We might be in a generative AI bubble. There are many potential signs of this around:

• Business investment in generative AI have had very low returns. 
• Expert opinion is turning against LLM, including some of the early LLM promoters (I also get this message from personal conversations with some AI researchers).
• No signs of mass technological unemployment.
• No large surge in new products and software.
• No sudden economic leaps.
• Business investment in AI souring.
• Hallucinations a continual and unresolved problem.
• Some stock market analysts have soured on generative AI, and the stock market is sending at best mixed signals about generative AI's value.
• Generative AI companies aren't making profits while compute investments continue rising. OpenAI is behaving like a company desperate to find a way of monetising its models, rather than a confident company on the cusp of AGI.

If LLMs were truly on the path to AGI[1], I would be expecting the opposite of many of these - opportunities for LLM usage opening up all over the place, huge disruption in the job markets at the same time as completely novel products enter the economy and change its rate of growth. And I would expect the needed [...]

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Outline:

(02:34 ) What a bubble is

(04:09 ) If we are in a bubble, what does it mean for Alignment research?

(05:20 ) Some thoughts on how to prepare or adapt to being in a generative AI bubble

The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

December 22nd, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dxF7cPKTFMbkbtnxi/the-future-of-alignment-if-llms-are-a-bubble

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.