Don't Look Up
We recorded 13 claims from this post. 13 can’t be checked. 5 more are held. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (13)
In the order they appear in the post. Each quotation is the speaker’s words in this post. A label such as “Supported” or “Can’t be checked” is the claim’s current assessment; its page has the evidence and the reasons.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“Good bloody question Torsten! The answer is “probably not.””
Our reading: ROI for AI's end customers will probably not arrive fast enough to sustain the spending that generates upstream AI margins.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“It’s likely that the number is more like $220 billion. It’s likely more.”
Our reading: Anthropic and OpenAI's 2027 compute spend on Google Cloud, AWS and Azure is likely about $220 billion or more.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“Anthropic and OpenAI are only set to spend $100 billion on compute this year, and had to raise over $200 billion to do it, which makes it likely they’ll have to raise $150 billion each leading up to or in 2027.”
Our reading: Anthropic and OpenAI will likely each need to raise about $150 billion by or during 2027.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“To be clear, “growing super fast” is no longer sufficient for OpenAI and Anthropic.”
Our reading: Growing super fast is no longer sufficient for OpenAI and Anthropic.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“It suggests that there is a calamitous lack of demand across both those renting GPUs and market demand for software built on top of AI models”
Our reading: Microsoft's roughly $10.33 billion in non-OpenAI AI revenue suggests a calamitous lack of demand both for GPU rentals and for software built on AI models.
No horizon
Qualifier: it suggests
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“$10.33 billion in annual revenue is a catastrophic failure.”
Our reading: Microsoft's roughly $10.33 billion in annual non-OpenAI AI revenue is a catastrophic failure.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“Everybody conflated the massive capex spend with the return of growth to the tech industry versus an industry-wide swindle.”
Our reading: The AI capex boom was an industry-wide swindle mistaken for renewed tech growth.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“This runs antithetical to productivity or good sense, and everybody involved in it should be both eternally shamed and shunned from any sensible business.”
Our reading: The practice of penalizing people who won't claim massive AI productivity benefits runs against productivity and good sense, and everybody involved in it should be eternally shamed and shunned from any sensible business.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“When I wrote the Rot-Com Bubble in 2024, the AI bubble was a series of exploits used to mask the end of tech’s era of hypergrowth.”
Our reading: When he wrote the Rot-Com Bubble in 2024, the AI bubble was a series of exploits used to mask the end of tech's era of hypergrowth.
No horizon
Scope: when I wrote the Rot-Com Bubble in 2024
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“No money has been raised, what will likely happen — if anything — is that NVIDIA will end up backstopping a few $10 billion data center deals, or perhaps invest a few billion in equity into an SPV built to raise debt to buy GPUs as it already did with xAI.”
Our reading: No money has been raised under the NVIDIA financing MOU; what will likely happen, if anything, is that NVIDIA ends up backstopping a few $10 billion data center deals, or perhaps invests a few billion in equity into an SPV built to raise debt to buy GPUs, as it did with xAI.
No horizon
Qualifier: if anything
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“If there were actual diverse demand for NVIDIA’s GPUs commensurate with analyst expectations, you wouldn’t have to do these bizarre, painfully-circular deals that exist only to inflate its revenues and further prop up the existence of unprofitable AI labs!”
Our reading: If there were real, diverse demand for NVIDIA's GPUs matching analyst expectations, NVIDIA would not have to do these circular deals, which exist only to inflate its revenues and prop up unprofitable AI labs.
No horizon
Only if: if there were actual diverse demand commensurate with analyst expectations
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“To not warn people that AI revenues are heavily-centralized around two companies that burn endless billions of dollars, and that the commensurate demand isn’t there as a result, is to both fail your readers and actively empower the powerful.”
Our reading: The media should warn readers that AI revenue is concentrated in two cash-burning companies and that matching demand is absent.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“Every journalist that continues to ignore the obvious instability, circularity and centralization of the AI industry fails their audience by not discussing it before any discussions of AI’s theoretical returns or abilities. It is no longer ethically sound to ignore the problems.”
Our reading: Journalists should discuss the AI industry's instability, circularity and centralization before discussing its theoretical returns or abilities.
No horizon
Held from this post (5)
These records did not pass every check, so nothing about them is published. Held is not a finding.
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews reached different assessments. Our reading, not assessed: Four years in, the vast majority of AI demand comes from two companies (OpenAI and Anthropic) that cannot afford to sustain it and will not be able to even under the most optimistic booster projections.
- Attribution is uncertain