Brutkey

Mike McCaffrey
@mikemccaffrey@drupal.community

Senior Architect building Drupal sites for more years than I care to count, with a strong focus on accessibility and best practices. Trying very hard to convince people that the AI craze is a pyramid scheme that is going to crash the entire economy. Opinions expressed do not represent those held by my employer or coworkers; they are totally into AI as well, which makes meetings very awkward.


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https://www.drupal.org/u/mikemccaffrey
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https://www.kalamuna.com/bio/mike-mccaffrey
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@mikemccaffrey@mastodon.social
Mike McCaffrey
@mikemccaffrey@drupal.community

My other accounts:

@mikemccaffrey@pdx.social
Portland, covid, urbanism, city planning, dogs, crows, weather, nature, photography, house projects.

@mikemccaffrey@wandering.shop
Scifi, futurism, climate change, dystopia, books, television.

@mikemccaffrey@a11y.social
Accessibility, UX, HTML/CSS/JS, assistive technology.

@mikemccaffrey@neurodifferent.me
ADHD, mental health, productivity, the general travails of life.

@mikemccaffrey@mstdn.games
Minecraft, Fortnite, Dropout.tv, and other time-wasting activities.

Mike McCaffrey
@mikemccaffrey@drupal.community

As part of my job, I am now required to try #AI tools every week, so I used the #DeepAI image generator to create this masterpiece.

Cartoon of a parrot that is also a slot machine. A hand is reaching up to pull the handle on the side. A speech bubble says "That is a fantastic question!". It is a very attractive and dramatic image that only has some minor problems, namely odd punctuation in the speech bubble and there are two hands grasping the handle from opposite directions.
Mike McCaffrey
@mikemccaffrey@drupal.community

Me sitting here every day waiting for the #AIBubble to collapse.

Looking down at a rough hewn picnic table on which someone has scrawled "When will it get here already". A small scruffy dog is sitting on my lap at the bottom and at the top are a food container, pitcher, and glass. The pitcher has a tad of beer at the bottom, but the food container and glass are both completely empty. I've been sitting here a while and have consumed almost everything.
Mike McCaffrey
@mikemccaffrey@drupal.community

I just asked #ChatGPT how it "thinks" the #AIBubble will collapse. I'm looking forward to seeing how accurate the predictions will turn out to be (especially since I basically agree with everything it is saying).

Prompt: How will the Al investment bubble collapse? ChatGPT: If the Al investment bubble collapses, it would likely follow patterns similar to previous tech bubbles, like the dot-com crash in the early 2000s. Here's how such a collapse might unfold: 1. Overhype and Overvaluation (Current or Pre-Crash Phase) Startups and public companies get massive funding based on inflated expectations. Revenue and profit often lag behind valuation. Companies may rebrand or pivot to Al without real tech just to attract investors. ChatGPT: 2. Market Saturation and Missed Expectations Too many similar products (e.g., countless chatbots, copilots, Al productivity tools). Promised breakthroughs (AGI, full autonomy, etc.) may fail to materialize quickly. Costs of scaling models (compute, energy, data) increase faster than returns. Users and businesses discover limitations in accuracy, ethics, and utility. ChatGPT 3. Financial Pressure Builds Monetization fails: High user interest doesn't translate to sustainable revenue. Companies burn cash without clear paths to profitability. Interest rates or macroeconomic conditions worsen, drying up capital. Investors start demanding real results - not just promises. ChatGPT: 4. Confidence Collapse A few major players miss earnings, go bankrupt, or reveal fraud. Investor sentiment shifts quickly, triggering mass sell-offs. Private equity and VC firms pull back funding or try to exit. Layoffs, shutdowns, and fire sales begin across the sector.
Mike McCaffrey
@mikemccaffrey@drupal.community

Bookmarking this conference slide my coworker shared for posterity, since either we are about to reach the singularity, or we are walking straight into yet another tech bubble where the majority of people are somehow convinced that the line will keep going up forever, unlike the last 5 times this exact same thing happened.

#AIBubble

Slide from a conference presentation by Nancy Giordano who bills herself as a strategic futurist. An arrow points to the knee of an exponential curve with the text "could we be sitting on the horizon of 14 internet sized transformations". There is no dash in "internet-sized" and there is no context about how the weirdly-specific number 14 was selected.
Mike McCaffrey
@mikemccaffrey@drupal.community

As part of my job, I am now required to try #AI tools every week, so I used the #DeepAI image generator to create this masterpiece.

Cartoon of a parrot that is also a slot machine. A hand is reaching up to pull the handle on the side. A speech bubble says "That is a fantastic question!". It is a very attractive and dramatic image that only has some minor problems, namely odd punctuation in the speech bubble and there are two hands grasping the handle from opposite directions.
Mike McCaffrey
@mikemccaffrey@drupal.community

Dear #YouTube #AI, I would please like the children's menu.

https://apnews.com/article/youtube-video-age-verification-system-1ce99a7089b33e88dc76e49945ded186

The safeguards include reminders to take a break from the screen, privacy warnings and restrictions on video recommendations. YouTube, which has been owned by Google for nearly 20 years, also doesn’t show ads tailored to individual tastes if a viewer is under 18.
Mike McCaffrey
@mikemccaffrey@drupal.community

If nothing else, #AI seems very capable of crafting a compelling metaphor.

https://cleantechnica.com/2025/08/09/robotaxi-falls-into-construction-pit-tesla-dojo-done/

#AIBubble

Robotaxi Falls Into Construction Pit Social media was apparently ablaze this week in China after a robotaxi ended up in a construction pit. It was a Baidu Apollo Go robotaxi, and it was indeed transporting a paying passenger. It’s not clear how the robotaxi ended up at the bottom of this construction pit, but there were reportedly barriers and warning signs around the pit.
Mike McCaffrey
@mikemccaffrey@drupal.community

Journalistic malpractice to write a whole article about how #SamAltman doesn't like the term #AGI without even mentioning that it is a keystone part of the contract with #Microsoft that has #OpenAI over a barrel.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/11/sam-altman-says-agi-is-a-pointless-term-experts-agree.html

Mike McCaffrey
@mikemccaffrey@drupal.community

So the over-representation of #AI stocks in the S&P 500 has made #HankGreen worried enough about an #AIBubble to make a finance video, which as he admits, is totally not a thing he usually does.

https://youtu.be/VZMFp-mEWoM

Mike McCaffrey
@mikemccaffrey@drupal.community

I love how during Monday meetings, many of our developers say they don't have enough billable work, and then in Friday meetings everyone has to go around and say how we've delegated tasks to AI.

#AIBubble #AgencyLife #Winning

Mike McCaffrey
@mikemccaffrey@drupal.community

Nice to see that poor decisions that #Drupal made in the past are enabling us to make absolutely terrible decisions now.

https://dri.es/why-drupal-is-built-for-the-ai-era

Why Drupal is built for the AI era Drupal accidentally prepared for AI. The architectural decisions that made Drupal 8 painful to adopt now make it uniquely capable of deep AI integration.
Mike McCaffrey
@mikemccaffrey@drupal.community

Me sitting here every day waiting for the #AIBubble to collapse.

Looking down at a rough hewn picnic table on which someone has scrawled "When will it get here already". A small scruffy dog is sitting on my lap at the bottom and at the top are a food container, pitcher, and glass. The pitcher has a tad of beer at the bottom, but the food container and glass are both completely empty. I've been sitting here a while and have consumed almost everything.
Mike McCaffrey
@mikemccaffrey@drupal.community

I just asked #ChatGPT how it "thinks" the #AIBubble will collapse. I'm looking forward to seeing how accurate the predictions will turn out to be (especially since I basically agree with everything it is saying).

Prompt: How will the Al investment bubble collapse? ChatGPT: If the Al investment bubble collapses, it would likely follow patterns similar to previous tech bubbles, like the dot-com crash in the early 2000s. Here's how such a collapse might unfold: 1. Overhype and Overvaluation (Current or Pre-Crash Phase) Startups and public companies get massive funding based on inflated expectations. Revenue and profit often lag behind valuation. Companies may rebrand or pivot to Al without real tech just to attract investors. ChatGPT: 2. Market Saturation and Missed Expectations Too many similar products (e.g., countless chatbots, copilots, Al productivity tools). Promised breakthroughs (AGI, full autonomy, etc.) may fail to materialize quickly. Costs of scaling models (compute, energy, data) increase faster than returns. Users and businesses discover limitations in accuracy, ethics, and utility. ChatGPT 3. Financial Pressure Builds Monetization fails: High user interest doesn't translate to sustainable revenue. Companies burn cash without clear paths to profitability. Interest rates or macroeconomic conditions worsen, drying up capital. Investors start demanding real results - not just promises. ChatGPT: 4. Confidence Collapse A few major players miss earnings, go bankrupt, or reveal fraud. Investor sentiment shifts quickly, triggering mass sell-offs. Private equity and VC firms pull back funding or try to exit. Layoffs, shutdowns, and fire sales begin across the sector.
Mike McCaffrey
@mikemccaffrey@drupal.community

Bookmarking this conference slide my coworker shared for posterity, since either we are about to reach the singularity, or we are walking straight into yet another tech bubble where the majority of people are somehow convinced that the line will keep going up forever, unlike the last 5 times this exact same thing happened.

#AIBubble

Slide from a conference presentation by Nancy Giordano who bills herself as a strategic futurist. An arrow points to the knee of an exponential curve with the text "could we be sitting on the horizon of 14 internet sized transformations". There is no dash in "internet-sized" and there is no context about how the weirdly-specific number 14 was selected.