Beware AI Euphoria

"Even if you believe AI will be today’s equivalent of electricity or the internet, we are at the very early stages of a highly complex multi-decade transformation that is by no means a done deal. Yet valuations are pricing in the entire sea change, and then some. A February report by Currency Research Associates pointed out that it would take 4,500 years for Nvidia’s future dividends to equal its current price. Talk about a long tail."

"While Nvidia isn’t Pets.com — it has tangible revenues from selling real things — the overall AI narrative depends on many uncertain assumptions. For example, AI requires huge amounts of water and energy. There’s a push in both the US and EU to get companies to disclose their usage. Whether via carbon pricing, or a tax on resource usage, it’s quite likely that those input costs will rise significantly in the future.

Likewise, AI developers don’t now have to own the copyright to content on which the models are trained. They don’t have to make profits on AI itself, of course; the assumption of future gains is enough to fuel the froth. Relentless techno-optimism and the illusion of inevitability is how Silicon Valley creates paper wealth. But remember, many of the proponents of “AI everywhere” were touting web3, crypto, the metaverse and the benefits of the gig economy not so long ago."