nisiprius wrote: Tue Nov 25, 2025 7:44 am
ThankYouJack wrote: Mon Nov 24, 2025 1:08 pm
…When you created the AI investing Hype thread in 2023, OpenAI was valued at under $30B. Now it’s valued at $500B – $750B. That’s a ~2,000% return in a couple years…And that’s supposed to convince me that AI is not a bubble? You think AI is so promising that that’s sustainable?
Is there something that would need to happen for you to change your belief that maybe this tech is more useful than I realize or is more of a fundamental belief?
I think AI is world-changing. I think it’s more world-changing than the diesel engine, and less world-changing than antibiotics. But I don’t agree with the True Believers like Marc Andreessen (if he really believes what he says he believes), and I don’t think the AI companies are on the verge of creating God (or The Singularity). The rhetoric around AI has gotten nutty.
I think the question of whether the stocks of AI and AI-adjacent companies are in a bubble is completely separate from the question of how useful AI is.
I hold AI-related stocks at their market cap and don’t plan to change, even though I think they are in a bubble.
I think you are implicitly suggesting that the appropriate investment strategy is to intentionally invest in bubbles, in the belief that you can take money away from all the other people who are doing the same thing by outpsyching them, buying ahead of the climb and selling ahead of the crash. There’s no doubt whatsoever that some people do get rich doing that. I don’t think people ought to buy AI stocks now in order to profit from the rest of the supposed bubble, nor do I think they ought to sell them now in order to get out ahead of the supposed crash.
I’m not sure how one can buy and sell OpenAI stock since it isn’t publicly traded, and that “2000% return” doesn’t exist unless you actually bought in 2023 and sold now. But in any case, no, I don’t think the fact that people pay a lot for something proves that it is “more useful than I realize.” I think that some people have made more than a 2000% return buying and selling Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, yet I am not convinced that they are useful.
One possible reason for my being less optimistic about AI than others is that I am old enough to have known AI for longer than others. Joseph Weizenbaum gave me a personal demonstration of the first chatbot-as-we-know-it, ELIZA, circa 1965. (By the way, his version, written in “MAD-SLIP,” was considerably more capable and convincing than versions written in BASIC that circulated later among computer hobbyists). People were talking seriously about computers replacing psychotherapists in the 1970s, which upset Weizenbaum terribly, and he spent the rest of his career trying to tamp down overheated and inappropriate notions about AI.
There’s a shortage of therapists today and AI can be used to help fill the gap – https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2025/03 … h-benefits
I guess I just don’t get the countless hours and posts you spend trying to discredit it. Things like comparing it to IBM Watson, making it out to be a bad search engine, posting things about erotica being the top news headline. Maybe you just focus on the negative of tech and have many concerns(?) and I think about the positive.
I figure people are smart and will figure it out. Sure not everything bleeding edge will stick, but plenty of AI will.
I don’t get caught up in calling bubbles or overhype or the next recession – I’m surprised how many BH posts talk about this. It makes me think of a former member always saying “the coming recession” – if you say it long enough, you’ll eventually be right.
There was a thread years ago about investing in ChatGPT and I said this – viewtopic.php?p=7277584#p7277584
It’s the only time I’ve wanted to invest in a single company. I’d sell now though because even most Bogleheads are starting to come around
