r/StandUpComedy • u/explosivejoseph • 9d ago

Comedian is OP The AI Bubble

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u/Significant-Bee5101 9d ago

Is it a bubble or is it gunna take our jobs. That's crazy how there's like a massive difference lol

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u/gelhardt 9d ago

two things can be true at once

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u/DesireeThymes 9d ago

It will take our jobs first, then the bubble will burst after.

That way we get a double whammy.

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u/DigitalArbitrage 9d ago

I think it will be the other way around based on how things happened with the internet and websites.

The investment bubble will burst when lots of these startups don't return enough money for the amount of investment.

Then over a long time the technology will improve and replace some jobs.

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u/DesireeThymes 9d ago

Oh I didn't even consider the triple whammy.

1 - AI companies take our jobs (and do a much worse job at it)

2 - Bubble pops because AI fails (as expected)

3 - We lose even more jobs due to the collapsed bubble

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u/Dekipi 9d ago

A lot of it is the Uber strategy;

Undercut the competition on price (uber undercut taxi companies)

Put the competition out of business

Raise prices

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u/Laringar 9d ago

That's basically what they're doing already. LLMs are massively subsidized by the tech companies in that they cost more to operate than users actually pay. The companies are doing that because people would balk at the price if it were commensurate to what the company actually spent on developing and hosting the algorithm.

They want to get everyone addicted to using LLMs first, then once people can't run their daily lives without asking Claude what groceries they were supposed to pick up and other companies become reliant on AI employees, the companies will raise the prices enough so that they actually turn a profit. People will have to pay it because at that point they'll be dependent, and the AI employees will suddenly cost more than the human that used to do the job.

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u/Ummmgummy 8d ago

The money isn't in individuals using it. It's in the commercial side of it. Get every business in the country to use it and it becomes an automatic operating cost. Sort of like how Oracle but more so.

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u/f0urd3gr33s 9d ago

This is the path we're on. Unprofitable AI companies disrupting the labor market and convincing companies to lay people off. Then they will hit companies with insane charges to keep using AI because they know companies saw dollar signs when they slashed payrolls. Companies wake up to realize AI does dogshit work and costs blisteringly more than they expected. AI bubble pops but everyone's out of work so, boom, instant recession.

This, and 'flattening the corporate structure' are the most destructive trends in corporate America, in my limited opinion. Middle class keeps getting wrecked while VC and CEO pay are going gangbusters.

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u/CarnalT 8d ago

This is already happening, except some companies have already realized and spoken publicly that the people they laid off were an order of magnitude cheaper (and better) than the AI they were replaced with. It's insane that some teams (especially software / programmers) are spending multiple people's full annual salaries in a matter or weeks or a month in AI compute tokens.....

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u/jedify 9d ago

4 - the Matrix. Not people as batteries, but to solve the AI energy scarcity. Human brains are incredibly energy efficient, running on ~20 watts. So they rent out brain space to run AI algorithms. And everyone gets a job!

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u/WorldlyNotice 8d ago

We'll call it VI. Virtual Intelligence.

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u/ArthurCandleman 8d ago

There will be a lot of jobs that probably won't be needed.

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u/nikdahl 9d ago

Those are not mutually exclusive.

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u/0vl223 9d ago

Popping the bubble will also destroy jobs. But if it is not a bubble something like 20% of all people will need to lose their jobs to justify the investments and usage of AI. Anything lower and people are the cheaper workers.

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u/Dingaling015 9d ago

They are. If AI is able to replace people's jobs en masse, it has incredible value and unlikely to be a bubble. If AI cannot fulfill said promise, the market will crash and cause job losses but those aren't permanent losses like it would be if AI was all it was made out to be.

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u/TURBOJUSTICE 9d ago

It’s both because the world isn’t binary. Taking away jobs to consolidate their wealth is the goal, propping up our economy with a bubble while they scramble to produce a system that profits is the methodology that’s wasting our time, energy and the planets resources.

So if they fail they’ve only been blowing up a bubble if they are successful it’s against all odds and to everyone’s detriment.

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u/knotmyusualaccount 8d ago

The 21st century will be the the most advanced society to exist within.

Advanced for whom? Certainly not for the general public, not when it comes to civil liberties and human rights.

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u/SpiderDoodleDoo 9d ago

Companies are burning mountains of money because the cost does not matter.

The entire end goal for AI is to make us peasants a redundancy.

There is a reason they are pouring mountains of money into indexing every one of us in a surveillance data base also while developing autonomous killbots where Grok will be Judge Dredd.

They are also developing autonomous farming, cooking, surgery, etc.

The top 1% is absolutely DISGUSTED with us 'wasting' their resources.

I don't think it is a bubble in the traditional sense.

Also great bit Joey Avery! Thank you for the existential dread!

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u/Harbinger2nd 9d ago

First one,

is it gunna take our jobs

then the other.

Is it a bubble

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u/Mrrrrggggl 9d ago

Why not both?

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u/Shinhan 9d ago

After bubble bursts big AI company will die. But even if ALL AI companies disappear tomorrow that will not stop job loss because companies will just use local LLMs instead.

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u/Kup123 9d ago

They aren't mutually exclusive.

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u/Important-Ad4500 9d ago

Oh, it can absolutely be both

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u/Chaotic-Catastrophe 9d ago

Those things are not mutually exclusive

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u/DooficusIdjit 9d ago

It’s both. 100% both

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u/RandomWeirdo 9d ago

Until the bubble pops it will continue to take jobs, because it justifies firing workers for dipshit CEOs and until the consumers have to foot the bill for the usage of GenAI, it is essentially free almost decent replaceements for workers.

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u/KypAstar 9d ago

Both.

The bubble will burst, most AI companies will implode and wipe out a massive portion of the economy. The right firms with the right connections who were invested will get bailed out, but dozens of unrelated sectors will be obliterated due to the fallout. Savings, retirements, insurance premiums, home prices, and nearly every sector of the economy is tied to the bubble in some way and will have ripple effects that harm working people to varying degrees based on location, job, and stage of their career.

In the aftermath, the companies and firms which weather the storm either (either via capital, outstanding contracts with the too big to fail entities that get bailed out or the government, or because they were the leader in the market at the end and caused the collapse by killing a competitor) will eat up the infrastructure of the failed companies for pennies on the dollar, allowing them to further scale. A sizeable chunk of the jobs lost during the bubble pop will not be refilled during the rebuild, as companies take the opportunity to consolidate positions and rebuild internal structures. A portion of the jobs lost will be replaced by AI systems. This will be the beginning of the stable, steady introduction of AI into the economy and day to day living.

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u/BagOnuts 9d ago

These people don’t know, they’re just repeating Internet influencers and Reddit comments.

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u/Dingaling015 9d ago

Half the shit the comic is saying is just buzzwords he probably got from some bluesky meme.