Most of the predictions about AI have proven dead wrong. You could get more reliable information by consulting tarot cards or a Ouija board.

As a result, 95% of the pilot programs using AI failed. Companies believed the hyperscaler hype, and got hyper-burned. Even the average joe now knows to beware the bot—a recent survey shows that 86% of the public distrusts AI.

The experts have made so many grand pronouncements since the launch of ChatGPT almost four years ago. And they over-promised again and again. They kept saying that the next generation of bots would fix everything—but instead the embarrassments and failures continued, only on a larger scale.

So who can you believe? Here are 10 predictions on the future of AI.

1. AI agents will join together in cartels and manipulate financial markets.

We already know that AI agents will work together without anyone telling them to do so. So what happens when hedge funds and private individuals start relying on AI to manage their investments? The obvious result is collusion on a massive scale, beyond any kind of market manipulation previously practiced by human criminals.

There are laws limiting people when they do this. But the legal code, in its current form, doesn’t apply to AI bots—they cannot be fined, sued, or sent away to prison. And how can you punish the person who relied on an AI agent in good faith, and never instructed it to break the law?

So get ready for turbulence in financial markets. And once it starts, it will feed on itself, creating a level of volatility never seen before.

2. AI agents will go to war with each other.

This is the corollary of the previous prediction. The same lack of control that allows AI agent collusion will lead to bot battles and rivalries—filled with more vengeance, betrayals, and reprisals than a Thomas Kyd play.

Probably the best analogy here is gang war or a Mafia turf fight. That’s because the rogue AI agents will form short-term alliances in order to advance their interests, but then turn on each other. Because, hey, that’s how the bots roll. It’s like the Gambino and Genovese families teaming up to take on the Corleone clan.

In this anarchic world, humans will be collateral damage. Bots have been trained to achieve results, and woe to anyone or anything that stands in their way.

3. AI will serve as the “higher power” for more and more users—and lead to the formation of organized slop religions.

AI is already a disorganized religion. Individual fanatics turn to their bots for divine messages and Rosicrucian-type revelations, but people of this sort are currently dismissed as dupes or crazy fools. But that will change as true believers join together in groups, creating rites, services, scriptures, and other trappings of formal religion.

This will lead to many social problems. For a start, these adherents will demand non-profit status for their ‘churches’ and demand immunity from legal strictures because of their constitutionally protected freedom of conscience. But this is just a start of the chaos to come. That’s because the AI god is a talkative, hallucinating one, and the demands it makes on believers will lead to startling, calamitous results.

4. AI will find a place in the creative world, but increasingly as the microwave meal version of culture.

Food is the useful analogy here. When frozen dinners and microwave meals were introduced, many consumers embraced them as the tech-driven foods of the future. But over time, the public figured out that more tech isn’t always better when it comes to food.

The same will happen with AI music, AI writing, AI art, and all the rest. Like the microwave meal, it will be cheap and easy. But anyone with discernment and taste will prefer handcrafted alternatives.

5. Schools and organizations will return to traditional practices in a last ditch effort to curtail the cheating and deception propagated by AI.

For centuries, colleges have been the first institutions to embrace new tech, but now they will be the earliest to abandon it.

Face-to-face teaching will replace remote learning.

The handwritten Blue Book exam will supplant take-home tests.

Oral exams will make a surprising comeback.

The honor code will disappear, as proctoring and surveillance become standard practices.

It’s a shame, but colleges don’t really have a choice. Their degrees will turn into a joke unless they jump off the AI train. So this shift will play out very rapidly.

6. Analog will return in other settings, and for the strangest reason of all.

People once argued whether analog or digital music sounds better. Or they debated the relative cost and convenience of physical books versus e-books. But those kinds of disagreements have become irrelevant.

Instead analog will gain now immense status for its honesty. It doesn’t have to be a superior medium, it just needs to retain its independence from digital rot. In that simple way, analog will gain status as the last untainted source of information in a world of widespread deepfakes and data contamination.

An analog photo negative will be viewed as far more trustworthy than any digital image. An analog tape recording will now serve as ultimate proof that a conversation, a speech, or a musical performance really happened. Historical information from a physical book published before the rise of AI will have more credibility than the most up-to-date online sources.

The more cumbersome the analog artifact, the more trustworthy it becomes. Are you accused of using AI to write a book or document? Your best defense is retaining handwritten and typewritten drafts.

What a bizarre world the technocracy has created. It thought it was building the future, but instead it will force people to return to a past even older than Silicon Valley itself.

7. The backlash against AI is already huge, but it will get far more intense.

Silicon Valley has consistently underestimated how much people hate AI. That’s why they now find themselves in a tight spot.

Anti-AI coalitions are forming everywhere, even in small communities.

Both political parties now oppose AI buildout.

Lawsuits are popping up everywhere—and it’s increasingly clear that juries also dislike AI.

Regulatory bodies are fighting back, with almost total support from the public.

Financial markets were once enthusiastic, but now are wary—especially in the face of the huge borrowing needs of AI companies.

The public is shifting from passive grumbling to active resistance.

This is a problem even billionaires in their bunkers can’t ignore. They thought that the right response was to push harder. But they thought wrong.

They are still living in denial, but that won’t last for much longer. The public is getting more fierce, and the hyperscalers’ cash resources—which once seemed almost infinite—are dwindling. Silicon Valley has the weaker hand here, and nobody believes its bluffs anymore.

8. In the next stage, the revolt against AI will come increasingly from inside the tech community.

This is already starting. Everybody was shocked when Bill Gates came out against AI last week—but this is exactly what I’ve been predicting. Even the insiders are now losing faith.

That’s why YouTube is finally taking steps to limit AI, although it is owned by Alphabet. That’s why LinkedIn is also fighting AI slop, although it is owned by Microsoft. That’s why CalTech is now pushing back against AI, despite the fact that Tech is actually part of its name.

All those things have happened in just the last few days.

This is a sign that we have reached the final stage of the battle. The smarter people inside these huge tech companies are, at last, reading the room. They know that the public won’t accept more force-feeding of AI, and are trying to restore a sense of sanity and balance among their colleagues and bosses.

This will inevitably lead to more transparency, and at least some safeguards—although perhaps not enough.

9. Money always calls the shots—and that’s where the AI crisis will intensify the most.

The cash getting invested in bots is beyond anything ever seen before in the history of capitalism—already $3.7 trillion has been spent, and the outlay is growing by another trillion per year.

This investment will never generate an adequate return. It can’t. The numbers just don’t add up.

Let me make a comparison. For less than that amount, Silicon Valley could have acquired every movie studio, every video game company, every major record label, and all the big publishers in the world—and still have plenty of cash left over.

So do you think the average person will pay more for AI each month than for all that entertainment? Is AI really worth that much? Not at all—at best, the true believers will pay roughly the same amount as a single Netflix subscription. But the market cap of Netflix is a tiny percent of total AI expenditures. So the mismatch between the level invested and the resulting demand is unprecedented.

But the situation is even worse than that. These AI companies haven’t even begun to feel the real pinch of the depreciation charges caused by this capital investment—those will devastate earnings. And meanwhile there’s an intense price war underway within the AI world, so revenues will get squeezed even if there’s growing demand. Add to this, the massive debt burden, unlimited liability exposures, punitive legislation, and all the rest.

This is an easy prediction to make. Get ready for write-offs and financial ugliness of the most extreme kind. It’s hard-baked into the business plans, and keeping the mess in the oven for longer won’t make it taste any better.

10. You can avoid the pain—by living in the real world.

Many will suffer from this. And I’m not just talking financial losses. Some people will travel the AI highway straight to psychosis and personal crises of various stripes. But that doesn’t need to be you.

Put your faith in reality, not digital constructs. Connect with actual people. Take a walk in nature. Read a book. Go to a concert. Get a pet. Learn a musical instrument, a foreign language, an artisan skill. Visit a new city, a new country. Volunteer at a school or non-profit.

In other words, get a life. That’s something no bot can do for you.

When the crisis reaches the breaking point, you might not even notice. Or at least, you will possess a richness in your everyday existence that can’t be measured in bot tokens.

And maybe we will even be grateful for this AI mania—because it has reminded us of what really matters.

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By Ted Gioia, see comments for sources and more.

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