A friend recently asked in a group chat, “What could stop or significantly slow down the advance of AI?” My answer to that question was simple: “Not much.”
The artificial intelligence revolution has cleared many major hurdles so far, and there is a clear path for further progress. The exact speed of advance will vary with economic and political circumstances, but the logic of artificial intelligence will do more than anything else to set the pace.
I realize that there are many people who fear that we are in an AI bubble, and I don’t dismiss the possibility. The latest scare came last week when an AI-oriented hedge fund, Situational Awareness, lost $35 billion in the space of two weeks in July. Although in truth, as I’ll get to shortly, I don’t view that as a particularly worrisome event.
Instead, I’d point to history. In the early 2000s, the dot-com bubble burst. In the mid-aughts, the housing bubble burst. As is always the case, few realized that these were bubbles until boom gave way to bust. Even so, important internet companies like Amazon, eBay, and Google continued to grow, and homes continued to be built.
Given that most of the major AI companies are spending billions while counting on future revenue that has yet to materialize, it is not crazy to think that one or more of them might go bankrupt. I am not here to give investment advice, and so I will not speak to the probability of this happening. The important point, from a social point of view, is that the foundation upon which AI models are being built will continue to exist—and to grow.
