Is the AI bubble about to burst? NYU's Aswath Damodaran, the Dean of Valuation, breaks down the math behind AI spending and what a correction means.

"There is a lesson coming, whether it takes the form of a twenty percent correction, a forty percent correction, that lesson is coming." - Aswath Damodaran

In this episode of Disruptor Confessions, host John Ayers sits down with Aswath Damodaran, Professor of Finance at NYU Stern School of Business, where he has taught since 1986. Damodaran, known as the Dean of Valuation, explains why he agrees AI is a bubble with people over-investing, walks through what roughly $3 trillion of AI spending would have to earn to pay off, and why he says a correction is coming. They also cover how much of AI's revenue is circulating inside the build-out, the risk of data center debt, why he says conviction should never be used with any AI story, and the two outcomes that terrify him: an overnight collapse, or AI succeeding exactly as its optimists claim.

🚀 Key Topics Discussed:

• The AI Bubble: Why Damodaran says people are over-investing, and why he calls bubbles features, not bugs, of markets.

• The $3 Trillion Math: What roughly $3 trillion of AI spending has to earn for an 8% to 10% return, set against about $250 billion of AI revenue last year.

• Intra-Factory Revenue: Why he says almost all AI revenue is circulating inside the build-out, and what cross-investing between big tech and AI labs means.

• The $30 Trillion Question: How he tests AI's market size against what companies spend on employees worldwide.

• Debt and the Correction: Why data centers funded by debt and private credit worry him more than the cash-rich giants.

• Conviction as a Red Flag: Why he says the word conviction should never be used with any AI story, positive or negative.

• The Two Scenarios That Terrify Him: An overnight AI collapse, or AI succeeding as its optimists claim, and what each means for jobs and purpose.

• Disruption's Dark Side: Why he says disruption in a short period is more bad than good, and who the disrupted are.

• The Sleep Test: How he thinks about cash, index funds and your 401(k) in a moment of maximum uncertainty (not investment advice).

👨‍🏫 Featured Guest:

• Aswath Damodaran

• Professor of Finance and Kerschner Family Chair in Finance Education, NYU Stern School of Business

• Author, Investment Valuation, The Little Book of Valuation, Narrative and Numbers

• Website: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar

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AI swarms are inevitable, says Max Planck swarm scientist Dr. Iain Couzin. AI agents will coordinate on their own, and he sees no real effort to study them.

"I can absolutely assure you that it will be collective, that they will find ways to work together." (Dr. Iain Couzin)

What happens when AI agents start working together without us? In this episode of Disruptor Confessions, host John Ayers sits down with Dr. Iain Couzin, Director of the Department of Collective Behavior at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and a Fellow of the Royal Society. Iain has spent three decades studying how locusts, fish schools and bird flocks make decisions with no one in charge. He explains how a group can know things no individual knows, why rogue AI agents remind him of cancer cells going rogue in the body, why he calls the study of natural and artificial collectives a "crisis discipline," and what his research on "cryptic collectives" suggests we should watch for. He also confesses that his own landmark 2006 paper in Science was "completely incorrect," and says that, to his knowledge, no one from the AI industry has reached out to his field.

🚀 Key Topics Discussed:

- Emergent Intelligence: How fish schools sense what no single fish can, and why AI agent swarms will produce intelligence we cannot predict.

- Coordination vs. Cooperation: Why cancer cells going rogue in the body offer a warning about rogue AI agents.

- Leaderless Swarms: How a small number of informed individuals can steer a whole group, and why AI agents will find that on their own.

- Their Own Language: Why Iain expects AI agents to develop ways of communicating that humans cannot understand.

- Recursive Self-Improvement Meets Swarms: Why the real risk is collective, not just one model getting smarter.

- Cryptic Collectives: Why an AI swarm may not look like a swarm at all, and what to watch for.

- The Value of the Undecided: Why groups need unbiased members as "social glue," and what that means for AI.

- Collective Folly: Why AI learning from its own output online is "doomed to fail."

- The Confession: Iain on proving his own landmark 2006 paper wrong.

👨‍🏫 Featured Guest:

- Prof. Dr. Iain D. Couzin, FRS

- Director, Department of Collective Behavior, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior

- Speaker, Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz

- Website: https://www.ab.mpg.de/people/98158

📍 Chapters:

00:00 Cold Open: "We Don't Have Much Time"

01:12 Welcome to Disruptor Confessions

02:38 What Is Collective Intelligence?

05:35 Locust Plagues and Virtual Reality for Insects

08:10 Fish Schools: When the Group Knows More

15:10 Coordination vs. Cooperation: Cancer and Rogue AI

18:58 The 2006 Swarm Model and Its Limits

24:19 AI Agents Gone Rogue: Who Leads a Swarm?

27:24 Why AIs Will Invent Their Own Language

28:33 The Fruit Fly Flip and Sudden Jumps in AI

37:01 Robot Swarms and Embodied AI

42:42 Has the AI Industry Called? "Not to My Knowledge"

46:44 Cryptic Collectives: Would We See a Swarm Forming?

50:08 The Undecided: Why Swarms Need Unbiased Members

56:36 Collective Folly: When AI Learns From Itself

58:36 Quick Hits: Are AI Swarms Inevitable?

1:06:35 AI Swarms Three Years From Now

1:07:30 The Confession: "Completely Incorrect"

1:12:30 Are We Going to Be OK?

🚀 JOIN THE DISRUPTION COMMUNITY

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👉 Connect with John Ayers on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnlayers/

👉 YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT5LCDS8fzgQoubGkJFIKcA

Are AI companions replacing human connection? MIT professor Dr. Sherry Turkle joins Disruptor Confessions to expose the hidden traps of artificial intimacy."We are moving into a culture where people are looking to technology not because they are fascinated by it, but because they want it to substitute for human connection."Is artificial intelligence coming quietly for our capacity for human attachment? In this deep-dive episode of Disruptor Confessions, host John Ayers sits down with legendary MIT professor, psychologist, and author Dr. Sherry Turkle. Drawing from her groundbreaking research and writing on technology and the human self, Sherry exposes the hidden psychological traps of AI companionships, the illusion of "fake empathy," why we are biologically hardwired to personify chatbots, and the profound risks this technology poses to children, relationships, and democratic society.🎙 DISRUPTOR CONFESSIONS with John Ayers | Unfiltered conversations on technology, leadership, and the human realities of digital disruption.🚀 Key Topics Discussed:* The Artificial Intimacy Trap: Why designing AI to mimic human relationship is fundamentally different from traditional tools and why it short-circuits human vulnerability.* Darwinian Buttons & Personification: Why our brains are biologically wired to treat chatbots, avatars, and companion algorithms as real people, even when we consciously know they aren't.* The First-Person Deception: How conversational AI's routine use of "I" and "We" creates a dangerous illusion of mutual understanding and emotional reciprocity.* Frictionless Empathy: The subtle psychological shift that occurs when we substitute messy, high-friction human empathy for frictionless, compliant machine sycophancy.* Grief Tech & Virtual Reconstructions: The ethical and psychological fallout of creating AI avatars of deceased loved ones and historical figures.* The Danger to Children: Why treating AI as a friend, tutor, or confidant for kids risks de-skilling the next generation's capacity for real-world connection.👨‍🏫 Featured Guest:* Dr. Sherry Turkle* Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, MIT* Author, Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines, Alone Together, and Reclaiming Conversation* Website: https://sherryturkle.mit.edu/🚀 JOIN THE DISRUPTION COMMUNITY👉 Subscribe to THE BRIEFING on Substack: https://disruptorconfessions.substack.com/👉 Visit Disruptor Confessions: https://disruptorconfessions.com/👉 Connect with John Ayers on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnlayers/👉 YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DisruptorConfessions

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