I've enjoyed Howard Marks writing/thinking in the past, but this is clearly a person who thinks they understand the topic but doesn't have the slightest clue. Someone trying to be relevant/engaged before really thinking on what is fact vs. fiction.

I believe it’s you who is misunderstanding his positions here. He clearly lays out that he is focused on irrational optimism effecting the investment around the tech, not whether or not the tech itself is viable. His analysis was indeed well thought out from the perspective he is approaching it from.

he clearly states he doesn't understand the topic.

But you don't need to understand to explore the ramifications which is what he's done here and it's an insightful & fairly even-handed take on it.

It does feel like AI chat here gets bogged down on "its not that great, its overhyped etc." without trying to actually engage properly with it. Even if it's crap if it eliminates 5-10% of companies labour cost that's a huge deal and the second order effects on economy and society will be profound. And from where i'm standing, doing that is pretty possible without ai even being that good.

One can see he knows little about AI and relies on the judgments of others. Yet, he knows a lot more about economics, finance, and history than most AI practitioners.

As a founder of an AI company, I actually agreed with most of the article and found it to be very close to my mental model of the world. Turns out you might actually not need to understand what's causing the hype if you know that history rhymes...!