'It's going to be really bad': Fears over AI bubble bursting grow in Silicon Valley

[Igel]

36. Sure, they knew what they were doing--making claims and asking for funding.

Lots of people make claims and ask for money. Most of them don't have people shoveling money at them hand over first and no more cause bubbles than the crazy guy on the street corner pushing some lunacy.

Who caused it? Not all the people around the edges praising it and saying how wonderful and glorious it will all be and how it'll be truly, truly awesome. Most of them just talked (but some chucked government subsidies at the local, state, or federal government) at them.

I guess we could blame board members who authorized a lot of corporation support for other corporations. But they just used monies that they had gotten from outside their corporations from the truly guilty.

And that would be the investors. Maybe money market funds in our 401s or 503s. Maybe state and federal pension fund managers, with their trillions. Maybe private pension managers or other fund managers. Maybe the occasional wealthy person that has a financial guru actually guiding their investments in specific stocks.

Bubbles may be promoted by talk but they are caused by money. A few "influencers" can say how brilliant the crazy guy on the corner is, but unless people believe them the crazy guy on the corner only affects a few similarly crazy wannabe influencers. But once the crazy guy has a large number of followers, *they* can do some real damage.