The stock market is largely being propped up by a promise of AI that has yet to deliver—setting up what could be a disastrous bubble. But the AI land rush isn’t merely a risky gamble. Wall Street is staking the health of the markets—and that of the broader economy with it—on a bet against the common good.

It seems to be a lose-lose situation for those outside Wall Street and Silicon Valley: If the frenzied investment in artificial intelligence is overheated, as even OpenAI’s Sam Altman has warned , the markets could be hit hard enough to shake the economy as a whole—making an impact worse than that of the dot-com bust 25 years ago. But if the gamble pays off, it’ll mean a boom for a technology that could bring about widespread unemployment and social disruption.

“If this works as fas

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