The Dark Descent: why compute oligopoly is the mathematical inevitability of AI's capital structure
Paimaamu · x · 2026-09-21
A Substack essay reflects on abandoning the AI democratization narrative by looking past software to thermodynamics and capital structure: modern training runs cost tens of billions of dollars and require buying entire nuclear plants; only three or four entities worldwide can sustain that burn rate, making even "open source" champions tenants of the same landlords. The author argues the back-end is already oligopolized, and that the mismatch between quarterly-report economics and long-term human goals makes civilization-level consolidation a mathematical inevitability of the current capital structure.
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