Part of me feels the fact that EVERYONE is saying that there’s a huge AI bubble makes me wonder if there’s actually a possibility there isn’t an AI bubble. Because I was around for the dot com and GFC bubbles and no one (not really) saw those coming. Also, China is pretty much doing everything right these days, and they seem to believe in AI too.
And I’m not against AI in any and all forms. Like, I think there’s huge potential in translating foreign languages. I think it would be cool if people could talk in their native languages but have AI translate things perfectly - which I understand is something AI can do. There are some simple functions in my job (like searching through and summarizing things from our very massive list of policies). But even thinking about the absolute best case scenarios for AI, I can see how the current expectations are even close to what the reality can be.
So what is the argument that we’re not in a bubble, even if we don’t actually believe it?
It’s easy to get caught up in complexities. But the difference between bubbles and booms is just about the balance of time + capital going into a thing vs value that comes out.
Now I have seen some marginal value come out of AI. I personally reluctantly use it because I’m forced to if I want stay competitive in my tech job.
I don’t see a value from it that is anywhere close to the level of investment that’s gone in, basically nobody does. For all the memes, it really is just a markov chain with more dimensions. The whole question of bubble/boom is whether AI will be improved to a much more useful state (eg “AGI”), or whether we’ve hit an effective dead end with little but marginal improvements left until a real revolutionary step comes in 10+ years.
I don’t personally see AI reaching a fundamentally more useful state anytime soon, I think we’re at the end of this S curve. It’s an interesting discovery with limited useful applications, but as things stand it’s just a “fairly good” guess machine. Given that nobody seems to be making any fundamental improvements anymore, nobody can clearly state what the next step is, and we’re just jamming on extra tools and APIs, and 90% of people’s belief in it comes from overhyped marketing, most entities will rightfully give up on it / heavily reduce their usage in a few years.
With that being said, it’s quickly becoming a market that’s too big to fail. I actually think the biggest chance of it NOT being a bubble is governments desperately and artificially propping up the industry.