I am not a finance guy. I am an engineer. But I’ve been in this industry for forty+ years, and I’ve got enough scar tissue to look at a P&L sheet and ask some questions. And frankly, I don’t like what I’m seeing.

When I look at the current AI landscape, I see a trillion-dollar venture. As I wrote recently in AI Bubble? : AI Skeptics Hard Look at the Value Equation, the math of this investment requires scrutiny, not just optimism. You have reports like Leopold Aschenbrenner’s “Situational Awareness” paper arguing that AGI by 2027 is a certainty based on straight lines on a graph. You have accelerationists claiming that “winning AI” is a geostrategic categorical imperative—that the U.S. must secure “superintelligence” before China does to ensure national security. (If you want to lose some sleep, watch the AI 2027 video).  The narrative is that it is effectively a “winner take all” race.  But breathy narratives rarely hold up in the real world. We need to focus on Getting the AI Hype Cycle Right – distinguishing between inevitable progress and the economic reality.

I always like to look at the physics of a situation. And the physics suggest that this massive spending isn’t building a defensible fortress. It’s building a money pit.

Because here is the hard truth: AI ages like fresh fish.

I got a lot of feedback on my AI Bubble? : AI Skeptics Hard Look at the Value Equation, and the reactions were fascinating. A lot of you read my analysis of the economics and put me in the “AI Skeptic” box.

That’s a mistake. It misses the physics of what is actually happening.

While I agree with many of the skeptical points regarding the current financial bubble—because let’s be honest, the math on some of these valuations is ‘no bueno’—my long-term view aligns much more closely with Jim Keller.

There is an ongoing conversation happening right now between three camps: the AI Accelerationists, who want ‘all gas no brakes”; the AI Safetyists, who want to slam on the brakes; and the AI Skeptics.

The first two camps get all the press because they deal in extremes—utopia or apocalypse and extremes drive the attention economy. But we need to pay attention to the Skeptics. There is a taxonomy to the camp of skeptics; some don’t think AI is going to do what people say it will; others believe that it is a distraction from more pressing issues; and some are all about the economics and the math. The skeptics in this discussion aren’t arguing about the soul of the machine or killer bot swarms; they are arguing about the math. And from their perspective, the math is no bueno. MUY no bueno.