The LRB Podcast Will the AI bubble burst?
65 snips
Jan 7, 2026 
John Lanchester, a contributing editor at the London Review of Books and an author known for his insights on literature and finance, dives into the complexities of the AI financial bubble. He explores historical parallels with past economic bubbles and critiques the accuracy of the term 'artificial intelligence.' Lanchester discusses how AI firms might monopolize markets like Amazon did, and he raises concerns about the ethical implications and real harms of large language models. The conversation paints a vivid picture of what the future might hold as technology evolves.
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ChatGPT As The Bubble Igniter
- ChatGPT's launch in November 2022 crystallized an existing narrative that AI is transformational and triggered massive capital flows.
- The boom mixes genuine technological change with febrile overinvestment and misallocated capital.
Bubbles And Real Technologies Coexist
- Bubbles can coexist with real, lasting technologies: radical overvaluation often surrounds genuinely transformative waves.
- Lanchester likens the AI moment to railways: huge social value but lots of wasted capital and recurring exuberance.
NVIDIA's Moat Was Relentless Execution
- NVIDIA built a durable moat by iterating rapidly, hiring rivals' engineers, and repurposing GPUs via CUDA for parallel neural-net workloads.
- Their sustained execution put them in an unassailable position for cutting-edge AI chips.
