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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Long-duration storage, eg large-scale batteries & pumped
hydro, set to play a fundamental role (Tom Worthington)
2. Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh (27
Sep 2025) (Kim Holburn)
3. Re: Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh
(27 Sep 2025) (David)
4. Re: Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh
(27 Sep 2025) (Tom Worthington)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2025 12:17:20 +1000
From: Tom Worthington <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [LINK] Long-duration storage, eg large-scale batteries &
pumped hydro, set to play a fundamental role
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
On 9/29/25 16:06, Stephen Loosley wrote:
> What is ?dunkelflaute?? ...
'dark doldrums' or 'dark wind lull': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Dunkelflaute
> And how will a new long-duration battery change Australia?s energy
> grid? ...
Unfortunately everyone seems to be rushing into batteries, for a quick
easy fix. There is money to be made storing a few hours of cheap solar
during the middle of the day and selling it back in the evening. Well
off householders can also save tax, by storing and using their own solar
power. But this will not get us through a long still dark days.
What might save the nation is tax deductible battery on wheels: the
electric ute: https://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2021/04/will-
electric-ute-save-grid.html
--
Tom Worthington http://www.tomw.net.au
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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2025 13:30:57 +1000
From: Kim Holburn <[email protected]>
To: Link mailing list <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh
(27 Sep 2025)
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/#subprime-intelligence
....
One of those questions came from a young man who said something like "So,
you're saying a third of the stock market is tied up in
seven AI companies that have no way to become profitable and that this is a
bubble that's going to burst and take the whole economy
with it?"
I said, "Yes, that's right."
He said, "OK, but what can we do about that?"
So I re-iterated the book's thesis: that the AI bubble is driven by monopolists
who've conquered their markets and have no more
growth potential, who are desperate to convince investors that they can
continue to grow by moving into some other sector, e.g.
"pivot to video," crypto, blockchain, NFTs, AI, and now "super-intelligence."
Further: the topline growth that AI companies are
selling comes from replacing most workers with AI, and re-tasking the surviving
workers as AI babysitters ("humans in the loop"),
which won't work. Finally: AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100%
convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an
AI that can't do your job, and when the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging
"foundation models" will be shut off and we'll lose
the AI that can't do your job, and you will be long gone, retrained or retired
or "discouraged" and out of the labor market, and no
one will do your job. AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our
society and our descendants will be digging it out
for generations:
The only thing (I said) that we can do about this is to puncture the AI bubble
as soon as possible, to halt this before it
progresses any further and to head off the accumulation of social and economic
debt. To do that, we have to take aim at the material
basis for the AI bubble (creating a growth story by claiming that defective AI
can do your job).
"OK," the young man said, "but what can we do about the crash?" He was clearly
very worried.
"I don't think there's anything we can do about that. I think it's already
locked in. I mean, maybe if we had a different
government, they'd fund a jobs guarantee to pull us out of it, but I don't
think Trump'll do that, so ?"
....
That barely scratches the surface of the funny accounting in the AI bubble.
Microsoft "invests" in Openai by giving the company free
access to its servers. Openai reports this as a ten billion dollar investment,
then redeems these "tokens" at Microsoft's
data-centers. Microsoft then books this as ten billion in revenue.
That's par for the course in AI, where it's normal for Nvidia to "invest" tens
of billions in a data-center company, which then
spends that investment buying Nvidia chips. It's the same chunk of money is
being energetically passed back and forth between these
closely related companies, all of which claim it as investment, as an asset, or
as revenue (or all three).
...
How much money is the AI industry making? Morgan Stanley says it's $45b/year.
But that $45b is based on the AI industry's own
exceedingly cooked books, where annual revenue is actually annualized revenue,
an accounting scam whereby a company chooses its best
single revenue month and multiplies it by 12, even if that month is a wild
outlier:
--
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
+61 404072753
mailto:[email protected] aim://kimholburn
skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2025 16:03:13 +1000
From: David <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: [LINK] Re: Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is
nigh (27 Sep 2025)
Message-ID: <16292998.Emhk5qWAgF@ulysses>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
On Wednesday, 1 October 2025 13:30:57 AEST Kim Holburn wrote:
> That's par for the course in AI, where it's normal for Nvidia to "invest"
> tens of billions in a data-center company, which then spends that investment
> buying Nvidia chips. It's the same chunk of money is being energetically
> passed back and forth between these closely related companies, all of which
> claim it as investment, as an asset, or as revenue (or all three).
> [...]
> How much money is the AI industry making? Morgan Stanley says it's
> $45b/year. But that $45b is based on the AI industry's own exceedingly
> cooked books, where annual revenue is actually annualized revenue, an
> accounting scam whereby a company chooses its best single revenue month and
> multiplies it by 12, even if that month is a wild outlier.
Meantime back in the real world.... The execs of those companies continue
drawing huge salaries in negotiable currency while the common herd see the
prospect of a house and a modest, but affordable, lifestyle disappearing before
their eyes. Now if such inequity continues long enough, history demonstrates
it usually results in revolution or civil war. And the disturbances began
quietly enough with a popular movement against mindless "doom scrolling",
indeed it became cool to be seen as a strong, independently minded person
without a mobile 'phone in sight.
In the next instalment of our feature "Origins of the Post-Industrial World"....
Climate change is still progressing inexorably. Then one day a rather large
chunk of the Antacttic ice-cap slides into the sea....
(;-)
_DavidL_
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2025 09:04:18 +1000
From: Tom Worthington <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [LINK] Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is
nigh (27 Sep 2025)
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
On 10/1/25 13:30, Kim Holburn wrote:
> https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/#subprime-intelligence
> ....
>
> ... bubble that's going to burst ...
If you think AI is a bad investment, don't invest in it, and check your
super fund isn't.
Any AI crash will likely be a more limited version of the dot-com crash
at the start of the millennium. It was problem for those who invested in
it, particularly in the USA, but not so much for everyone else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble#Bursting_the_bubble
An AI crash will likely not as widespread in impact as the subprime
mortgage crisis of the early 2000s. Investment in the mortgages was
spread around the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis
I worry more about another real-estate induced financial crisis. But on
the plus side, the arms industry is booming (bumped into someone over
drinks last night who is selling anti-drone guns). War is good for
pulling the economy out of recession. ;-(
--
Tom Worthington http://www.tomw.net.au
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