Greg Ambrose

Co-Founder / Managing Director @Stack_Talent | AI Data CTO Leaders

[Greg Ambrose @AppDevTalent]

@SimslearnAi Send

[Greg Ambrose @AppDevTalent]

Wise words

[Ray Dalio @RayDalio]

Trainees must be open-minded; the process requires them to suspend their egos while they discover what they are doing well and what they are doing poorly and decide what to do about it. The trainer must be open-minded as well, and it's best if at least two believable trainers work with each trainee in order to triangulate their views about what the trainee is like. This training is an apprentice relationship; it occurs as the trainer and trainee share experiences, much like when a ski instructor skis alongside his student. The process promotes growth, development, and transparency around where people stand, why they stand where they stand, and what they can do about improving it. It hastens not just their own personal evolution but the evolution of the organization. #principleoftheday

[Greg Ambrose @AppDevTalent]

@BrettErickson28 They left off the two last words, "for me!"

[Meacham @MeachamDr]

It’s like a meth family moved in….

[Greg Ambrose @AppDevTalent]

A very good read and true: "Technology changes. Human behaviour doesn't"

[Macro Liquidity by Sunil Reddy @Macrobysunil]

The Railway Bubble Explains AI Better Than Most People Think

The railway bubble is one of the best ways to understand what’s happening with AI today.

The railway boom began with a real breakthrough.

Before railways, moving goods and people was slow, expensive, and limited. Goods travelled by horse carts, canals, and ships. People moved at a much slower pace. Markets were mostly local. A region’s economic value depended heavily on how easily raw materials, workers, and finished goods reached other places.

Then railways arrived.

Distance began to shrink.

Trips once measured in days took hours. Coal, steel, food, and manufactured goods moved faster and cheaper. Cities expanded. Workers reached new places. Trade routes shifted. Entire regions became more valuable because they were connected to railway networks.

So the early excitement made sense.

Railways changed the world.

The first railway companies showed investors what was possible. Investors saw speed, scale, and profit. Governments saw national development. Promoters saw a chance to raise money. The public saw a future unlike the past.

That’s how the bubble began.
First came real innovation.
Then came the early winners.
Then came the story everyone wanted to believe.

“Railways are the future.”

And they were.

But the market slowly turned a true idea into a dangerous assumption.
“Railways are the future, so every railway company must be valuable.”

That’s where things went wrong.

Money rushed into almost every railway project. New companies appeared quickly. Promoters proposed routes everywhere. Investors bought railway stocks less because they understood each business, and more because railway stocks were rising.

The quality of the project mattered less.
The price mattered less.
The expected return mattered less.
Exposure to the future became the only thing people cared about.

That is classic bubble psychology.

A real technology creates real winners. Investors then stretch those early wins across the whole sector. Capital gets careless. Valuations break away from reality.

As railway mania grew, more routes were approved. Some made sense. They connected major cities, industrial hubs, ports, and high-demand areas.

Many others didn’t.

Some lines copied routes already in place. Some connected weak markets. Some were built mainly because money was available. Some existed more for speculation than long-term profits.

The world needed railways.

It didn’t need every railway, in every location, at every price.
That was the mistake.
The infrastructure had value. The capital allocation didn’t.
Then reality arrived.

Railways were expensive to build. Land had to be bought. Tracks had to be laid. Bridges, tunnels, stations, and engines required huge sums of money. Costs rose. Many companies needed more funding than expected. Profits took longer to arrive. Passenger and freight demand wasn’t strong enough to support every route.

Investors eventually understood the future was real, but the returns were not spread evenly.

The best railway lines survived.
The strongest operators became valuable.
Weak projects collapsed.
Share prices crashed.
Speculators were wiped out.
Money raised in a wave of excitement turned into losses.

That’s the main lesson.

Railways didn’t fail.
The railway bubble failed.

The technology survived. The infrastructure stayed useful. Railways kept transforming economies for decades and became one of the foundations of industrial growth.

But investors who bought the wrong railway stocks at the wrong prices still lost money.

That’s how bubbles work.

They are not always built on fake ideas.

Many of the biggest bubbles begin with real technology, real innovation, and real productivity gains.

The bubble forms when investors confuse the future of the technology with the future returns of the stocks.

Railways changed the world.
Railway investors still lost money.
The internet changed the world.
Dot-com investors still lost money.

Now AI has taken the place of railways.

AI is real. It will change productivity. It will affect software, research, coding, automation, defence, healthcare, finance, content, and robotics.

But that doesn’t mean every AI company deserves any valuation.

The tracks and stations of the railway era have been replaced by GPUs, data centers, power contracts, cloud spending, and private AI valuations.

The story is once again simple.

“AI is the future.”
And that statement is likely true.
But the dangerous assumption is back too.
“AI is the future, so every AI asset must be valuable.”
That is where investors need discipline.

The question is not whether AI is real.

The question is whether future AI revenue will justify the amount of money being poured into chips, data centers, energy infrastructure, cloud contracts, and private valuations today.

History doesn’t repeat perfectly.
Human behaviour does.

Every generation believes its bubble is different because the technology is new.

The pattern usually stays the same.

Real innovation.
Early winners.
A story everyone repeats.
Capital rushing in.
Overbuilding.
Valuations getting stretched.
Reality returning.
A crash.
Survivors become infrastructure.
Speculators get wiped out.

Railways were real.
AI is real too.

But a real technology still turns into a financial bubble when capital loses discipline.

That is the lesson from railway mania.
The future might be right.
The price might still be wrong.

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

CONAN AT HARVARD: “No university in our nation has produced more Nobel laureates or white collar criminals… so whether you choose good or evil, know that you are among the very best.”

[Greg Ambrose @AppDevTalent]

Yes - I am changing my name to Greg AI. I'll take me 800% raise now

[Data Driven Stocks @stockdatamarket]

I have an idea for how to make McDonald’s / $MCD stock shares soar: just announce a new product called the “Big Mac AI.”

Then every person in the kitchen would become an AI kitchen service. And McDonald’s would have the highest amount of AI workers on the planet!

[Greg Ambrose @AppDevTalent]

Norm was the best!

[Norm Macdonald Joke of the Day @NormSNLJokes]

Well, the magazine P.O.V. came out this week, with a list of the best and worst jobs to have in the next century.

Their three best were, in this order: Multimedia Software Designer, Management Consultant, and Interactive Advertising Executive.

While their worst, for the third year in a row... Crack Whore.

[Gregg Carlstrom @glcarlstrom]

I am 95% done with a deal to buy a new house. The remaining 5% of negotiations are focused on the price and whether the owners are actually willing to sell

[Greg Ambrose @AppDevTalent]

@AlfieJCarter 31

[Greg Ambrose @AppDevTalent]

@stockdatamarket Gamestop, obviously

[Greg Ambrose @AppDevTalent]

@SimslearnAi Claude

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

My thoughts are that this prediction is not looking great.

[Greg Ambrose @AppDevTalent]

@JacobKinge And half of them wandered in from the casino floor hoping for a higher payout

[Greg Ambrose @AppDevTalent]

@felixprehn workbook

[Greg Ambrose @AppDevTalent]

@Zephyr_hg IDEAS

[Greg Ambrose @AppDevTalent]

Excellent - and true

[Jonathan Chait @jonathanchait]

The Iranians agreed to negotiate with Tony Schwartz?

[Greg Ambrose @AppDevTalent]

@Zephyr_hg Ideas

[Greg Ambrose @AppDevTalent]

@abubakarkhan44 @LearnWithSubhan kids

[Greg Ambrose @AppDevTalent]

Wow. Just wow

[Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 @FmrRepMTG]

On Easter morning, this is what President Trump posted.
Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness.
I know all of you and him and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit.
I’m not defending Iran but let’s be honest about all of this.
The Strait is closed because the US and Israel started the unprovoked war against Iran based on the same nuclear lies they’ve been telling for decades, that any moment Iran would develop a nuclear weapon.
You know who has nuclear weapons?
Israel.
They are more than capable of defending themselves without the US having to fight their wars, kill innocent people and children, and pay for it.
Trump threatening to bomb power plants and bridges hurts the Iranian people, the very people Trump claimed he was freeing.
On Easter, of all days, we as Christians should be reminded that the son of God died and rose from the grave so that we can be forgiven once and for all of our sins. Jesus commanded us to love one another and forgive one another. Even our enemies.
Our President is not a Christian and his words and actions should not be supported by Christians.
Christians in the administration should be pursuing peace. Urging the President to make peace.
Not escalating war that is hurting people.
This NOT what we promised the American people when they overwhelmingly voted in 2024, I know, I was there more than most.
This is not making America great again, this is evil.