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By:

Kiran D. Tare

21 August 2024 at 4:53:13 pm

The Great Contrarian

Michael Burry made his reputation by seeing through the housing boom. Now he is turning his scepticism on AI by questioning the stories being told about it. Michael Burry has always had an uncomfortable relationship with consensus. When everyone else sees a boom, he tends to look for the balance sheet underneath it. Recently, when some of the globe’s most powerful executives began telling the public that Artificial Intelligence is something is both enormously valuable and dangerously...

The Great Contrarian

Michael Burry made his reputation by seeing through the housing boom. Now he is turning his scepticism on AI by questioning the stories being told about it. Michael Burry has always had an uncomfortable relationship with consensus. When everyone else sees a boom, he tends to look for the balance sheet underneath it. Recently, when some of the globe’s most powerful executives began telling the public that Artificial Intelligence is something is both enormously valuable and dangerously powerful, Burry’s instinct was to wonder who benefits from the story. Burry’s instinct – of saying directly that the Emperor has no clothes – has made him famous. As the physician-turned-investor immortalised in 2015 film The Big Short, Burry was one of the investors who saw the fragility of America’s housing market before the financial crisis of 2008. While Wall Street was busy packaging subprime mortgages into increasingly elaborate securities, he concluded that the loans were deteriorating, lending standards were weakening and house prices could not keep rising simply because the financial system assumed they would. This month, as some of the world’s most prominent AI executives began warning that the technology could produce catastrophic consequences unless its development was slowed, Burry again took aim at the argument. In a post on his Substack, Cassandra Unchained, he described the warnings from OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and Elon Musk as “self-serving” and suggested that the language of impending catastrophe was serving a very different purpose from public safety. Burry pulled no punches when he said that the technology’s boosters and its doomers can sometimes be selling the same product. Burry’s suspicion is that the more extraordinary AI appears, the more extraordinary its valuations become. The same behemoths then warn that AI development must be slowed, gain time and protection from their competitors. Burry’s suspicion is particularly pointed because OpenAI and Anthropic have been moving towards possible public listings at enormous valuations. Inc. reported his argument on September 16, noting his contention that AI safety warnings could provide “cover” for slowing growth and postponing IPO plans. Burry’s provocative formulation is that large language models are not themselves artificial general intelligence, and the industry’s rhetoric about slowing “AI” therefore risks confusing a specific class of technologies with a much broader hypothetical future. The current AI debate has increasingly acquired the language of science fiction when it speaks of machines that might escape human control and autonomous systems that might manipulate infrastructure. While such scenarios deserve examination, Burry asks a more mundane question: what if the companies issuing the warnings have commercial incentives that are being overlooked? It is a question characteristic of the man who became famous by reading the footnotes while everyone else watched the headline. Burry’s scepticism toward AI is not new. Since launching Cassandra Unchained in November 2025, he has made the economics of the AI boom one of its central subjects. His writings have examined what he calls “supply-side gluttony”, the enormous investment in AI infrastructure and the financial assumptions underlying the industry. He has also taken short positions against several beneficiaries of the AI boom, including Nvidia and Palantir, arguing that the market may be pricing in too much future success. In one series, The Heretic’s Guide to AI’s Stars, he has examined the accounts of Nvidia and the major hyperscalers, focusing on capital spending, financing arrangements, customer concentration, depreciation and other details that can disappear beneath the headline numbers. His argument is not simply that AI companies are overvalued. He sees familiar patterns in the rush to build infrastructure before the economic returns have been established. In June, he wrote that he had seen something similar before and compared the current AI capital flows with the exuberance of the late 1990s. Burry’s reputation has not been built on predicting every future development. Rather, it was built on being willing to ask whether the story everyone else was telling was supported by the evidence. The housing crisis taught investors that financial innovation could conceal old-fashioned bad lending. The AI boom may yet teach markets that revolutionary technology can coexist with inflated expectations and extraordinary valuations. Burry’s great talent is refusing to accept the present at face value. In a market increasingly dominated by grand claims about machines that will either save civilization or destroy it, that may be the most contrarian position of all.

The Hidden Costs of Digital Matrimony

Writer: Bhaskar Nath Biswal
Bhaskar Nath Biswal
2 hours ago
3 min read

Matrimonial portals promise convenience and choice, but their pricing models can turn an emotional family milestone into an expensive digital transaction.

In Indian society, marriage is rarely viewed as a mere agreement between two individuals; it is an emotional, socio-cultural milestone that deeply involves entire families. For generations, traditional matchmakers, local middlemen and extended relatives held sway over the search for prospective brides and grooms. 

Today, digital platforms like Shaadi.com and Bharat Matrimony have almost entirely replaced these traditional networks. While these portals promise convenient access to thousands of verified profiles, their core business model relies on monetizing personal intent, family anxiety and financial vulnerability.


The Freemium Trap

The gateway to online matchmaking appears completely friction-free at first glance. Platforms allow prospective brides, grooms or their parents to create accounts, upload photos and list detailed preferences entirely free of charge. Users can browse through thousands of profiles, creating an illusion of abundant possibilities and seamless connectivity. However, this free registration serves merely as an alluring entry point. The moment a parent identifies a suitable match and attempts to initiate a conversation or view a contact phone number, the platform halts access. Direct communication is locked strictly behind high paywalls, forcing parents to purchase expensive subscription plans simply to make a basic phone call. A close examination of prevailing price packages reveals an extraordinary fee structure designed to maximize revenue. Basic monthly plans often start around nine hundred and ninety rupees but severely restrict usage by capping phone number views to a meagre ten contacts.

 

To gain reasonable access, parents are driven toward quarterly or semi-annual packages such as Gold, Prime Gold or Diamond Plus, which carry heavy baseline fees ranging anywhere from three thousand six hundred to well over eight thousand rupees. Furthermore, portals frequently add optional add-on costs for profile boosts, extra contact limits or horoscope matching, turning a simple search into a significant financial strain for middle-class households.


The financial squeeze culminates at the final payment screen with the addition of tax. Matrimonial platforms are classified as digital software services, subjecting them to the maximum eighteen percent Goods and Services Tax bracket. When parents proceed to complete their transaction, a substantial tax surcharge is added to an already steep base price. For instance, a base package priced around two thousand seven hundred rupees jumps to over three thousand two hundred rupees once the tax of more than five hundred rupees is tacked on at checkout. Applying an eighteen percent tax rate, a slab typically associated with luxury items to a basic social necessity places an unreasonable burden on families seeking life partners for their children.


Regulatory Reform

This systematic practice amounts to exploiting vulnerable parents who are desperate to secure a good match for their children. To curb predatory pricing while keeping digital matchmaking accessible, regulatory intervention is urgently required. The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs and the GST Council should consider reducing the tax rate on matrimonial portals to a minimal slab, recognizing matchmaking as an essential social facilitation rather than a luxury commercial service. Additionally, consumer protection authorities should establish reasonable price caps on contact access and mandate transparent pricing so that hidden fees and taxes are not sprung on users at the last moment.


There is also a wider question about whether digital matchmaking platforms should be allowed to monetise every stage of a deeply personal social process without adequate consumer safeguards. As more families shift from personal networks to commercial platforms, the need for clear disclosure, easy cancellation and meaningful consent becomes increasingly important.


Although online matchmaking undeniably offers convenience and genuine help in finding matches, the exorbitant subscription fees discourage many parents who simply cannot afford them. Compounding the problem, payments are frequently linked with auto-debit renewals, leading to recurring subscription charges deducted upon expiration without the explicit knowledge or clear consent of unsuspecting parents. If business entities lower their subscription rates and the government minimizes the GST burden, significantly more parents will be able to subscribe, ultimately increasing the volume of paid users and boosting overall revenue for these platforms. It is high time the government steps in to regulate these practices, protect consumers from hidden auto-renewals and ensure fair pricing across the digital matchmaking industry.


(The writer is a former college Principal and Founder of Supporting Shoulders, an Odisha-based non-profit Trust. Views personal.)

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