What is it with tech billionaires?
Anyone else notice how tech billionaires are just different? Every other billionaire archetype is predictable, make money, buy a yacht, own a sports team, and fuck off into rich-guy hobbies. Tech billionaires, meanwhile, cannot stop talking. Half of them are trying to cosplay as normal cool guys. Zuckerberg suddenly becoming a martial artist, Bezos doing his action-movie protagonist arc, while the other half are in full prophecy mode, constantly warning us about or promising salvation through AI and “the future.” It’s always framed like they’re on the brink of delivering humanity from suffering, even though it sounds exactly like the plot of a bad sci-fi movie. Is this just what happens when the weird smartest kid in the room gets infinite money, influence, and an audience that never tells him to chill?
Neurodivergence, drug habits, growing up as utter dorks leading them to care way too much about looking cool to randoms on the internet, being surrounded by yes men, and buying into the fallacy that because they are exceptional at 1-2 things, they must be exceptional at everything.
The “saving humanity” nonsense in particular is just fundraising. See: the “AI bubble” that is both bleeding billions and chronically underwhelming. Speak enough like a prophet and people will line up to give you money. That’s a key component of most scams.
AI is not a bubble. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
This is the only thing I've seen called a "bubble" for a whole year that has yet to pop.
"It's not a bubble because it hasn't popped yet" is certainly a take.
Just say 'This time is different' bro
People were identifying the real estate bubble in 2005. It took years to burst. Why do you lie?
Can't forget the Pre-Seed / Seed Founders who think their company has the greatest mission. I follow a handful on LinkedIn who admittedly have interesting startup ideas but half the time I find myself unfollowing them after reading their paragraph long posts with really dumb takes (one that I saw recently was advising applicants to submit bad references as most people submit references who paint them in a good light and somehow bad references are more honest...?)
Tim Dillon has some great bits about Peter Thiel in particular about this:
Tim Dillon is amazing hahaha
Public image is important in tech. At least to some degree. It's how you pump your stock price. It's all very calculated moves. Do you really think Mark Zuckerberg was wearing the same T shirt and jeans every day due to "efficiency"? No, he was doing so because it made him seem silly and innocent, which made people laugh at him and look at him as something more humble rather than a Harvard rich frat boy running a multi billion dollar internet company that wrecks democracy. Oh, and those jeans and t shirts cost about 300 dollars.
Now Zuckerberg is changing images into a macho man, because that's what gets tech bros and Trump on his side. Anything to prevent the breakup of Meta. Bezos and Musk do the same macho act because they're trying to appeal to a small crowd of elite investors and MAGA adjacent tech bros. But once that crowd is out, you'll see them shift their whole identity again. It's all PR.
This is for 2 reasons.
There are a lot of things going on in this post, not all of them connected.
Personally, I think a lot of tech people claim to be saving the world or building some new future in large part to distance themselves from any kind of ethical considerations about what they do or how they do it. Any impartial observer of the AI bubble has to be sitting here scratching their heads about why we've poured hundreds of billions of dollars into creating a product no one really wants or needs, when that money could have solved a lot of pressing social issues. As long as it's in service to some hyper fictionalized better tomorrow, the Sam Altmans of the world don't have to actually answer that question, either to the world or to themselves. Ditto Elon Musk, who can justify anything to himself since he thinks he's leading humanity to Mars.
And of course they can't stop talking. Most tech fortunes are built on a lie, or bullshit. Mark Zuckerberg runs a shit company that wastes ungodly amounts of money on stupid nonsense while its core product gets worse and worse - if he stops talking, people might start asking questions instead of listening. Elon Musk has built his entire fortune off debatably legal bullshitting about his companies. These people HAVE to keep talking, because if they stop, someone might fill the silence with some uncomfortable questions they simply cannot answer.
Completely agree
What gave it away? When I called it a bubble? Whether or not you are buying what the AI industry is selling, if you aren't thinking "what else could have been done with these resources?" then you aren't an honest or impartial observer.
It's kind of crazy that you think it's somehow wrong to ask about the opportunity cost here. One of the reasons I think the AI/LLM bubble is predicated on a giant fountain of bullshit is precisely the fact that people like you not only refuse to consider these kinds of questions, but actively try to stop others from doing so.
Which is why there are so many profitable AI companies, right?
We can go back and forth about whose anecdotal experience is more relevant. At the end of the day, we have a metric for judging this kind of thing: profitability. The demand for free AI services is there (though it is not "insatiable" as we see from the fact that hyperscalers are in fact scaling back) but that isn't the same thing as people being willing to pay for it.
And if no one is willing to pay, then I will reiterate that this is a PRODUCT that no one needs or wants.
Yet another unsubstantiated, unfalsifiable claim from an AI booster. What a shock.
Really? How much profit is OpenAI making? How many users have they added in the last few months?
The bubble is not that people will stop using the product. As long as it is free, or so heavily subsidized as to be nearly free, I wouldn't expect people to stop using any AI based services.
But all of these companies burn hundreds of millions or billions of dollars a year. There is zero sign any of them are bringing their costs down to the level that they'll be profitable at current pricing. The bubble pops when they raise prices, people don't want to pay, and everyone looks around and realizes hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on a product no one is willing to pay for.
The fact that you're so obviously ducking this and coming up with alternative ways to define a "bubble" when it is contextually obvious what's being discussed is a far more eloquent indictment of your position than anything I could say or write.
Well said.
In addition to many of the items mentioned above, two other important factors are 1) they all grew up reading sci-fi; and 2) they are all largely secular / non-religious. If you combine high intelligence, lack of religious belief, personal insecurity, and huge ego, you often get a strong fear of death. Technology is their way of transcending the human condition which is why you have these strong eschatological beliefs about AI.
The whole sci-fi (and sci fi adjacent) thing plays a big role in forming these guys personality IMO...immediately part of a usually nerdy (no offence intended) subculture.
Never thought about the whole secular thing, that's a very interesting point. It could also play a role in their famous delusional takes that are seemlingly unrestrained from Judeo-Christian Morality/ culture/ outlooks in the west
Zuck taking BJJ is badass. It is a great sport.
You're exactly the target audience for the PR ladiesman217 was talking about lmao
Well people in tech are usually high iq which usually leads to people in tech being autistic/weird
Uhm… no lol
For the most part, non-tech billionaires are effectively just normal people. Like they are pretty much all highly competent at something or another, but if you line them up with 50 random people, you wouldn’t be able to tell who the billionaires are based on behavior.
Tech billionaires… they are do often neurologically deficient drug abusers who grew up as othered. As a class, modern tech billionaires are constitutionally incapable of touching grass.
Similar to what others have said - it’s mostly PR and fundraising.
Tech companies are largely boom or bust. You can have a small companies in other industries that rake in tons of cash. And those companies never need to go public, raise VC money, do large scale digital advertising, hire developers, etc.
Tech as an industry has always needed to be big. Hardware needed to be produced. SaaS needs to be developed. That costs a lot of money. Even a small SaaS startup won’t really succeed without lots of VC capital and continuous YTD growth. Because it’s all subscription based on the industry is getting larger and larger. And because of the trucks the industry - you’re either growing or you’re distressed.
For the tech billionaires- they’re just putting on PR shows. Most of their work once they get that wealthy is just managing investor expectations. And in tech you need a fuck ton of investor capital - so it helps them when they play to whatever stereotype works best at the time.
The “preaching about Ai salvation” bs is a mix of two things. One is recognition and necessity. Brand recognition and product necessity are huge. When a tech billionaire convinces people that learning his product is necessary to sustain a living wage - people will line up to give them cash.
The other other part of it is likely having been a loser growing up. This is what I think of when I see Alex Karp talk. Not being physically attractive, being dorky, stuttering around people they find attractive, etc. How else do you get they get the attention of the girl from HS who didn’t know that they existed?
Can they at least stop with the “wearables?” Nobody wants this shit.
All billionaires are definitely not normal - some choose to be more in your face some choose to be more private.
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