There Is No Alternative: How “Inevitable AI” Keeps the Bubble Inflating

This week, Kimberly Becker and Jessica Parker dig into the “AI bubble”—why it keeps inflating even as skepticism grows inside the industry.

We unpack the growing disconnect between massive investment and unclear payoffs, including a widely discussed Goldman Sachs research question: what $1 trillion problem will AI actually solve?  From there, we connect the dots between two very different narratives:

• Dario Amodei’s essay framing “powerful AI” as an imminent civilization-level risk—and a reason to race ahead (carefully… “to some extent”). 
• Cory Doctorow’s argument that this is a familiar tech bubble pattern, with a predictable ending—and that we should focus on what can be salvaged from the wreckage. 

Along the way, we define what makes a bubble a bubble (and how this one differs from dot-com), talk about growth-stock dynamics and why no one in power wants to be responsible for “popping” it, and explore what AI hype looks like when it hits real workplaces—especially through Doctorow’s concept of the reverse centaur: a human reduced to a machine’s accountable appendage.

We also go nerdy (in the best way): training corpora, “WEIRD” cultural assumptions baked into data, model-collapse fears from AI eating AI-generated output, and why the internet itself feels increasingly polluted by synthetic text patterns.

In this episode: 

• The “$1T problem” question and why the AI ROI story feels thin right now 
• Why “AI is inevitable” functions like a strategy (not a neutral prediction) 
• Growth stocks vs. mature companies—and the incentive to keep inventing the next hype cycle
• Reverse centaurs, liability, and why “AI replaces jobs” often means “humans take the blame.” 
• “TINA” (There Is No Alternative) as a trap—and a demand dressed up as an observation
• Corpus 101: what it is, why it matters, and how bias shows up in “universal” models
• Model collapse / photocopy-of-a-photocopy: when AI trains on AI outputs
• Regulation talk that centers on “economic value” (and whose value that really is) 
• Pit & Peach: slowing down, pausing, gratitude, and building without growth pressure

Sources:

• Goldman/AI bubble discussion (Deep View): https://archive.thedeepview.com/p/goldman-sachs-publishes-blistering-report-on-ai-bubble
• Goldman Sachs “$1T spend” framing: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/top-of-mind/gen-ai-too-much-spend-too-little-benefit
• Amodei essay: https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/the-adolescence-of-technology
• Doctorow (The Guardian): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/18/tech-ai-bubble-burst-reverse-centaur