Pucker time

Silicon Valley is home to many major tech firms, including Apple's circular headquarters. BBC

It's pucker time for the tech bros as AI's running out of content to process so, to continue the money train, tech companies are tasking their AI's to create synthetic experiences, something akin to inbreeding as per Charles II of Spain where hallucinations and other such bon bons come to the fore, making the erstwhile AI's increasingly marginal entities at best.

Charles II Portrait by Juan Carreño de Miranda, c. 1685

At OpenAI's DevDay this week, OpenAI boss Sam Altman did what American tech bosses rarely do these days: he actually answered questions from reporters.

"I know it's tempting to write the bubble story," Mr Altman told me as he sat flanked by his top lieutenants. "In fact, there are many parts of AI that I think are kind of bubbly right now."

In Silicon Valley, the debate over whether AI companies are overvalued has taken on a new urgency.

Sceptics are privately - and some now publicly - asking whether the rapid rise in the value of AI tech companies may be, at least in part, the result of what they call "financial engineering".

In other words - there are fears these companies are overvalued.

Mr Altman said he expected investors would make some bad calls and silly start-ups would walk away with crazy money.

But with OpenAI, he told me, "there's something real happening here".

Not everyone is convinced.

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Read the rest of the BBC's truly excellent piece to see why pucker time applies.

It's the smart thing to do.