I'm building software for a sector that is massive, but one where you don't really need AI. At least, not AI == LLM.

And before I go further, let me state up front that I do like AI coding agents. They are great as assistive tools.

People say that if the AI bubble pops, the economy tumbles. And okay, I mean the M7 will certainly get rekt but everyone else? Things will recover within a few years. We didn't make it to 2026 AD taking the easy road.

You still need to visit the doctor. Goods still need to be delivered. Homes need to be built. We need to drill for oil. People still need to eat. And yes, unfortunately or not, we still need millions of administrators because humans are not 0/1 systems.

Am I crazy to think that maybe it won't be that bad? There are still infinite number of things to do, and maybe (call me stupid, whatever) it would be a good turning point for our species if we realize that speculative bubbles are absolutely destructive and not worth it.

I don't need a personal assistant to make calls for me to get a restaurant reservation, and I certainly don't care for AI slop videos. I would much rather we have better products and services that actually work, and even if they have rough edges I would prefer people are employed and busy doing something with their lives.

Maybe a world where we don't chase endless growth (to escape inflation, pay off debts, whatever the case) would be good. And also we put nerds (not people like us, the engineers, I mean the evil dorks who cosplay as movie super villains) in the toy box again and pick up different toys this time.

No the economy doesn’t tumble. All of the major public tech companies have real businesses that were profitable before AI and will be profitable after AI. All except Amazon are spending money out of their own revenues.

Businesses aren’t going to stop growing because of AI, the only public company really dependent on AI are NVidia and Oracle. Oracle because it is borrowing money to support build out for OpenAI.

Well, the Great Fiscal Crisis did not result in mass starvation, so in some sense, it "wasn't all that dramatic". But, it was a big deal in comparison to a normal downturn. So, it depends on what you mean.

Medium term, I think it would release a lot of resources (skilled workers, productive capacity, energy) to use on something more productive. But then, I kind of hoped for that after the GFC, also...

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47034849

A pop hurts valuations, not demand for useful software.

The distinction nobody makes is between the AI infrastructure bubble and AI utility. The infrastructure spending is clearly overheated - the capex numbers are insane relative to actual revenue. But the underlying technology genuinely works for specific use cases. I use LLMs daily in production pipelines and they save me hours of work that would otherwise require hiring. The bubble popping would mean GPU prices crater, API costs drop further, and the actual useful applications become cheaper to run. That's not a catastrophe for builders - it's a gift. The people who get hurt are investors in pure-play AI companies with no real moat and NVIDIA's stock price.