Gaming Out Collateral Damage of the AI Bubble

There are presumably millions now living who are unaware that Pontiac was a General Motors brand and millions more that there was such a thing as a Pontiac Vibe.

They've been out of production since 2009, but you still see them around from time to time. Those left on the road are pretty beat up now, although, let's be honest, they weren't much to look at even when they were brand new.

I'm a bit of a weirdo about this sort of thing, keeping track of makes and models, where they're made and the decisions to kill them off. It's got something to do with being the grandson of a doctor at a Frigidaire factory in Moraine, Ohio (near Dayton) that became a GM assembly plant, and then covering the auto industry at my first reporting gig at the Dayton Daily News in the early 2000s.

In any event, there was this car called a Pontiac Vibe, and every time I see one, it's kind of like seeing a time capsule on wheels. I'm transported back to 2008-09, and the shock of living through economic collapse. I was in law school at the time, sitting in class with my laptop, half-listening to my professor while reading headlines of a mind-bending series of implosions: Lehman Brothers, AIG, Washington Mutual.

Of course, the contagion of the financial crisis – which started as a real estate bubble – spread into the economy at large. And that gets us back to the Vibe. GM filed for bankruptcy in June 2009, following Chrysler's bankruptcy filing by about a month. The Obama administration, worried that a liquidation of GM would turn the Great Recession into another Great Depression, bought a stake in the company at a cost of about $50 billion. The U.S. government was GM's majority owner until exiting its position during Obama's second term. As part of its restructuring, GM killed the Pontiac, Hummer and Saturn brands. It also closed numerous factories, including the assembly plant in Moraine, which at the time was making the Chevrolet TrailBlazer and GMC Envoy SUVs.

That was obviously quite a while ago. But I remember with clarity how it felt, the disorientation of everything coming unmoored. That's what I'm reminded of when I see an old Vibe or an old Saturn or Hummer. Lehman Brothers can't collapse, right? GM can't collapse, right? Well, actually, yes, they can, and they just did.

The Vibe was collateral damage of the financial crisis, and I've been thinking a lot lately about the collateral damage of the coming AI crisis. We have reached the point in the proceedings when all involved know we're in a bubble. The red flags are everywhere, out in the open and seemingly acknowledged by everyone. And while I hope that cooler heads prevail and that we avoid the part where we drive the flaming car off the cliff, that's not generally how we roll.

What will the collateral damage be this time around? What are the Pontiac Vibes in our midst? The things we'll see fifteen years from now that remind us of this moment when that arrow on the chart seemed like it was going to go up forever and then, what do you know, it pointed straight down, and the talk shifted from ceilings to floors?