The author of the book 'The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable', Nassim Taleb, who predicted the 2008 crisis, warned investors about potential bankruptcies in the software sector due to artificial intelligence. His words are quoted by Bloomberg.
According to Taleb, markets underestimate structural risks while overestimating the resilience of today's AI leaders.
"Someone will make a lot of money from artificial intelligence," the economist said in an interview. However, he noted, there is no guarantee that it will be the companies that currently form the backbone of the AI market.
The author of 'The Black Swan' does not rule out bankruptcies in certain segments of software against the backdrop of technological instability, fierce competition, and geopolitical conditions. On one hand, investors fear that rapidly evolving AI tools will undermine the positions of software developers, while on the other hand, tech giants seeking to develop AI infrastructure have begun a dangerous race for borrowings that may not pay off for many years.
As Taleb explained, since a significant portion of stock market growth over the past couple of years has been driven by a narrow group of AI-related stocks, broader indices remain vulnerable in the event of a leadership change.
"Tail risk in various sectors of the economy is structurally underestimated," the economist noted. "The risk is not in a minor correction, but in a significant decline." "Hedging is always necessary (protecting investor financial investments by reducing risks through transactions that will cover losses from the main investment)," he is convinced. "Such declines are hard to predict."
Taleb, while positively assessing the potential of technologies such as artificial intelligence, is simultaneously skeptical about the hype surrounding them at present. The author of 'The Black Swan' expressed doubts back in late 2024 that these companies would maintain their positions in the long term and drew parallels with the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
In 2001, one of the largest stock market collapses in modern history occurred — the technology index NASDAQ crashed. Along with this, the dot-com bubble burst. A huge number of internet startups went bankrupt. Even companies with established businesses suffered enormous losses.
The dot-com bubble is an economic phenomenon caused by active trading of overvalued stocks of IT companies and startups. From 1995 to 2000, NASDAQ grew by 400%, and in 2002 it fell by 78% and lost $5 trillion in capitalization. The collapse triggered a wave of bankruptcies. The term "dot-com" comes from the commercial top-level domain .com.
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