Naomi Klein argues the AI race is being driven by the biggest financial bubble in history, and that the people building it are willing to accept catastrophic risk to win it — bad news for workers, the climate, and anyone exposed to the coming bust.

• The push for artificial general intelligence has already created the first trillionaire, Elon Musk, and the payoff is so large that rivals think only two or three companies will survive.
• AI executives openly say the technology could end humanity, then keep building it anyway to beat China.
• Anthropic has told investors its future market could reach $30 trillion — close to the size of the entire US economy — which explains the frenzy better than any talk of unlocking the secrets of the universe.
• Billionaires who once sold themselves as green have gone all-in on fossil fuels to power data centers, with real ecological and economic damage.
• China has shown more willingness to regulate AI than the US, and Washington is fighting the international rules the UN tried to build.

Outlook: Expect the buildout and the lobbying against guardrails to continue until the AI bubble bursts, with the costs landing on everyone outside Silicon Valley.