Michael Burry, the famed investor who prophetically shorted the housing market before the 2008 financial crisis, argued on Monday that major AI companies joining the panic around the technology were only doing so out of a “self-serving” need to provide “cover” for the slowing growth in the industry.
Burry has long warned that AI companies’ soaring stock prices represent a bubble that could tank the entire market if investors panic over the massive spending and limited revenue the companies operate with.
“Let’s all take a moment to understand how self-serving it is for OpenAI, Anthropic and other execs of big hyperscalers to talk of slowing things down,” Burry wrote on X Sunday night, adding:
1. LLMs are not AI and won’t be AGI. There is nothing AI to slow down.
2. Competition is coming up fast, slowing benefits incumbents.
3. IPOs need hype & puffery; “we are so awesome it could become dangerous” is hype & puffery
4. Cover for real uncontrollable slowing growth as IPOs look to be pushed out
Burry’s message echoed some of the sentiments put out by President Donald Trump this week.
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump posted on social media Monday, adding:
The Trump Administration has stopped AI “people” from doing bad, or potentially bad, “things,“ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a “perfect little angel” – and we will continue to do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies! There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE! Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Last week, Jacob Coxon, who worked as a lead artificial intelligence researcher at Anthropic, grabbed headlines and sparked a national debate about the safety of AI. Coxon posted to X, writing, “I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
Burry’s first claim that LLMs (Large Language Models) are not AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) runs counter to Coxon’s warning, as Burry is suggesting that AI is not actually at the stage of any kind of independent thought, but is still only a statistical text-prediction tool.
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