Ask HN: What if no AIpocalypse, no AI bubble, what if it just keeps advancing?

10 points by consumer451 8 hours ago | 25 comments

The two mainstream arguments are the extremes, because that's how our modern society rolls. It's either that there is an AI bubble that will crash, or that a rogue ASI will kill us all.

What about the third possibility? What if GPT 3.5 -> Sonnet 3.5 -> Opus 4.5 -> Astra / Opus 5.5 just keeps going for the next few years? Based on my experience, that will eat all software and software-related meetings. Once lab researchers focus on fields other than software, they will eat those nearly as quickly.

This feels like the real contrarian position in 2026. What does the US economy, which is >70% service-based, look like in the next 3 to 5 years, if this happens?

Does a couple labs having control of that percentage of the GDP make an economy? What if it happens too quickly? Is this the real reason why they are talking about "pacing the frontier" all of a sudden? Maybe this impossible "pacing" is due to the fact that the labs' own economists pointed out that collapsing your country's economy might not be a good idea?

What does unemployment look like in the next few years in this scenario, in the USA?

sdevonoes 1 hour ago |

That it will make a few individuals even more ultra mega rich. And then they will have even more power to adjust the world as they see fit.

tavavex 1 hour ago |

> Based on my experience, that will eat all software and software-related meetings. Once lab researchers focus on fields other than software, they will eat those nearly as quickly.

I don't understand your framing, because this is far more apocalyptic than any old bubble burst, even if the bubble is a massive one. A crash due to a bubble causes a temporary setback and readjustment that slowly rebounds over time. Fully displacing even 20% of the workforce would likely cause a societal implosion on a never before seen scale. Now imagine how bad it would be if it's 30, 40 or 50% of the workforce. Full automation is not temporary, it would remove these jobs for good. There is no rebound to be had, and only a mass restructuring of society that we all know is not likely to happen would save us from near-total collapse. I don't think AI labs have much of a reason to pace themselves to prevent this, because they're the ones who will come out on top in that poorer, more desperate, more divided hypothetical future.

atleastoptimal 4 hours ago |

If AI keeps advancing it will eclipse humans in all domains. This has been predicted for over a hundred years and it is a reasonable extrapolation from current trends.

Existing among machines more capable than humans in all domains is not a stable outcome. Either AI is significantly curtailed and restricted, or humans are consumed by the machines or disassembled for spare carbon.

consumer451 3 hours ago | |

I think that you might still be going with the exciting extremes, p(doom) style.

What about p(economic-collapse)? i.e. p(boring)

Where is the discussion by economists on the latter, as that appears to be exactly where we are headed, nearly for sure?

The Economic Nobel exists after all. Shouldn't there be a very public fight over the future on this topic?

fzzzy 1 hour ago | | |

Doesn't p(economic collapse) go without saying from the point gp makes?

nitwit005 2 hours ago |

Perhaps look at the past dozens of discussions on this general idea.

consumer451 2 hours ago | |

One would hope that there were many thousands of examples of this exact discussion. If you could point me to some of your favorites, I would appreciate it.

nitwit005 1 hour ago | | |

You are perhaps not getting the hint that I'm suggesting you should put in a bit of effort.

mstaoru 2 hours ago |

I might be a bit pessimistic but not extreme.

It's not "AI bubble that will crash" but definitely some kind of deflation or correction that will damage a lot of investments. As always, common people will be most affected.

It's not "rogue ASI will kill us all" but advancements in cyberattacks, skill erosion, job loss that will damage us all. Again, common people will be most affected.

It's been 5-6 years with these things, how does anyone still believe that this will usher a new era of prosperity? Maybe for Sam and Dario.

andsoitis 7 hours ago |

> will eat all software and software-related meetings.

Software engineering is a job. Writing code is a task. The task isn't the job.

i_have_an_idea 6 hours ago | |

copium

pierreb-aiva 6 hours ago | | |

Until models have taste, we still need Software Engineers to judge their output in the context of a broader goal. Not saying this will never happen, but we have yet to see evidence of models getting good at this. If anything, the lack of improvement on that axis has been quite underwhelming; the latest example of that being OpenAI offering a Lean proof of the solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations, but that proof not matching the natural language of that proof [1].

[1] https://arxiv.org/html/2610.08144v1

techblueberry 6 hours ago | | |

Copium seems like the rational response to the loss of millions of job, stability, and the meaning of one’s life.

Billions of people are going to become impoverished and your reaction is to insult someone for grieving?

What do you think is the purpose of life? Is this how you’ll react as one by one the souls of the ones you love most go dark?

dormento 7 hours ago |

my 2c:

IMHO, the US is already cooked. Technological superiority is one of many ways to exert influence, and foreign initiatives are closing in, fast. There's nothing the US can do do stop it, unless it can find a way to stall China's advances in the area, and this is incredibly unlikely.

techblueberry 8 hours ago |

How are you defining “AI bubble”? Via the capability trajectory of AI or as an economic analysis. How is “AI bubble” an extreme? Was dotcom bubble an extreme? In retrospect it feels like a median position. Bubbles are super normal not extreme. “AI is useless and will go away” would be the extreme position. Your third possibility could happen in the “AI bubble” world.

I think “AI bubble” gets framed as a technological question about AI capabilities and not a financial one. The bubble may deflate slowly, but if you eat all software or eat all other Field’s something is popping. Anthropic OpenAI and SpaceX are all valued partially as if they’ll be the only ones to succeed.