The real parallel is Canal Mania — Britain’s late-18th-century frenzy to dig waterways everywhere. Investors thought canals were the future of transport. They were, but only briefly.
Today’s AI runs on GPUs — chips built for rendering video games, not thinking machines. Adapting them for AI is about as sensible as adapting a boat to travel across land. Sure, it moves — but not quickly, not cheaply, and certainly not far.
It works for now, but the economics are brutal. Each new model devours exponentially more power, silicon, and capital. It just doesn't scale.
The real revolution will come with new, hardware built for the job (that hasn't been invented yet) — thousands of times faster and more efficient. When that happens, today’s GPU farms will look like quaint relics of an awkward, transitional age: grand, expensive, and obsolete almost overnight.