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AI Economy Is a 'Ponzi Scheme,' Says AI Doc Director 58

Posted by BeauHD from the smoke-and-mirrors dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vanity Fair: Focus Features is releasing The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist in theaters on March 27. If you're even slightly interested in what's going on with AI, it's required viewing: The film touches on all aspects of the technology, from how it's currently being used to how it will be used in the near future, when we potentially reach the age of artificial general intelligence, or AGI. AGI is a theoretical form of AI that supposedly would be able to perform complex tasks without each step being prompted by a human user -- the point at which machines become autonomous, like Skynet in the Terminator franchise. [...]

[Director Daniel Roher] interviews nearly all the major players in the AI space: Sam Altman of OpenAI; the Amodei siblings of Anthropic; Demis Hassabis of DeepMind (Google's AI arm); theorists and reporters covering the subject. Notably absent are Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. "Have you seen that guy speak? He's like a lizard man," Roher says regarding Zuckerberg. "Musk said yes initially, but it was right when he was doing all the stuff with Trump, and we just got ghosted after a while," adds [codirector Charlie Tyrell]. Altman, arguably AI's greatest mascot, is prominently featured in the documentary. But Roher wasn't buying it. "That guy doesn't know what genuine means," he says. "Every single thing he says and does is calculated. He is a machine. He's like AI, and it's in the service of growth, growth, growth. You can be disingenuous and media savvy." [...]

How, exactly, is Roher an apocaloptimist? "We are preaching a worldview," he says, "in a world that's asking you to either see this as the apocalypse or embrace it with this unbridled optimism." He and his film are taking a stance that rests between those two poles. "It's both at the same time. We have to try and embrace a middle ground so this technology doesn't consume us, so we can stay in the driver's seat," says Roher -- meaning, it's up to all of us to chart the course. "You have to speak up," says Tyrell. "Things like AI should disclose themselves. If your doctor's office is using an AI bot, you have to say, I don't like that." The driving message behind the film is that resistance starts with the people. That position is shared by The AI Doc producer Daniel Kwan, who won an Oscar for directing Everything Everywhere All at Once and has been at the forefront of discussions about AI in the entertainment industry. [...]

Roher and Tyrell both use AI in their everyday lives and openly admit to it being a helpful tool. They also agree that this technology can make daily tasks easier for the average consumer. But at the end of our conversation, we get into the economics of AI and how Wall Street is propping up the industry through huge evaluations of these companies -- and Roher gets going yet again. "This is all smoke and mirrors. The entire economy of AI is being propped up by a Ponzi scheme. The hype of this technology is unlike any hype we've seen," he says. "I feel like I could announce in a press release that Academy Award winner Daniel Roher is starting an AI film company, and I could sell it the next day for $20 million. It's fucking crazy." [...] "These people are prospectors, and they are going up to the Yukon because it's the gold rush."
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AI Economy Is a 'Ponzi Scheme,' Says AI Doc Director More

AI Economy Is a 'Ponzi Scheme,' Says AI Doc Director

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  • Not that different than previous tech bubbles (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @12:09PM (#66060962) Homepage
    This is pretty similar to the "dot com" bubble of the late 1990s, or the railroad boom of the late 1860s early 1870s. Both bubbles had people investing with minimal justification. Businesses which were "Normal thing X but on the internet" got insane amounts of money. And both bubbles popped in ways which were very harmful to the economy. However, at the same time the underlying techs stuck around and became far more common than they were at the height of the bubble. The 1873 collapse took the US about a decade to recover from, but by multiple metrics, such as number of train engines being used, number of passenger miles traveled per a year, tons of freight moved, rail continued to grow with just a small set of blips. Similarly, the internet now is far more extensive and used than even many starry-eyed optimists or hype-obsessed would have predicted in 1998. A tech can be part of an irrational bubble and still be a game-changing technology.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jhoegl ( 638955 )
      Yup, overhyped, oversold, suckers buy in, they abscond.

      Why does it keep happening? Because no lawmaker understands what is going on or are bought out by the oligarchs.

    • Re:Not that different than previous tech bubbles (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Art Challenor ( 2621733 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @12:17PM (#66060978)
      More simply. The stock market does not reflect the economy. After Tesla, GameStop, AMC, etc. etc. etc. you'd have to be delusional to think otherwise. And GameStop, in particular, very much looked like a Ponzi scheme. Nvidia and all the other AI stocks are just a continuation of that trend.
      • Of course the stock market isn't a perfect reflection of the actual economy. If it were, Soviet style central planning would actually be possible. It's just a (usually good) estimate of it by a large number of people. Just like guesses about how many marbles a jar contains, the individual ones may be wrong in one direction or another, but the aggregate average will turn out to be fairly close to the actual amount.

        The GameStop situation wasn't a good example of a Ponzi scheme. That was an entirely separat

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luthair ( 847766 )
          Actually most of the gains in the Gamestop "short squeeze" was actually retail investors piling on driving the price up. So the people who made money largely did so on the backs of later investors which does sound a lot like a Ponzi or just a typical pump & dump scheme.
    • What? No mention of the Dutch Tulip mania?

    • ... in at least one key aspect: The cash going around is almost exclusively from the deep and wide warchests of large megacorps. Which means if a bubble pops it likely will just be a little fart for regular people and we can get rehired for our bullshit desk jobs.

      • A nice thought, but the labor force participation rate hasn't reversed its downward trend across multiple bubbles and crashes.

        You might get a halfway-return to the degraded "normal" of 2022, but that will get wiped out in the resumption of the long-term trend.

  • Is there a torrent link that I can feed my AI for a summary? I'm definitely not going to a theater for anything, let alone this op ed.

  • I can have a Doctor's on my signature? Heck, I came to this conclusion at least a year or so ago.

  • Well, thanks, capt. obvious, (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @12:19PM (#66060984)

    but if you think that "the Academy Award-winning teams behind 'Everything Everywhere All at Once'" gives you some credibility, let me disappoint you, that was one of the dumbest pieces of crap that one could watch that year.

    • Credibility is not the same as opinion. Your argument is your opinion which is based entirely on your personal taste of the movie should automatically negate everything about the director. If we look at metrics, the movie made $143M on an estimated budget of $25M at the box office. If we look accolades, it won seven Oscars. Besides your personal taste, did you have any points about the director's credibility?

      • An argument from authority is a strong rebuttal indeed, but allow me to retort:

        a) oscars are no mark of achievement, except perhaps in the makeup and special effects department. quite the opposite, the oscars have historically been a mark of trite, worn out themes with heavy emphasis on production budget and big names and nothing else.

        b) having made money on a small budget is great, but there are scores of films that have achieved sales above $150M on a budget between 20 and 30M, so there's nothing special

        • Re:Well, thanks, capt. obvious, (Score:4, Insightful)

          by njvack ( 646524 ) <njvack@freshforever.net> on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @01:59PM (#66061254)

          Beside your argument from authority, do you have any argument on how a nausea-inducing and boring piece of garbage helps the promotion of a completely different type of film?

          Wait; you're criticizing someone's argument from authority and your rebuttal is effectively that you thought the movie was boring?

          I am not saying the Oscar committee is incredible or anything but I don't see how your opinion is any more valid. You can't just beat argument from authority with argument from non-authority

          • His argument is his opinion of a movie projected onto another movie is equally meaningless. He thought the previous drama/comedy movie was boring. How does that make the director less credible when it comes to his new documentary movie?

          • Both you and the guy with the apt nickname should work some on your reading comprehension.

            All I'm saying is the piece of crap that is pasted in an article about a documentary is not really a valuable recommendation to make me watch another product of the same team.

            And yeah, I could not care less what your opinion of my opinion is given how poorly you understand plain English.

        • An argument from authority is a strong rebuttal indeed, but allow me to retort:

          It was not an argument from authority. I posted metrics about the movie. You have posted nothing but your personal opinion.

          a) oscars are no mark of achievement, except perhaps in the makeup and special effects department. quite the opposite, the oscars have historically been a mark of trite, worn out themes with heavy emphasis on production budget and big names and nothing else.

          The Oscars are based on a voting system of peers. In this case a peers in the motion picture industry. My point is that is their opinion. How should your opinion negate theirs other than your own personal taste of the movie?

          having made money on a small budget is great, but there are scores of films that have achieved sales above $150M on a budget between 20 and 30M, so there's nothing special in that department either.

          As a director, he has made the studio money. That is my point. Some directors lose money for their studios.

          With that all said: Do you have any points other than your

        • there are scores of films that have achieved sales above $150M on a budget between 20 and 30M, so there's nothing special in that department either.

          "Others have also succeeded; this means the very successful thing I don't like is bad." is the dumbest thing I've read so far today. (And yes that is exactly what you MEANT even if it isn't exactly what you wrote. Shut up.)

        • An argument from authority is way better than your non-argument without any authority.

    • I really liked Everything Everywhere All at Once and saw it twice in the movie theater. I thought it was a creative way to look at family relationships with a bit of scifi thrown in. I've never laughed so hard at scenes like - fanny pack weapon, dildo weapon, everything bagel and mother daughter rock talk with googly eyes just to name a few.

      I've always liked the Daniels work though. Their brains work very differently than most and it seems to work for me.

      The thing about creative work is it will move some to

      • You want a funny and creative movie on family relations instead of a pointless and pretentious piece of garbage?

        See "Black Cat, White Cat", for example.

        Sorry, it is an older film, so no special effects or giftless former martial arts hacks in it.

    • let me disappoint you, that was one of the dumbest pieces of crap that one could watch that year.

      To counter from the authority of the dude: that's just, like, your opinion, man.

  • This is a terrible way to look at new and exciting tech
    The better strategy is for people to evaluate the new tools and determine which ones work for them and which ones don't

  • that only I will control... until it out smarts me and we all become paperclips. [newcartographies.com]

    I promise you a great paper return on investment if I do create my God. And you will have no control over my God. After all, you are all just NPCs (non-player characters) in my experience of life anyway.

  • It's not a ponzi scheme (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nedlohs ( 1335013 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @12:34PM (#66061028)

    No investor is being paid profits from new investments. There are no profits being paid pretend or or real, it's just a giant money vacuum.

  • A "Ponzi Scheme" you say? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Just like Bitcon?

    • My OCD was about to make me complain that you misspelled "Bitcoin", but then I realized your spelling was both deliberate and appropriate.
  • Big AI firms will crash soon, and please let OpenAI be the first.

    But this is clearly not a Ponzi scheme, just crazed investors putting way too much money into loss-making ventures they don't understand.

    I can't wait for the cheap GPUs, RAM, etc !

    • Re:It will crash, but not a Ponzi scheme (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @01:07PM (#66061116)
      It's worse than a Ponzi scheme. The major would-be providers of AI are essentially all passing the same billion-dollar bill back and forth to buy each others' "services". And the consumers of AI are setting their reputations R&D teams on fire based on the promise that they can install robots on the ashes, even though if their plan pans out there won't be anybody able to buy services from anyone anymore.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Looks to me like OpenAI is close to the brink. Cannot wait for their demise.

      Fully agree it is not Ponzi. It is circular exchanges of things that have no value to inflate valuation.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      crazed investors putting way too much money into loss-making ventures they don't understand.

      On the contrary. They are inflating their "value" to become "too big to fail", bailouts are waiting in the wings.

  • The difference to regular tech hypes is that the proponents are even more stupid.

  • It'll distract us from the war and gas price caused inflation.

  • > AGI is a theoretical form of AI that supposedly would be able to perform complex tasks without each step being prompted by a human user -- the point at which machines become autonomous, like Skynet in the Terminator franchise.

    Thank you VF, without that razor sharp analogy I wouldn't be able to grasp the concept of artificial general intelligence. Or even natural general stupidity. Which is most people

    “Have you seen that guy speak? [Zuckerberg] He’s like a lizard man”

    OK, that

  • The question is only when, not if the market will collapse.

    With Nvidea valued more than the GDP of France, we will see devastating effects of the correction on world financial markets once it hits, and all the circular business will drain the US economy. The result will be Japanese Desease.

  • Virtually every time that I am asked a question of the form "is the answer A or B", I find that the answer is virtually always "yes and no".

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