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[–] 26 points 4 weeks ago (7 children)

Even if the AI bubble collapses tomorrow (it won't), to see lower consumer prices you would either need old stock to be marked down or the fabs that are currently making AI cards to switch to making gaming cards and those cards to be manufactured and come through the market. That will take months. Not only does the bubble need to pop, but everyone involved needs to believe and accept that it has popped, otherwise they will continue to keep prices high and AI production high in the hope that their plans remain correct.

Remember that it's psychologically much harder to accept making a less money than you thought, which happens when you mark down prices, compared to making more money than you thought, which happens when you mark up prices! This is why prices tend to be "downwards sticky" and so, instead of going down when demand drops/supply improves, they instead tend to stagnate while other prices continue to rise gradually with inflation.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (2 children)

    That will take months.

    Dude, I've been waiting to buy a new card for something like a decade. I can wait months.

    but everyone involved needs to believe and accept that it has popped

    That's the very definition of a bubble popping. Something's a bubble when people believe it has value when it really doesn't. The bubble popping is the moment everybody realizes the value was an illusion and there's a rush to get out. As long as people still believe that there's still value, it's still a bubble and hasn't popped.

    We're already in the stage of the bubble when many people know it's a bubble and are doing everything possible to hedge against the bubble popping, while others just keep pouring more money in.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 child)

    I think someone saying, "come on, burst already" does not see the bubble popping as "when diminishing confidence in AI has reached all bits of the economy" because they see it as something likely to happen soon, and that ain't happening soon. However, we may see reduced AI investment from some quarters soon.

    It's also worth recalling that stock market bubbles can and do pop very suddenly - I don't think it's that reasonable to take a definition that spreads it out over months, but maybe that's what you're saying.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 weeks ago

    What I'm saying is that when it happens it will probably be fast, and it could happen anytime. I personally think it still has at least half a year to go because I think the tech / AI companies are so close to the Trump administration that it will jump in to save them if there's a problem, which will delay the pop by a few months.

    But, I can't see the bubble deflating slowly. The bubble is just too big for that. They're betting on AI Jesus. Investors won't be satisfied with a normal technology which is somewhat useful, not after pouring trillions into it. Just to break even, the AI companies need to reach revenues of multiple trillions of dollars. That's almost 10x more than Google makes, and it's a mature 20-year-old company that has a monopolies in multiple areas.

    Just to break even, it has to be something that every single person on earth spends hundreds of dollars on each year. And, since that includes multiple billions of people who don't have hundreds of dollars to spend, it's really multiple thousands of dollars spent by every person, or spent on behalf of a person in a developed country.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

    Who said anything about wanting gaming GPUs?

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