The Rot-Com Bubble
We recorded 17 claims from this post. 5 were checked against evidence. 12 can’t be checked. 6 more are held. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (17)
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: SupportedSaid
“Despite being an inherently AI-powered feature, it can’t distinguish between ordinary computer usage and genuinely sensitive information — like passwords, health information, or trade secrets that must be protected at all costs.”
What we tested: Microsoft's AI-powered Recall feature cannot distinguish ordinary computer usage from sensitive information such as passwords or health data.
What happened: The contemporary reproduction of Microsoft's own FAQ explicitly says that the preview did not hide sensitive information. The surrounding FAQ lists manual and application-based exclusions, which do not amount to automatic sensitivity recognition. (Gibson Research Corporation, Security Now!, )
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“And now, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office — the nation’s privacy watchdog, with powers to impose steep fines on violators — is probing whether the technology presents an unacceptable risk to consumers. Which, as anyone with a modicum of common sense can confirm, it does.”
What we tested: Microsoft Recall presents an unacceptable risk to consumers.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“It's the same reason that Sundar Pichai and Liz Reid are forcing generative AI into Google Search even as it actively misinforms their customers, recommending people introduce glue and rocks to their diet, claiming former U.S. President Barack Obama is a muslim, and regurgitating stories from satirical news outlet The Onion as indisputable fact.”
What we tested: Sundar Pichai and Liz Reid are forcing generative AI into Google Search, even as it actively misinforms their customers, for the same reason Zuckerberg pushes it: the hope of getting more hyper-growth.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“Every single company chasing the generative AI dragon is hoping that it's the next Amazon Web Services — the ubiquitous cloud product that went from a side project to a bigger revenue-driver than Amazon's store, and today underpins much of the Internet — because it sort of, kind of seems like it's "the next big thing in cloud," even if it doesn't actually seem to do anything useful, let alone incredible.”
What we tested: Generative AI does not appear to do anything useful, despite companies hoping it will be the next AWS.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“On top of that, nobody really seems to be able to explain why or how generative AI is the next big thing.”
What we tested: Nobody really seems to be able to explain why or how generative AI is the next big thing.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“They can generate images, quickly query datasets (albeit with no guarantees of accuracy), and craft poetry, but there is no endearing reason to pick up one of them every day and use them.”
What we tested: LLMs such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude can generate images, quickly query datasets (with no guarantees of accuracy) and craft poetry, but there is no endearing reason to pick one up and use it every day.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“The use cases they enable are neither exciting nor ubiquitous, nor are they, if we're honest, anything like what tech executives are trying to sell us, and the problem might not be that it's useless, but that as a piece of technology, it just isn't a hyper-growth market or industry-changer, no matter how many hundreds of billions we put into it.”
What we tested: The problem with generative AI might be not that it is useless but that, as a technology, it just isn't a hyper-growth market or industry-changer, no matter how many hundreds of billions are put into it.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“Sam Altman isn't asking Microsoft for a $100 billion supercomputer because generative AI is going to get better — he's doing it because what we have today isn't the world-changing boondoggle that the tech industry needs it to be, and his only prospect of fulfilling the lofty promises he’s made is with a tech industry equivalent of the Marshall Plan.”
What we tested: Altman seeks a $100 billion supercomputer from Microsoft not because generative AI will improve, but because current AI is not world-changing and massive spending is his only way to meet his promises.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“For the best part of 15 years we've assumed that the tech industry would always have something up its sleeves, but what's become painfully apparent is that the tech industry might have run out of big, sexy things to sell us, and the "disruption" that tech has become so well-known for was predicated on there being markets for them to disrupt, and ideas that they could fund to do so.”
What we tested: It has become painfully apparent that the tech industry might have run out of big, sexy things to sell, and the disruption tech is known for depended on there being markets to disrupt and ideas to fund.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“The Rabbit R1 and Humane Pin both raised incredible sums of capital based on the vaguest of ideas — that people feel overwhelmed by their smartphones — to build products that range from extremely bad to potentially fraudulent, failing to build a product that nobody asked for based on some combination of ignorance and ambivalence.”
What we tested: The Rabbit R1 and Humane Pin raised incredible sums of capital on the vaguest of ideas to build products that range from extremely bad to potentially fraudulent.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
“They both went through yCombinator, and both of them have sold products that don't do what they said it would based on what it might do in the future.”
What we tested: Like Rabbit's Jesse Lyu, Sam Altman has sold products that don't do what he said they would, based on what they might do in the future.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“He’s the archetypal Rot-Com CEO — an unqualified lobbyist pretending to be a technologist and abusing anyone he needs to in the pursuit of growth.”
What we tested: Sam Altman is the archetypal growth-obsessed CEO, an unqualified lobbyist posing as a technologist.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“When the bubble bursts, I imagine these firms will be absorbed by the massive tech companies that have put billions of dollars into them in exactly the same way that Microsoft absorbed Inflection, quietly hiding their shameful failures and repurposing the massive compute investments to bolster the already-existent cloud infrastructure.”
What we tested: When the AI bubble bursts, OpenAI and Anthropic will probably be absorbed by the big tech companies that invested in them, as Microsoft absorbed Inflection.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
“Generative AI is not going to change the world, and while artificial intelligence itself might, it isn't going to do so in the hands of Sam Altman and OpenAI, or Anthropic.”
What we tested: Generative AI will not change the world, and OpenAI and Anthropic will not be the ones to change the world with AI.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
“The answer is simple: it isn't coming.”
What we tested: Generative AI will not have a big moment where it suddenly proves itself useful and changes everything.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“I just don't think that anyone in big tech is prepared for the bubble to burst.”
What we tested: He doesn't think that anyone in big tech is prepared for the bubble to burst.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
“The Rot-Com bubble will inevitably pop, but until it does, billions will be plowed into building hardware and software to inflate the Rot-Com bubble in the hopes that the growth-at-all-costs party will never end.”
What we tested: The tech growth bubble, including AI, will inevitably pop, with billions invested in hardware and software until it does.
Held from this post (6)
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 record does not meet the current rules. Our reading, not assessed: Artificial general intelligence is totally impossible to build with any of the generative AI OpenAI makes, and it likely requires number-crunching technology that does not yet exist.
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The record does not meet the current rules. Our reading, not assessed: The "artificial general intelligence" with human-like cognition that OpenAI allegedly will build is simply not possible, based on how generative AI works.