I've got a lot of opinions, but up there among the strongest are my thoughts on the so-called 'AI Bubble' - a populist meme built on a flawed appreciation of what's really at stake. It's a complex discussion with many moving parts, so it may take a handful of essays to cover - but stick with me because this will hopefully prove to be quite insightful.

Where Things Stand

It's pretty hard to overstate the significance of GenAI. I know it may be difficult to wrap your head around, given the technology is evolving at a completely unprecedented rate, but those in the industry have a much better sense of what's around the corner - and it's not just more chatbots. Whilst the concerns around circular finance, imaginative debt gymnastics and mountains upon mountains of app-layer slop wrappers are actually quite understandable at a human level (and we’ll touch on them later), the bottom line remains true - generative AI will radically change the world.

The online debate dynamic as I currently see it is pretty fascinating. We all understand the heuristic of 'trusting that those with specialist knowledge likely know what they're talking about' - you will probably trust your doctor with healthcare issues, as you will probably trust your lawyer or accountant with legal & tax concerns - the entire world operates on the basic assumption that being a specialist in a field usually means that your opinions and recommendations should largely be trusted, at least over those of a layperson.

It's interesting, then, how when it comes to GenAI - a field to which the world’s best and brightest have rapidly converged - the industry isn't being treated with the same reverence. This is a deeply, deeply complex field involving not only algebra and software, but geopolitics and macroeconomics; unfortunately, your favourite YouTube influencer just likely isn't qualified to speak on it, let alone present a nuanced analysis.

There's levels to it - at the absolute frontier you have off-the-charts geniuses optimising pure mathematics and developing novel systems that improve the model's raw capabilities. Multiple steps removed, you have those building & refining harnesses and tool systems around the model, giving it the ability to take action, build things, research autonomously, manage memory and context, and ultimately make economic contributions.

Some of the latter areas are actually not as deeply technical as you may think, and those already there at the forefront of the 'meta' see the writing on the wall - progress in raw model capabilities could flatline today and we'd still see decades of meaningful AI application (and the resulting economic benefit) as plumbing is constructed around what we already have.

Take call centres, for example:

• >Enormous amounts of staff, approximately 17 million call-centre agents worldwide per Gartner.
• >Properly implemented AI voice-agents are superior in almost every way.
  • >They're available 24/7
  • >They're able to answer immediately
  • >They have immediate, accurate access to the company's entire customer service corpus
  • >They don't require expensive hiring campaigns, onboarding, training, benefits, or a salary
  • >They 'learn' new products, policies and practices instantly - just update the docs
  • >They're able to be tuned and optimised with reinforcement learning techniques to improve over time
  • >They're VASTLY cheaper in-practice than human counterparts

Despite all of this, AI has yet captured but a fraction of the market - because it's tricky to implement properly and requires specialists to maintain, optimise and update as models improve over time.

That, however, is exactly the point - the bottleneck is not the capabilities of the models, but rather the number of people qualified to deploy and maintain them. This is where many of those made unemployed by innovation end up eventually - leveraging the superior solution that replaced them in a newly created job role - but alas, they’re complaining online that A I“took our jobs!” in-between doomscrolling.

The Industrial Revolution

Mechanised textile production was one of the earliest examples of modern production methods deployed at scale, and it took hold first in Britain. Prior to the advent of machinery like the spinning jenny & water frame, individual weavers manufacturered textiles by hand in their homes. Despite the obvious benefits and productivity gains made as a result of these machines, adoption took time, and not everyone was pleased - weavers, for quite a long time, broke machinery in organised campaigns - most notably the infamous Luddites.

We still often jokingly refer to those reluctant to embrace innovation and progress as Luddites even to this day - it's comical to imagine a world where individual weavers hand-craft the latest fast-fashion trends in their own homes - times have changed, and the world has progressed.

The Industrial Revolution delivered a paradigm shift in the ways in which British people (and most others in the West by extension) lived their lives - economic growth was parabolic, with living standards improving at completely unprecedented rates. It's agreed almost universally among economic historians that the first Industrial Revolution was among the most important events in human history - not just economically speaking, but holistically speaking - comparable to agriculture and animal husbandry, antibiotics, and electricity.

Yet, just like today, there were years of meaningful - admittedly well-intentioned but highly misguided - pushback from those who didn't understand the technology, were disadvantaged by it, or were scared by what it meant for those near and dear to them. Again, much like sentiment among some today, the Luddites believed that machines only benefitted the mill owners with the 'means of production', and that these mill owners were capturing all the worker's value output as their own. Of course, history has shown us that this is obviously not the case - modern living standards in the West are unrecognisable from 300 years ago, and we have innovation (read: innovators) to thank for it.

That said, it's not hard to see why the average person has difficulty rationalising what history has shown us with the realities of the situation we currently find ourselves in. We’re now seeing CEOs approach trillion-dollar net-worth figures as unemployment creeps up - much like how the weavers saw mill owners get filthy rich while their skillsets were rendered obsolete, and their families faced economic straits. A tough pill to swallow, no doubt - but I guarantee the AI skeptics don't give much thought to the Luddite plight as they fill their SHEIN baskets with sub-dollar t-shirts while watching Netflix on their iPhone 17 Pro Max, and the Taco Bell they ordered 20 minutes ago is delivered to the door.

Progress Is Inevitable

The most important thing you can wrap your head around is that the economy and living standards in general are not zero-sum games. Yes, the innovators benefit disproportionately - but why shouldn’t they? This mechanism is essential for incentivising innovation in the first place. Everyone has benefitted, and will continue to benefit from AI - just as they did from the Industrial Revolution - you have free access to an unfathomably knowledgeable, infinitely malleable personal assistant who will teach you things, assist you in your work, democratise previously cost-prohibitive knowledge & advice, and unlock career paths previously gated by years of practice - think: legal advice, accounting advice, investment advice, branding and graphic design, copyediting, web development, software engineering, videography, music production, and the list goes on.

As was the case back then, there will be an adjustment period - some jobs will disappear, while some will reshape themselves almost beyond recognition - but one thing is certain, and that's that the genie is out of the bottle and it won’t go back in; the best thing you can do now is adapt.

This is why capex continues to rise in the face of scepticism and pushback from the general public - because frankly it doesn't matter what the normie zeitgeist has to say when the smartest, wealthiest and most powerful people in the world, the innovators, the builders, the net-contributors, almost unanimously agree that GenAI will deliver net-benefits to those who adopt it.

Naturally, they'll benefit most - they invented the thing, refined it, and productised it - but you get to use it - often for free or very little, and eventually enough earlier adopters, believers, and high-agency individuals will further wrangle it into applications that meaningfully improve your life.

• >Nightmare landlord or cavalier employer? Hold them to account without absurd legal bills.
• >Want to learn something? Learn 1-to-1 at home with the best teacher in the world, for free.
• >Starting a business or side hustle? Build your own website, design your own branding, file your own accounts, identify your own opportunity areas - no consultants or agencies required.
• >Have an artistic vision? Realise it - no decades of practice needed.
• >Unsure about things? Stress-test your worldview, and build nuanced understanding.
• >No idea where to start? Don’t worry, the labs will show you - free of charge.

These applications already exist, are approaching mainstream awareness, and keep getting both better and cheaper. Once the harnesses like Claude Code & Codex begin to mature and see adoption among the non-technical, it will make the changes we’ve already seen pale in comparison to the upcoming paradigm shift in an individual's ability to create value and alter the trajectory of their lives, nearly irrespective of socioeconomic background - abundant AI levels the playing field.

AI's PR Problem

Right now, the true bleeding edge is confined to a small subset of people who have the hands-on experience, specialist domain knowledge, and enough holistic world knowledge to see where things are heading. These people are disproportionately bright and technical, often hailing from STEM fields and working on stuff we have no comprehension of - i.e. individuals the general public usually hold in high regard - Will Hunting was sooo epic and wholesome guys, amirite?

Any one of them that has experienced Opus 4.5 in Claude Code, or GPT 5.2 in Codex will tell you - this might as well be the fabled 'Artificial General Intelligence’ we’ve sought all along. What is already possible for a smart and motivated person defies uninitiated comprehension, and it will only continue to improve - there has never been a time in history where opportunity is so plentiful - you have the tools available to you to build the world's first one-person billion-dollar business with just a laptop, internet connection, and the ability to ask good questions.

However, for whatever reason (and I have my thoughts), some have decided that they won't extend the same level of trust to these individuals when they speak on the subject - they'd rather listen to YouTubers, influencers, and so-called 'tech journalists’ instead - because they’re sticking up for the everyman? Because they've got no skin in the game, and 'tell it like it is'? Maybe - but you must admit that it's a truly baffling cognitive dissonance, to simultaneously see

• >The smartest people you've ever known rushing to work on AI
• >The richest, most powerful people you've ever known rushing to invest in AI
• >The historical hindsight of how every similar innovation has universally impacted humanity for the better
• >and the experience of the technology first-hand, given it's available to basically everyone, for free

and yet still choose to distrust the experts - the tacit implication being that Hank Green and the comrades on Reddit know better. The same crowd were so frustrated by a lack of trust in experts when Covid came around - I wonder what changed?

So why is it then, that AI contrarianism is so popular among the great unwashed?

• >Is it that we all enjoy our respective algorithmic echo chambers, and don’t want to confront the idea that we may be wrong?
• >Is it the unrelenting environmental misinformation, like the supposedly massive water consumption of GenAI, relative to other technology?
• >Maybe it's financial misinformation, like the suggestion that the circular investment among Nvidia & hyperscalers is indicative of 'fraud' or a ‘Ponzi scheme’?
• >Perhaps the misguided intuition that ‘evil’ billionaires are 'taking' wealth, rather than creating it?
• >Or a sense that one’s own previously-valuable skills are being trivialised by innovation?
• >Could it be the moral belief that AI is anti-humanist, and that we ought not to pursue it?

Who cares? It’s largely inconsequential, because much like has proven the case for every other technological revolution throughout human history - resistance is futile.

Don't get me wrong, the AI crowd isn't infallible, and there are legitimate concerns that need to be addressed - we need to avoid an 'Engels' Pause', and ensure proper education, training support & resources are put in place to aid in this transition period. We need to champion nuclear, ensuring cheap and abundant energy for all - this, to me, is the the most obvious PR win. AI energy consumption will eclipse that of private individuals - make energy radically cheap, and tell everyone that it's AI's doing.

Capitalism's PR Problem

Whilst this isn't really a political essay, it's hard to ignore the elephant in the room -there's a growing and very vocal minority of Westerners, largely juvenile, who think billionaires are eating the world, and that same bunch also seem to hate AI. If you have a degree of emotional intelligence - which unfortunately many of the most prominent figures in AI do not - you'll understand where a lot of this sentiment comes from. In the eyes of the average Gen Z-er, property is now significantly more difficult to acquire, the cost of living has sharply increased, the 'wealth gap' continues to expand, and there doesn't seem to be any sign that the trend is reversing.

Of course, when you step back and consider that life didn't actually begin with boomers, it doesn't take long to realise living standards have actually improved dramatically over time, even since the turn of the millennium. Even with boomers - often derided as the most privileged cohort in history - they arrived into a world where refrigerators, washing machines and phones were considered luxurious. What do they have to thank for those items becoming trivial everyday belongings for the average household? Well it certainly wasn't socialism.

Alas, such is the way of the world, and the average level of economic literacy has eroded over time - so much so that discussions around the merits of communist policies have re-entered the mainstream public consciousness only a few decades since wars were fought to rid them. Opportunistic hard-left politicians and influencers leverage wealth inequality and rising unemployment to their personal advantage, and they’re hailed as champions, despite never having contributed much of anything to society. It's quite sick, really - but it's increasingly tricky to tell a knowing, ill-intentioned pied piper from someone genuinely clueless, given social media has democratised reach for even the most ill-equipped to handle it.

How strange then, that the communist Chinese aren’t plagued by such infighting, or ‘burdened’ by elections at all for that matter - everyone just happens to be onboard! Say what you will about the CCP authoritarian nightmare, but they’re certainly effective at rallying people behind a common goal. A major Stanford study recently found that 83% of those in China believed there were “more benefits than drawbacks” with AI , as opposed to only 39% of those in the USA. Perhaps the answer is to introduce benevolent ‘Sam Altman Thought’ and jail dissenters - surely that’ll go down a treat on /r/socialism!

But really, it's at least partly down to political polarisation that AI has somehow become something largely embraced by the right, and disdained by the left - and it's something that requires serious, urgent attention from those in leadership positions. For their own sake more than anything else, we need the Luddites along for the ride - else we risk not only further political fracturing, but a lost generation of unemployables left behind because "AI is evil" or whatever.