AI is so many orders of magnitude more complex that the comparison is not really useful.
It is entirely plausible to me that there are great technologies that are impossible to reach via the normal means of VC/investor financed capitalism. I certainly have encountered market failures requiring extremely patient money (usually in the form of government subsidies) to produce a useful product that eventually does have market value. That has worked many times in the past. But so far generative AI has not had that, and looking at my non-technology friends, I very much doubt that there would be much support among them for government subsidies of AI companies. AI companies have made too many people unhappy, served as too much of a punching bag, to be in a good position politically for that.