AI oligarchs shamed with devastating list of 'false promises and decadence'

The artificial intelligence boom has been wildly profitable for tech billionaires and catastrophically hollow for everyone else, a new Mother Jones report said this week. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Sam Altman have built fortunes on AI hype while delivering false promises, toxic platforms, and minimal actual job creation.

According to Mother Jones columnist Tim Murphy's investigation, "The AI bubble has been a boon to the portfolios and prospects of the tech world's biggest players. Their companies are vying for hegemony and their net worths are trending toward Mount Olympus."

Murphy documented a pattern of deception and excess: "Beyond the hype, you can find a litany of false promises, questionable investments, and just plain decadence, complicating both their predictions for the future and claims to come in peace."

Bezos's Project Prometheus AI initiative carries a $38 billion valuation and is "focused on physical AI designed to interact with real-world industrial processes, such as manufacturing, aerospace engineering, and semiconductor production."

Meanwhile, Bezos has dismantled the Washington Post after acquiring it in 2013 with promises of a "new golden era." After he nixed a Kamala Harris presidential endorsement, the paper suffered a mass exodus of subscribers, a $100 million 2025 loss, and a 40-plus percent purging of its staff. Yet Bezos still had enough leftover cash to purchase a 246-foot yacht for $75 million to join his previously purchased 417-foot yacht, Murphy reported.

Zuckerberg burned through $77 billion before pivoting to AI. Mother Jones reports that 10 percent of Meta's profits came from scam ads — funds that also financed his 4,500 square foot underground bunker in Hawaii.

Musk's AI platform X has been hit with allegations of 679,584 antisemitic posts over a one-year period between 2024 and 2025. Musk's Grok generated 1.8 million graphic images of women during a nine-day period last winter as his net worth continued to ascend to $850 billion, the report said.

Trump lauded OpenAI's Stargate data centers as a job-creation engine that would "create 100,000 jobs 'almost immediately.'" In reality, however, "only 100 employees needed to operate Stargate's Abilene, Texas, campus once construction is completed," according to the report.

Despite a promise to invest $1.4 trillion in AI infrastructure over the next eight years, the company's reported revenue in 2025 came in at $20 billion, a 70-to-1 spending-to-revenue ratio for a company promising to reshape the economy.