looking at what's actually driving AI: the infrastructure, the rule-writers, and the structural conditions that make the outcomes inevitable before anyone notices.
Trump's administration has taken stakes in more than 20 companies this term, including Intel and IBM. It is now in active talks with OpenAI about equity, while simultaneously restricting which of OpenAI's models can reach the public. The GPT-5.6 Sol release this week required government approval before it could ship. What the administration is building is not an oversight framework. It is a toll booth.
In August 2023 Gary Marcus warned that generative AI economics were broken. In a Wired piece shortly after he predicted the bubble would collapse in 2025. It did not. In August 2024 he wrote the collapse was "days or weeks" away. It was not. Last week he filed Accenture's earnings as bubble confirmation without reading the earnings report. Today he has coined the "Generative AI Fizzle™": a slow decline rather than a collapse. The trademark symbol is on a rebranded failed prediction. The evidence he is not citing tells a more complicated story than either his original thesis or its replacement.