Leopold’s Folly

Before I get to what I am going to call Leopold’s Folly, let’s talk about check-kiting, a classic scam that has been on my mind. Wikipedia has a nice summary. I am not saying that the generative AI industry is literally check-kiting. If Masa wants to take out loans on his OpenAI shares in order to buy more OpenAI shares, he’s entitled to do that. And I don’t think it’s blatant fraud the way that check-kiting is, where people know from the outset that the promises to pay will never bear out. But we certainly see circular elements that are reminiscent of check-kiting:And it’s not clear that all the debts that are being issued can actually be paid off. They are all extraordinarily speculative. Maybe there...

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