We need to stop talking about the AI bubble popping like the technology will disappear and the problems will sort themselves out. A bubble means investors have pushed prices beyond what a business can realistically justify. When it bursts, those bets fall apart. China has already had a sharp crash in some AI-linked shares, and American tech shares have taken hits while companies keep spending heavily. AI is still being developed and used in both countries. A technology can be useful while people wildly overestimate how much money they’ll make from it.

There’s a reason both American and Chinese capitalism want AI so badly. Owners want the work done without having to keep paying as many people to do it. They want less dependence on workers who can demand higher wages, organize, or strike. Getting more production out of less paid labor has been a capitalist ambition since the early days of industrial machinery. AI gives owners another way to pursue it across more kinds of work. Servers, electricity, and maintenance cost money, but the bet is that those costs will be lower than the wages they can avoid paying. Even replacing some tasks can give an employer more leverage over the people still doing the rest.

A crash wouldn’t remove that incentive. Companies could go bankrupt and projects could be cancelled while other businesses kept developing and using AI. The software and research wouldn’t vanish. The dot-com crash didn’t get rid of the internet, either. And a company losing its investors’ money wouldn’t suddenly give workers control over automation or protect anyone’s privacy. Those things have to be fought for. They don’t come attached to a falling share price.

A serious collapse could also hurt a lot of people who had nothing to do with creating this situation. These companies buy equipment, hire construction workers, borrow money, and place orders with other businesses. When spending dries up, people can lose jobs and contracts well outside the AI industry. Losses can also spread through retirement savings and the financial system. The IMF has warned about the risks surrounding AI investment and the financing connecting these companies. We shouldn’t be wishing for ordinary people to get caught in that because we imagine it’ll finally settle an argument about AI.

What bothers us is how easily “the bubble will pop” becomes an excuse to put off the work we could be doing now. If we’re worried about data centers using water a community can’t spare or putting unreasonable demands on its electricity supply, we should be organizing around those developments. Talk to municipal officials. Bring residents together before approvals are handed out. Fight for suitable locations and enforceable limits on water use, pollution, and noise. Demand that companies pay for the infrastructure they require instead of passing the costs to residents. Some decisions sit with local government, others with state regulators or national representatives, so our demands need to reach the people who can act on them. An organized group that keeps showing up gives those demands weight.

The same goes for AI at work and in public services. Workers should have a say before these systems are introduced, including the ability to bargain over what happens to their jobs. People need ways to challenge harmful automated decisions and stop their personal information being misused. We should be fighting for democratic ownership so workers and communities can decide how these resources are used and who benefits. If a tool lets us do the same useful work in less time, we should be able to take that time back without losing the things we need to live.

We should not be cheering for the AI bubble to burst. A crash can leave people worse off without securing any of the protections they were hoping for. It won’t give communities control over data centers or workers control over automation. Democratizing those decisions requires us to organize and win that authority. AI is already part of our lives, and we need a political program that deals with its continued existence. Waiting for it to disappear leaves the decisions to the people who own it.

Living in right relation with technology means deciding together what it should do, what limits it must respect, and how its benefits should be shared. In our municipalities, we should be able to use reliable tools to reduce repetitive paperwork and free people for work that needs their attention, without turning every saving into another round of layoffs. We should also be able to refuse harmful uses and stop companies imposing costs on our communities without our consent. Capitalism encourages owners to capture the benefits while pushing environmental burdens and insecurity onto everyone else. We have to confront those choices through ownership, regulation, and public power. Blaming AI as though the technology itself decided who should profit leaves the people making those choices out of the argument.

When opposition becomes policing people’s tools, proving personal purity, and celebrating every headline that promises collapse, lifestylism, performative politics, purity culture, and sensationalism take the place of political seriousness. Political seriousness means organizing now to improve people’s lives and give them power over the technologies affecting them. A fantasy of AI disappearing cannot do that work for us. Our enemy is capitalism and the authority it gives owners to direct technological change at everyone else’s expense. Building a liberatory society requires us to bring that authority into democratic hands, so useful advances can reduce the work we have to do and give us more time to live.