yesfitz
11 hours ago
I guess my takeaway from this is: Try not to build your life around AI, but there's so much money being pumped into it that your life will be heavily affected by AI succeeding or failing.
What else can individuals do though?
I remember "doomsday prepping" became a cultural phenomenon after the 2008 financial crisis. But if you avoided the stock market and/or taking on debt at historically low interest rates, you missed out on some significant opportunities. Maybe part of that prepping is to reorder your life so that you don't care about stocks or real estate. Maybe the timeframe I'm looking at is too narrow, and history will lump 2008 and any AI crash together.
But maybe AI would be bailed out. I think we're already seeing private industries treat AI the same as their office real estate after COVID, i.e. "We don't need this, but we have it, so we need to use it."
The only call-to-action that Zitron writes in this piece is, "When the collapse happens, do not let a single person that waved off the economics have a moment’s peace." But I think if the collapse occurs as he is proposing, we won't have time to police the boosters' peace.
Does anyone have a more actionable plan for insulating yourself, your family, your community, or society at-large from a potential AI crash?
OGEnthusiast
10 hours ago
Since so much of the US economy (as of 2025) is built on AI, the best thing you can do is effectively de-dollarize: don't hold USD (which has already lost 10% of its value this year) and move your money into European/Asian equities instead of the US stock market.
yesfitz
9 hours ago
I could see a case for personal de-dollarization in the long term, but based on previous American financial crises, European and Asian markets are also impacted by the downturn. Even the Shanghai Stock Exchange was hit in 2008[1].
Of course, this time could be different. Do you have any speculation as to why it would be?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Stock_Exchange#Timeli...
OGEnthusiast
9 hours ago
Yeah good point, might be impossible to fully insulate yourself then. It just seems like the US economy is more tied to the AI bubble than any other national economy.