Profits?!? Where we're going, we don't need profits!

This is a hideous mis-meme-ing of the original XKCD comic. The tiny pillar is supposed to represent something we all actually need -- since we have built so much on top of it -- but barely think about. Like curl or ffmpeg.

I imagine solvent banking institutions, retirement funds and the like are something that most people seriously need but barely think about. If the most valuable listed American company finds its value plummetting from 4 trillion to a few billion, there will be all sorts of fun and interesting revelations about the entire American financial system.
That being said, you are absolutely welcome to post your own memes which meet your specifications!
Sure but it also works as a solid visual for something like this. This is kinda the whole thing about memetics, memes aren't solid permanent things they shift and change as people interact with them putting a bit of themselves like genetic additions in a population. Memes the DNA of the soul.
Aye but the hoverover text on the original comic also alludes to a single point of failure and the repercussions.

And that other pillar at the bottom next to it? All the blue and white collar workers who are being forced into employment oblivion by the AI hype.

AI hype is papering over the bullshit economy that exists underneath it all. Only a handful of companies make up most of the gains in the past few years of the stock market. If you take that away the market has been pretty flat. Which reflects the reality for most people.

I've been working for a company that has been burning money for over 10 years, it never became profitable, and its potential is way less disruptive than AI. No problem with funds, and it's still burning money today.

Even if AI is just hype (I doubt it) the potential is so high that investors will throw money in for decades even with no return.

Yeah but AI is burning so much that there literally won't be any VC money by 2027. Like, at all.
- When we say “burning money” just keep in mind that money is not coal: you only transfer it to someone else. People are making money with AI right now, just not AI companies.

Sooner we give it a kick, the better.

Happens every half decade. In my day it was outsourcing. It came and went. This will come and go. It's just how society is.

Oh, how I wish it were true that AI was this thin stick that would bring the whole building down if it fails.

Is not about hype anymore.

The entire ~~American~~ Global Economy.

Can you explain? I fail to see how the American economy is dependent on AI-hype. AI-hype is here, yes, but if it ceases to exist tomorrow, nothing would change on the big scale.

Companies like Nividea, who are turning huge profits right now because of demand from AI, are the main bright spot in the stock market right now.
OpenAI, with just 3000 employees, is “worth” $300-$500 billion right now, while losing $5 billion a year and is still without profitability even on the horizon. It’s hard to say if they’ll ever figure out how to monetize it and how much it will be worth at that point.
These are big big numbers and if the AI hype died overnight, so would a lot of the stock market.
- Also look at all the mass-firings in the tech industry. Many of them are argued with AI being able to replace the workers, even though this hasn't been proven. Even non-tech companies argue that way. AI is supposed to increase efficiency and thus you need less people to do the work.
  The dot-com bubble at least also came with mass-enployment. I wonder if the burst of the AI-bubble will result in the companies having to re-employ many of the workers they fired...
It's based on a report from Deutsche Bank finical analysts that said that the enormous spending on "AI" is the only reason the US economy isn't in recession already.
As it was seen in previous crisises (dot-com bubble being the perfect somewhat recent example) - after hype hits its peak - reality of diminishing returns kicks in, and and then it's up to human nature to start panic, and that will just wreck valuation of companies along the board.
Economy ain't gonna cease existing, but it will absolutely hurt, when massive amounts of money will just instantly vaporize.

"We just need beans and rice as an essential part of -- ah, who am I kidding? -- entirety of our diet, but we're not going to have that either."