even 400B is very far from "world ending"
rvz36 minutes ago
It appears that it is more likely that AI will cause the next financial crisis than crypto will.

Still no credible long term solution to the so-called "UBI" for all and the abundance fantasies and the utopia that was supposedly "promised".

georgemcbayabout 2 hours ago
Feels a bit early for this decade's "once in a lifetime" financial crisis, but I guess AI just makes everything more efficient.
ccvannormanabout 1 hour ago
My AI recommended that a chuckle at this comment would be a great balance of engagement, humor and foresight.

chuckle

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metalliqazabout 1 hour ago
Leverage is imploding the Korean market, and so it will be for the US.
minimaltomabout 1 hour ago
South Korea had an extremely large population of retail investors investing in options and leveraged ETFs, to the point that 3% of the adult population has now been margin-called.

That setup isnt true for the US, not even close.

mannanjabout 1 hour ago
what happens when you mix world wars, potential food and water shortages, and a rising unrest with the local governments? (edit: and a massive inequality in resource distribution). (edit 2: and a drop in jobs).

Any historical precedent for this all occurring together with technological hype/fast growth?

3738838383about 2 hours ago
money printer goes brrr mashi mushkil
kube-systemabout 1 hour ago
money printer is takin' a break

> And unlike earlier periods of heavy debt, the Federal Reserve is no longer a big buyer of Treasuries, placing a heavy burden on private-sector investors.

iAMkenoughabout 1 hour ago
pretty sure they’re literally printing useable currency with Trump’s face on it, cause printing money is cool again
kube-systemabout 1 hour ago
Not only is that not happening, it is currently illegal for the mint to do so.

You may have seen the headline recently where Sec. Bessent held up a mockup of a bill printed out on a regular sheet of letter paper[0], and there's bill circulating to change the law, but it will not pass[1].

0: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/97ed/live/f6126...

1: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1761

ChrisArchitect44 minutes ago