Some months ago as the AI hype train was powering ahead, I wrote about how it may not be all that it’s been cracked up to be and that it was looking to be a bubble and it’s looking more and more like that may well be the case.When it does pop though, what’s the impact likely to be?
The first thing for anyone to try to wrap their head around is that the AI industry is massive. Not in terms of people it employs as such or infrastructure that we all depend on but more in terms of how much of a number of major economy’s money is tied to it.
Check out this image that was apparently made by Bloomberg.
What you see, if you follow the lines, is that a lot of the AI industry is propping itself up kinda like some sort of a Ponzi scheme where they’re all investing in one another. It’s bizarre.
And the sums of money involved are unimaginable to us mere mortals, it’s trillions! So, if it pops the fallout could be catastrophic making the financial crash of 2008 look like a blip by comparison.
The thing is, now opinion seems to be swinging more towards when the bubble will burst, not if and that, given the sums involved is scary.
What’s AI Delivered?
So far, some videos, some shady work stuff and a whole heap of slop.
Okay so it might have done some good things but on the whole, what regular people are using it for is, at best, trite and merely another distraction.
On the other hand however, loads of fake images, photos and so on that are demonstrably bad for society as a whole and is leading to a place where you can’t trust anything you see online anymore without verification from several sources.
Loads of people won’t do that, they’ll just believe what they see. Often because they want to believe what they see.
But the big, bold promises of a better future, cures for disease, better energy management, new technologies, replacing millions of jobs… they’re nowhere to be found be seen and, aren’t likely to be by the look of where the technology is at now.
To get there, it’s gonna take a *LOT* more money. A lot more chips. A lot more data centres. Just a lot more of everything and you have to wonder, is it worth that cost?
Which begs the next question, will the AI industry get the time an money it needs to deliver on these promises when, it’s failed so far?
I suspect it won’t, investors are already getting jittery.
AI And The Appliance Industry
If or when that does happen and, it’s increasingly looking like a when it happens, all this would suggest that AI will be the spawn of satan for a good while. Nobody will want to have AI plastered on anything in, quite the reverse of where we are today.
Meaning that this huge rush to get “AI’ onto products even where that’s stretching the bounds of reality to the maximum, might just be a bad move.
If people get burned, their pensions and so on battered by the storm of the aI bubble busting they probably don’t want to see “AI” everywhere they look and, certainly not staring them in their face every time they walk into their kitchen.
And if the narrative in the media turns out to be, the AI bubble burst because it doesn’t work, it’s easy for people to then think, well if it doesn’t work why do I have an AI appliance as surely that won’t work if AI doesn’t work?
For the customer that might mean that they could get to thinking that the product is fundamentally flawed from the outset as, AI soon’t work, the news says so.
It’s not a huge leap to make.
But in any event, it may well turn out to be that what some makers think is a sales positive to have AI slapped on a machine, turns out to all of a sudden be the exact opposite.
And, if the bubble burst, it’ll happen really quickly as the dominos all fall, they won’t have tome to rethink, rebadge and get rid of stock. Especially where that is being stockpiled to perhaps avoid or limit the damage from tariffs.