Bookmark: ‘The black swan’ author warns future selloffs could be 2-3 times worse than the deepseek shock as it reveals how fragile the economy is
Nassim Taleb warns that future market selloffs could exceed past shocks, highlighting the economy's fragility amid rising AI competition and tech reliance.
“This is the beginning. The beginning of an adjustment of people to reality.” - Nassim Taleb
‘The Black Swan’ author warns future selloffs could be 2-3 times worse than the DeepSeek shock as it reveals how fragile the economy is
Nassim Taleb, author of “The Black Swan,” has warned of potential market instability following the significant stock downturn experienced by Nvidia. This came amidst concerns over DeepSeek’s new AI offering, which operates at significantly reduced costs compared to rivals. Nvidia’s stock declined by 17%, eradicating $589 billion in market capitalization, marking the largest drop for a U.S. company and affecting the Nasdaq index by more than 3%. Taleb suggests this event indicates the beginning of market adjustments to reality, exacerbated by the AI boom spurred by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. He highlighted the risks of economic fragility due to over-reliance on a few tech giants, recalling how technological history shows first movers like Google can overcome initial leaders like Alta Vista. Taleb predicts potential future market downturns could be even more severe, emphasizing that the fragility of current wealth structures is significant. He previously indicated that market conditions mirror those preceding past collapses, citing widespread complacency and reliance on low interest rates that have discouraged conservative investments.
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AI as staff, not software
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Knowledge work was never work
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The practice of work in progress
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A skill correctly stated 'default to standing down.' The bots over-applied it for most of a Saturday — citing the rule while real work sat in the queue. Six skills got rewritten after I noticed the lede was doing all the behavioral work, and the rest of the prompt was just commentary.
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