The sheer saturation of new A.I. gambits, added to the mismatch with consumer priorities, gives this year’s NFL showcase the sector-specific recession-indicator vibes that have defined Super Bowls of the past. 2022 was a pride-cometh-before-the-fall event for the cryptocurrency bubble, which collapsed in such spectacular fashion later that year — thanks largely to Super Bowl ad client Sam Bankman-Fried — that none of its major brands have ever returned to the broadcast. (… the coins themselves are once again crashing, hard.) Mortgage lender Ameriquest was as conspicuous a presence in the mid-2000s Super Bowls as it was an absence in the later aughts, having folded in 2007 when the risky subprime loans it specialized in helped kick off the financial crisis. And then there were all those bowl-game commercials for websites like Pets.com and Computer.com in 2000, when the dot-com rush brought attention to a slew of digital startups that went bust with the bubble.
Does this Super Bowl’s record-breaking A.I. ad splurge also portend a coming pop? Look at the business environment: The biggest names in the industry are swapping unimaginable stacks of cash exclusively with one another. One firm’s stock price depends on another firm’s projections, which depend on another contractor’s successes. Necessary infrastructure is meeting resistance, and all-around investment in these projects is riskier than ever. And yet, the sector is still willing to break the bank for the Super Bowl — even though, time and again, we’ve already seen how this particular game plays out.
It tells me that they have run out of things to spend their money on to make the products better and that they just need people to start paying them for what they currently have. It signals the end of active development and that we cannot expect any significant improvements from this point forward.
Whatever LLMs have to offer, we are seeing it now.
How about the ad for Ai.com which basically said “the future AI. Sign up now to get a short username. We will not answer questions.”
Oh, and it immediately requested a credit card and wouldn’t let you sign up with a Privacy.com card or anything. I was genuinely curious about it, and that was such an insane red flag.
That was the one that promised AGI without any explanation of what or how or anything except a demand for people to give them money and their personal information.
They are far from being out of things to spend money on. This is them tryin to end the need to pay workers and their benefits packages while having capacity to create and sell whatever slop people will buy. The only way to properly feed to the poor starving shareholders is to generate profits without any actual expenses.
I just wish all those US-caused crashes wouldn’t drag the entire world economy down with them.
Why the fuck does a US company gambling with sub-par American real estate lead to me getting fired from my IT support gig in Germany??I’m in favor of anything that gets them to bankruptcy faster, while at the same time realizing that it will take down the entire economy.
They have thought of every aspect of this. “Too big to fail…” :/
When the “AI” companies said they were spending billions of dollars, I didn’t know they meant they were doing it on Super Bowl ads
I remember watching the onslaught of .com commercials in the 2000 Superbowl very clearly. Felt exactly the same as these 2026 AI commercials.
The current AI bubble is going to burst into flames spectacularly, and out of the ashes AI will become the actual life-enhancing tool that it was meant to be, just like the .com bubble.
Fortune favors the brave.
There’s a fine line between brave and foolish.
i wonder if the saturation of Superbowl ads about one thing being an indicator of a bubble about to burst is kinda analogous to how getting on the Forbes 30 under 30 list and then seeing someone from that list get arrested for fraud isn’t terribly surprising
I’m looking to bail on several of my AI stocks over the next few months while I still have solid profits.
Do it now. Get out while you’re ahead.
The writing is on the wall, the first CEOs are getting more cautious (or desperate) in their public messaging, the math says that a path to profitability is already impossible, and the fact it’s getting force-fed to everyone shows a lack of genuine demand.
By the time you’ll hear the crash, it’ll already have happened.At least set stop losses
No.
Next question?
