“You slop, you flop”.
If we let them build everything they want, the bubble bursts all at once, taking down banks, pension funds, and governments with it. If we slow them down, starve them of sites, force them to confront reality piece by piece, the bubble deflates more slowly. The damage is still real, but it is contained.
This is the choice in front of us. Not whether to accept AI or reject it in its entirety. Not whether or not to stand outside a corporate building yelling END AI. Not whether to be techno-optimists or Luddites. But whether we let the biggest speculative bubble of our lifetimes explode in all our faces, or whether we take the small, practical, local steps that let the air out before the blast.
We have more power than we realise. We are not just protesting a technology we dislike. We are standing across multiple political divides, against a financial scam that threatens all our livelihoods. The good news is that we don’t need to bring down the whole edifice at once. We just need to keep saying no. What’s needed isn’t heroism, it’s just turning up at council planning permission meetings armed with facts. We only need to stop them, again and again, location after location, until the clock runs out. Keep blocking. Keep organising. Until the thing collapses under the weight of its own impossibility.