AI’s Market Domination: How Financial Oligopolies Exploit Emerging Tech for Structural Power
Original framing: “Goldman’s Minnis Sees AI as ‘Generational’ Force Driving Markets” — Bloomberg
Financial history shows that 'generational' tech booms (railroads, electricity, the internet) are followed by speculative bubbles where early investors profit while latecomers bear the costs. The 1929 stock market crash and 2008 financial crisis demonstrate how financial elites use crises to consolidate power under the guise of 'innovation.' AI’s current hype cycle mirrors past patterns of overvaluation, with firms like Goldman Sachs positioning themselves as inevitable winners.
The narrative of AI as a 'generational force' is a financialized myth that obscures the structural power of institutions like Goldman Sachs to shape markets in their favor, while externalizing risks onto workers, communities, and the planet.
Historically, such booms have always followed a pattern of speculative excess followed by crisis, with elites positioning themselves as inevitable beneficiaries—whether through railroads, the internet, or now AI. Cross-culturally, this framing clashes with Indigenous and Southern epistemologies that view technology as relational, not extractive, revealing the absurdity of treating AI as a sacred, infallible force. The solution lies in dismantling the oligopolistic control of AI through public infrastructure, cooperative ownership, and regulatory frameworks that center marginalized voices and ecological limits. Without these systemic shifts, AI will remain a tool of elite consolidation rather than a force for collective liberation, echoing the trickster’s lesson that even the cleverest systems can be outwitted by those who refuse to play by the rules of the powerful.