#ai-bubble

#ai-bubble

It's becoming clearer that we are in a perilous financial situation globally. Fears over an "AI bubble" are being cited by the Bank of England, the International Monetary Fund and the boss of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon. If you want a sense of how insane the narrative is around AI investments, consider this: Thinking Machines Lab, an AI startup, recently raised $2bn funding on a valuation of $10bn. The company has zero products, zero customers and zero revenues. The only thing it made public to its investors was the resume of its founder, Mira Murati, formerly chief technology officer at OpenAI. If that's not hubris meeting market exuberance, what is?

"I know it's tempting to write the bubble story," Mr Altman told me as he sat flanked by his top lieutenants. "In fact, there are many parts of AI that I think are kind of bubbly right now."

Last week, while touring one of OpenAI's mammoth data centers being built in Abilene, Texas, Altman had a pretty casual outlook when he was asked about a bubble that could financially decimate the entire industry. "Between the ten years we've already been operating and the many decades ahead of us, there will be booms and busts," Altman ruminated, as quoted by The Associated Press. "People will overinvest and lose money, and underinvest and lose a lot of revenue."

I think it is both true that AI will transform the economy, and I think it will, like the internet, create huge amounts of economic value in the future,

"When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth," Altman recently told reporters, per The Verge. Altman said this describes the state of play. "Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes," he said.

Big names in Silicon Valley collectively seem to be saying the same thing abut the AI boom lately, namely that it is looking more and more like a bubble, and that the rush to AGI (artificial general intelligence) may be very misguided. The Wall Street Journal has a report today that Meta's widely buzzed-about AI hiring spree is coming to an abrupt halt, likely due to scrutiny by high-profile investors who are balking at the massive sums being thrown at poached AI researchers and engineers.

Altman noted, "When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth." He elaborated that while AI has great potential, investors are too optimistic.

The top 10 stocks contribute 54% of market returns since January 2021, with the Magnificent Seven driving significant risk exposure for investors.