Choose Your AI Adventure: Immiseration or Extinction

Jason and Asher replace Rob with a much more humane and humble co-host, Elon Musk, to explore the feasibility of harnessing the entire sun to power AI superintelligence. We come away perplexed that not much of the excellent reporting on the environmental, energy, and financial risks of the AI boom address the googleplex-sized elephant in the room – that both AI success and failure lead to immiseration. Originally recorded on 12/3/25.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• “Colossus 1” Search Engine podcast, November 21, 2025
• “Colossus 2” Search Engine podcast, November 21, 2025
• Episode 77, "The Elon Musk Episode about Elon Musk Brought to You by Elon Musk", Crazy Town podcast, June 14, 2023
• “Elon Musk on DOGE, Optimus, Starlink Smartphones, Evolving with AI, Why the West is Imploding” All In podcast, September 9, 2025
• “Is there an A.I. Bubble? And What if It Pops?” The Daily, November 20, 2025
• Hanna Rosin, The Atlantic, “What If AI Is a Bubble?” The Atlantic, November 13, 2025

Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Episode 77, “The Elon Musk Episode about Elon Musk Brought to You by Elon Musk”
• Episode 84, “Escaping Technologyism: Dreams of AI Sheep and the Deadliest Word in Film History”
• Episode 101 “Even AI Chatbots Hate Us: The Rise of the New Luddites, with Brian Merchant”