Will the AI bubble burst?

The LRB Podcast

London Review of Books

Society & Culture

4.4 • 579 Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2026

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

‘Is it a bubble?’ John Lanchester asked in a recent LRB of the colossal amounts of money pouring into AI firms. ‘Of course it’s a bubble. The salient questions are how we got here, and what happens next.’ On this episode of the podcast, John joins Thomas Jones to discuss some possible answers to those questions. They talk about the history of companies such as Nvidia and OpenAI, the reasons ‘artificial intelligence’ is a misnomer, the harms that large language models can cause and why you shouldn’t rely on them for advice in the kitchen. From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm James Wood, and this year on the LRB's Close Reading's podcast, I'm asking,
0:07.4	Who's Afraid of Realism? I'll be taking a range of great novels and short stories,
0:12.4	from Flobe's Madame Bovary and Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, up to more recent works
0:17.2	by Amit Chowdhury and Gwendolyn Riley. And I'll be examining what makes and makes
0:22.5	for the real. How does realism produce its effects? What's the difference between artifice
0:28.3	and artificiality? And who is and has been afraid of realism and why? The series starts with
0:35.5	two episodes on Madame Bovary, which you can listen to right now,
0:39.2	and in the third episode I'll be talking to Adam Thurlwell about Dostoevsky. You can find a link in
0:44.0	the description or search close readings wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to the LRB podcast. I'm Thomas Jones, and for this, our first episode of
1:11.8	26, I'm delighted to be joined by John Lancaster to talk about the AI financial bubble,
1:17.8	how it grew, who is behind its gross, and what may happen as and when it eventually bursts.
1:24.0	John Lancaster is a contributing editor at the LRB and the author of six novels, including
1:28.3	the debt to pleasure, capital, the wall, and Look What You Made Me Do, which will be published
1:33.2	in March, and a collection of ghost stories, reality and other stories.
1:37.8	He has also written a memoir, family romance, and two books about the financial system,
1:42.7	whoops and how to speak money.
1:45.4	His piece in the latest issue of the LRB
1:47.4	is a review of four books,
1:49.0	The Thinking Machine,
1:50.1	Jensen Huang,
1:51.0	NVIDIA and the world's most coveted microchip
1:53.7	by Stephen Witt,
	...

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