OpenAI is not the one who will be requiring the bailout. they aren't even a public company, for one.

Oracle, Coreweave or both will be the ones requiring it, ostensibly. in reality it's much larger than that.

tremendous money has been invested into AI already, commitments for far more spending still have been made, contracts signed and funds borrowed. the DC building sites are abuzz with expensive effort and soon racks will welcome fresh batches of not-so-fresh previous gen GPUs.

investment is roaring like a locomotive joy-ride atop tracks freshly laid. AI executives are also roaring on any talk show and podcast that will have them but the path to profitability still leads through a maze of smoke and mirrors and hasn't been exactly charted.

you think the LPs of VC firms will just write off the losses when those are realized? O&C will just default on loans and their many creditors will let them?

there are tens if not hundreds of billions already locked in the storm cloud beyond the point of no return. financiers from all corners of finance and sundry are already holding a compartment or two in that bag, each.

when the bag turns out to be largely filled with hot air, i suppose all those powerful bagholders will just go "welp, we dun goof'd" and hold a Sprint Retro about the learnings that will be their consolation prize for the financial haircuts suffered.

perhaps if they had no other option, they would. they do have that other option and the debts in risk of default which, something tells me, creditors won't be able to write off without being pushed to the brink themselves, are the wedge already planted in the financial system the bailout breeze draft will gently blow through.

P.S. it's not that Oracle or any of the Magnate 7 are devoid of means to patch up the fabric of a battered balance sheet.

that wasn't the case in 2008, either. it's a little known and even less appreciated fact that parties tied up in Lehman on day of Chapter 11 filing were made whole to the tune of 100 cents on the dollar after all was said and done in the post-bankruptcy proceedings. sure it took 10 years but it happened.

in the heat of the moment, though, there's a burning hole in the pocket, runs on the bank imminent if not in motion already and 401 millions of voices crying out in anguish.

that's no time for methodical disbursement, it's time for the hair-on-fire vaudeville act Wall Street had gotten rather good at throughout the numerous reruns of that particular number they performed to date.

it will be politically absolutely unacceptable and a burning public grievance for numerous news cycles. so what? as if that spectacle of manifest outrage, justified and futile, was anything but jolly good entertainment for those looking on at it from the gallery.

Lehman was allowed to go under because hey, their liabilities numbered in the low billions plus they are such dicks anyway. Especially the Dick in charge.

Salient point being, it didn't seem like that big a deal. Compared to the high-powered AI deals it seems like nothing at all.

The next day, an important monetary fund broke the buck because well, they were into Lehman and that was no longer great business.

This was the OG monetary fund, not some fly by night operation and suddenly everyone was redeeming all there was to redeem with a religious fervor. This faith centered around Wall Street Broker the Redeemer, something like that. Not much of a religion but then these are very down-to-earth people.

Then AIG called. They bragged about their stroke of genius idea to raid their vaults for commercial paper, raising well over 10B just like that — paper they didn’t even know they had! Sounds crazy? Read the full story, it’s way crazier than can be put in a paragraph.

Briefly pausing here to let it sink in just how pedigreed the pedigree of these masters of the universe is. They got it all — the degrees, the grit, the genius. Only the creme de la creme get hired for the elevated job at the higher echelons of Wall Street skyscrapers.

But back to the story. The vault loot was impressive but it wouldn’t cut it.

Realizing now the surprising fact of these institutions being interconnected and this contagion well beyond controllable with social distancing (from Lehman), Hank Paulson, the hero of the story (the film version at least, the real story leaves you with a different impression of this shrewd operator) makes the difficult decision to tell the Pres that “oh hey, we’re fked but, idk, a trillion dollars could help a lot”.

His aides don’t like the t-word much, so they kinda vibe out a more palatable number and the rest is bailout history.

If you think Oracle took a risk taking out that loan, think again. That loan is the hedge. A gun to the head of the vaunted Markets, free but admittedly somewhat feeble, makes for a powerful persuasion tactic. They won’t even have to ask for the bailout — Wall Street will do it for them. Systemic risk. Need they say more?

Different than 2008? No doubt. The numbers flying around the DC buildout Ouroboros dwarf the 2008 headscratchers and the companies involved made sure to link up like tentacle monsters getting it on. Interconnected as they were, 2008 investment banks still were somewhat in competition with one another -- the 2026 batch of trouble are in bed with each other.

When you're 30k in debt and insolvent, it's your problem. 30mil in debt, the bank's problem. 30B? Not a problem at all, certainly nothing the Fed couldn't solve, for you and the bank. And solve it they will for what's the alternative? Show must go on.

> Using AI to output noise and learn nothing at breakneck speeds is worse than simply looking out the window, because you now have a false sense of security about your understanding of the material.

i may put this into my email signature with your permission, this is a whip-smart sentence.

and it is true. i used AI to "curate information" for me when i was heads-down deep in learning mode, about sound and music.

there was enough all-important info being omitted, i soon realized i was developing a textbook case of superficial, incomplete knowledge.

i stopped using AI and did it all over again through books and learning by doing. in retrospect, i'm glad to have had that experience because it taught me something about knowledge and learning.

mostly that something boils down to RTFM. a good manual or technical book written by an expert doesn't have a lot of fluff. what exactly are you expecting the AI to do? zip the rar file? it will do something, it might look great, lossless compression it will be not.

P.S. not a prompt skill issue. i was up to date on cutting edge prompting techniques and using multiple frontier models. i was developing an app using local models and audio analysis AI-powered libraries. in other words i was up to my neck immersed in AI.

after i grokked as much as i could, given my limited math knowledge, of the underlying tech from reading the theory, i realized the skill issue invectives don't hold water. if things break exactly in the way they're expected to break as per their design, it's a little too much on the nose. even appealing to your impostor syndrome won't work.

P.P.S. it's interesting how a lot of the slogans of the AI party are weaponizing trauma triggers or appealing to character weaknesses.

"hop on the train, commit fully, or you'll be left behind" > fear of abandonment trigger

"pah, skill issue. my prompts on the other hand...i'm afraid i can't share them as this IP is making me millions of passive income as we speak (i know you won't probe further cause asking a person about their finances is impolite)" > imposter syndrome inducer par excellence, also FOMO -- thinking to yourself "how long can the gold rush last? this person is raking it in!! what am i doing? the miserable sod i am"

1. outlandish claims (Claude writes ALL the code) noone can seem to reproduce, and indeed everyone non-affiliated is having a very different experience

2. some of the darkest patterns you've seen in marketing are the key tenets of the gospel

3. it's probably a duck.

i've been 100% clear on the grift since October '25. Steve Eisman of the "Big Short" was just hopping onto the hype train back then. i thought...oh. how much analysis does this guru of analysts really make? now Steve sings of AI panic and blood in the streets.

these things really make you think, about what an economy even is. it sure doesn't seem to have a lot to do with supply and demand, products and services, and all those archaisms.