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Retirement Savings Are Fueling the AI Bubble

17 points speckx 41 minutes ago 8 comments

teddyh 13 minutes ago | parent

Doesn’t retirement savings fuel every bubble?

triceratops 11 minutes ago | parent

Somebody explain:

AI companies and hyperscalers' kamikaze spending on data centers may not be profitable. But they seemingly have no choice because everyone else is doing it.

Would anti-data center measures be like an arms control treaty in this arms race? Maybe if they force companies to spend slower it'll actually be good for everyone's finances.

andriy_koval 7 minutes ago | parent

> But they seemingly have no choice because everyone else is doing it.

doesn't sound like valid reason

cyanydeez 4 minutes ago | parent

I think you're taking off in the wrong direction.

Retirement savings are 401ks in the US and they're managed by _NOT_ the retirees, but random middle managers. Those are the people who are chasing whatever the bubble is producing because their "due diligence" requires them to be bootlickers.

The same can be said of many of the tech moguls who've sworn fealty to trump; if they didn't lick the boot, they could be considered acting against shareholders value.

So, like most things in America: the people are not in control of their actual power. Not in retirement funds, not in healthcare, and not in education. They've all been turned into bizare economic dependent indirect funding programs.

avereveard 10 minutes ago | parent

Didn't see them complaining when their fund went to the moon tho

matteoraso 3 minutes ago | parent

This seems like pure slopulism to me, to be honest. It doesn't back its claim that pensions funds are fueling the supposed bubble, just that pension funds are invested in AI companies. The given solution of completely divesting from index funds (since some AI companies are in the Nasdaq) is also completely unreasonable.

>Are we on the brink of the next financial crisis? Last Thursday, there was a “bloodbath in tech stocks,” as the stock market lost $3.2 trillion in a single day.

Sounds bad, until you take a closer look and see that this was just a 4% decrease.

>In the longer term, with enough political will, we can redirect our retirement savings towards productive investment, such as building out affordable housing and funding the renewable energy transition. For example, NYC Comptroller Mark Levine announced a $4 billion affordable housing initiative in April. Pension fund trustees could follow his lead rather than direct money towards Blackstone, one of the country’s largest landlords and a major fund manager for public pensions.

The slop bells are deafening. I suspect that the author is driven more by political motives than a sincere belief that the AI industry is financially doomed.