It’s no secret that USA has neither the electricity nor the skilled labor to deliver data centers needed for the AI revolution. Yet, frontier model providers and public companies alike keep insisting that America must win the AI race or be left behind! and they are spending like there is no tomorrow. Most rational people understand that this bubble won’t hold up and they think this is where AI is actually going:
Problems (beyond 5th grade math) aren’t just around lack of electricity, GPUs, staff, ram shortages or even investor enthusiasm. Developers are complaining that they are getting less tokens for the buck and that models are thinking less. Major providers like xAI/Twitter’s Colossus DC (Grok) run on natural gas (methane) burning turbines. Most of the world is on a path to economic recession and $ from the Middle East is not arriving like it used to habibi.
All these headwinds are giving many AI naysayers reasons to remain pessimistic. I hope you’re not among them.
Here is the issue: AI is not the dot-com bubble pets.com sock puppet where removing one or two players will going to collapse the entire value chain. Frontier models like GPT/Opus/Grok require a ton of resources but provide massive context windows and fast token output. Billions of dollars and entire supply chains are tied to the success of these AI models. Are they at risk? Sure! Problem is, these are not the only AI models out there and those are also not likely to put you out of work (unless you’re a developer).
As of mid-April 2026 I can run a very respectable Gemma 4 model from Google on my iPhone 17 Pro.
Even Raspberry Pi can run Qwen, Deepseek R1, llama, etc.
These selfhosted and quantized models are the genie that won’t fit back in that magic lamp. If you can have AI on devices that cost less than $100 no amount of Middle East war or RAM and electricity shortages is going to hold it back.
When the same PC you used to give to your employees can outperform and outproduce your employees… you’re going to have far less employees. Billionaires don’t disagree:
If you’re worried about OpenAI, Grok or Claude putting you out of work and have hopes that economic collapse will put them out of business – respectfully – you need to broaden your horizons. The overall automation, orchestration, and awareness at the edge or in your pocket is what will ultimately decimate low-skill labor.
It’s not a question of if but when. Consider this an encouragement to get out of roles that can be obsoleted by last years smartphone tech.