{"id":25993,"date":"2026-02-12T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebrokernews.ch\/?p=25993"},"modified":"2026-02-10T09:02:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T08:02:18","slug":"the-speed-of-light-and-the-speed-of-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebrokernews.ch\/en\/the-speed-of-light-and-the-speed-of-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"The speed of light and the speed of AI"},"content":{"rendered":"
The speed of light and the speed of AI in Eric Lefebvre's Tuesday column.<\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Tuesday Column by Eric Lefebvre, today on Thursday.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

11:45 \u2013 Restaurant Time, Z\u00fcrich HB<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, I was waiting for Binci for lunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Z\u00fcrich HB, in the restaurant called Time, which in retrospect may have influenced the direction of my thoughts more than the menu did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Above the hall, the large station clock said 11:45.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone trusts that clock. Nobody really looks at it. Trains orbit around it, people synchronize unconsciously with it, yet it disappears from awareness, like gravity or interest rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I watched it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Near the large departure screen, a traveller stood motionless with her suitcase, eyes fixed on the track numbers. A man ran past as if thirty seconds had personally offended him. Same station. Same minute. Completely different speeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then the question appeared:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is speed, really?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Boundary Einstein Discovered<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

We all know the number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

300,000 kilometres per second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The speed of light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We memorized it at school, probably next to the name Einstein, and then never thought about it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the speed of light is not interesting because it is fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is interesting because it is a boundary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You cannot exceed it not because engines are weak, but because beyond that point cause and effect stop making sense. Push further and motion turns into reversal \u2014 arriving before leaving, effects preceding causes. The famous paradox: go fast enough and you could erase the conditions that produced you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Einstein\u2019s unsettling insight was simple: rather than allowing that contradiction, reality changes time itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Move faster \u2192 time slows down<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Move faster \u2192 distances shrink<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The universe protects order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Organizations Accelerate<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Companies rarely think this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They believe speed creates progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Faster execution<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Faster scaling<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Faster innovation<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Faster AI adoption<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until speed outruns comprehension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organizations are meaning-processing systems. Understanding must travel inside them, and it has a maximum propagation speed. Beyond it, action continues but causality breaks:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Work starts before understanding<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Strategy explains decisions already taken<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Investment precedes business model<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From outside this looks visionary. From inside it becomes disorientation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oracle \u2013 Financing Tomorrow<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Right now, the AI industry is testing this limit in real time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take Oracle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company plans to raise roughly $45\u201350 billion to build AI data-centre capacity and openly accepts years of financial pressure (losses) in order to secure a position in a future computing market. Debt increases, cash flow weakens, and investors debate whether demand will justify the capacity being constructed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oracle is effectively saying:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We will finance tomorrow before tomorrow exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not incompetence. An attempt to move economic causality forward in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk, xAI, and Burning the Present<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Now look at Elon Musk and xAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

xAI is reportedly burning around $1 billion every month just to train models and expand computing infrastructure, and Musk merged it with SpaceX to build planetary-scale compute capacity, even imagining data centers in orbit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The logic is identical but more explicit:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We must build intelligence first, economics will follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Present losses purchasing future reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The industry-Wide Bet<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

These are not isolated cases. They are the same bet expressed differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oracle finances infrastructure before the market matures. xAI consumes capital before the product stabilizes. Both are rational, if the future arrives fast enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is exactly the physics problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you approach the speed of light, time itself must distort to keep causality intact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In business we are attempting the opposite. We are trying to distort causality to keep speed intact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Cause Comes After Effect<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

An organization normally lives in this order:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

experience \u2192 understanding \u2192 product \u2192 revenue<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI allows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

investment \u2192 infrastructure \u2192 hope \u2192 explanation<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You reach the future first. And only afterwards ask why it works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes it will. Sometimes you arrive in a world where the company that financed it no longer fits inside it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In physics you cannot outrun causality. In business you can. But only once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

12:00 \u2014 Time Resumes<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

I looked again at the clock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

11:59<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The traveller at the departure board moved the moment her platform number appeared, perfectly synchronized with reality. She disappeared toward her train, probably not thinking about trillion-dollar infrastructure or machines consuming the energy of small countries to predict the next sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 12:00, Binci arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lunch began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The world returned to normal speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Final Thought<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

The speed of light protects reality from contradiction. AI forces companies to ask whether their own speed still protects meaning. Because the danger is not moving too slowly into the future. The danger is arriving before your business still exists to understand it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eric Lefebvre<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References articles:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oracle – massive financing of AI data centers: Bloomberg<\/a>, Bloomberg<\/a>, Reuters<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Merger of SpaceX and xAI \/ Computing power on a planetary scale: Reuters<\/a>, Reuters<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read also: Virality as a risk factor: when 5.9 trillion dollars evaporate in 30 minutes<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Tuesday Column by Eric Lefebvre, today on Thursday. 11:45 \u2013 Restaurant Time, Z\u00fcrich HB Last week, I was waiting for Binci for lunch. At Z\u00fcrich HB, in the restaurant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5100,5134],"tags":[5102,9900,9904,9897,9899,9901,9896,6101,9903,9898,9902],"class_list":["post-25993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current","category-general","tag-ai-en","tag-border","tag-causality","tag-deceleration","tag-einstein","tag-oracle","tag-problem","tag-reality-en","tag-spacex","tag-speed-of-light","tag-xai","ownarticle"],"acf":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":"The speed of light and the speed of AI in Eric Lefebvre's Tuesday column.","source_text":"","source_url":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebrokernews.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebrokernews.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebrokernews.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebrokernews.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebrokernews.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25993"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebrokernews.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25996,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebrokernews.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25993\/revisions\/25996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebrokernews.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebrokernews.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebrokernews.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebrokernews.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}