After a week of much consternation, Nvidia’s third-quarter earnings were released on Wednesday. It was a blowout. CEO Jensen Huang struck a markedly bullish tone on a Wednesday earnings call; the chip-manufacturing giant announced $57 billion in third-quarter sales, which roughly equates to 62 percent growth on an annual basis for the company. 

“There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble,” Huang confidently told investors. “From our vantage point, we see something very different.“

Huang temporarily soothed the anxiety of traders who have come to recognize that the health of the global financial order essentially rests on the productivity of Nvidia and a handful of other companies engineering the artificial intelligence revolution. Speaking of that future, Huang said he expects AI to give rise to “new applications, companies, products and services” that will fundamentally transform the global society in the coming years. 

Huang isn’t the only one suddenly talking about a Brave New World. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has made a number of strikingly eager comments recently about the prospects of AI manifestly changing the world as we know it. Speaking before a group of investors last week, Musk predicted that “long-term, the AI is going to be in charge, to be totally frank, not humans.” What a delightful thought: the end of our species as we know it. “We just need to make sure the AI is friendly,” Musk added with an awkward laugh. 

But no one else in the room was laughing. In fact, the comments didn’t elicit much of a response at all. An intense silence filled the room; the still very real humans in attendance must’ve been wondering what Musk meant by “friendly” and “in charge” and who exactly made people such as Musk and Huang the sole arbitrators of such a bizarre future.

Only days later, Musk was spotted in a bow tie tux enjoying a fancy dinner at the White House among luminaries such as the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo. As long as humans are still running the show, Musk and his pals are going to eat well, dress well, and make a boat load of money as they envision an AI future for us all. 

It was a bit odd seeing Musk enjoying the fare at the White House. After all, it was only a few months ago that Musk suggested President Donald Trump was mixed up in Jeffrey Epstein’s underage sex ring amid a torrent of incendiary tweets that many thought would sour the duo’s relationship for the rest of time. But they appear to have patched things up. As the comedian George Carlin expertly pointed out in the late stage of his sterling career: “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.”

Never was that thought more on my mind than this week watching the markets teeter on edge, desperate for a crumb of good news from the data-center purveyors. As we all waited to learn whether the United States and the rest of the collective West would survive another three months until Nvidia’s next earnings call, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was proudly touring Mohammed bin Salman through the U.S. Capitol.

The Saudis, once pariahs on the international stage and loathed by the “heritage” American class who can still recall the identities of the 9/11 perpetrators, are now distinguished guests in our house. And bin Salman wasn’t even required to wear a suit. Remember all that theatrical nonsense about Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky’s refusal to put on a suit in the great, respected halls of American power? Never mind any of that when it’s a Saudi prince with access to vast wealth, not to mention business relations with the Trump family. In that case, he can wear all the keffiyehs and hattahs and ghutrahs and shemaghs he wants and Republican leaders won’t bat an eye.

Bin Salman even cracked a joke about his decision to wear traditional garb instead of a modern suit for his big presentation on the American stage. Speaking at the formal dinner held Tuesday, MBS mentioned that his advisors had informed him of prediction betting sites such as Polymarket where degenerate gamblers wager increasingly inflationary currencies on daily events such as whether MBS would don a tux like every other man in the room. “I’m sorry, you lose the bet,” he said. MBS and Trump laughed aloud like old friends.

The next day, on the other side of the ocean, far from the gilded halls of Trump’s remodeled White House, Russian President Vladimir Putin was witnessing the future. Standing before the first Russian humanoid robot embedded with artificial intelligence, Putin listened carefully. “Motors and numerous sensors allow me to move smoothly, maintain balance confidently, and interact safely with people,” the robot reassured Putin. Then it danced and Putin laughed. What a world we have inherited. What a future. The writing on the wall has never been clearer: It’s an AI boom or bust, baby. 

But what happens if the AI revolution isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? What if the new technologies don’t transform the gadgets and services that instruct the world of today? On Thursday, Huang acknowledged such concerns when he told staff that “the whole world would’ve fallen apart” if Nvidia had missed earnings. What would Congress do in a situation where our economy, which now appears to be singularly tied to the success of several (or perhaps just one) AI tech company, goes bust? 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) broached this very realistic topic Wednesday. “The entire US economy growth can be tracked to 7 companies and their AI growth,” warned AOC. “At least 40% of growth this year is attributed to these companies … Should this bubble pop, we should not entertain a bailout.”

A bailout. The Congress has already run the national debt to nearly $40 trillion with no end in sight. What’s another $10 or $20 trillion if it means cleaning up a mess driven by the insatiable hype and mania cycle of the Wall Street class? President Barack Obama, arguably the most progressive figure to win the White House since FDR, refused to punish the bankers who nearly tanked America during the last financial crisis, so why would we expect the likes of Trump and Johnson and the yes-men who toil in Congress to perform any differently this time?

So I suppose it’s bailout or boom. In that case, we’ll root for the boom, even if by boom people such as Musk mean “humans” no longer run the world. What other choice do we have? As Elon stated last week, let’s just all hope the humanoid robots with super-intelligence chips made by Nvidia are nice to us. And let’s also hope that the men in charge, the ones building the chips that will go in the robots, are placing the guard rails necessary to stave off a robot rebellion. 

More than anything, let’s hope cynical old millennials like me are wrong about the present and the future, about the people running the show, about the bleak outlook for the sovereignty of the human species. But one thing’s for sure—I’m not alone in my concerns. Just a few weeks ago the New York Times published a depressing piece about three humans who have fallen in love with AI chatbots. What was once pure fantasy in the Spike Jonze film Her has become a reality for the increasingly isolated and lonely people who occupy the West. And we haven’t even hit the holographic stage yet; wait until the chatbots can take transparent physical form. Wait til someone ponies up the confidence to run one of these things for Congress or the presidency. What once seemed laughable now appears inevitable. 

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It’s getting dark early these days—it’s that time of year again. Some of my friends think I’m too negative about all this stuff. Surely it’ll all be OK, they say. Surely the politicians and tech zealots and monied interests who drive Big AI have our best interests at heart. Maybe they’re right. After all, I am prone to negativity. Drifting to sleep far too late the other night, a friend from the past messaged me out of the blue. She had just read the NYT piece. 

“I’m worried about this ChatGPT stuff,” she admitted. “It’s one thing to have socially isolated and traumatized individuals but many of my friends that I view as relatively balanced people are getting lost in how intimately they use AI.” I nodded in agreement and closed my eyes, hoping for a nice, human dream from the world of my nice, human childhood.