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Just How Bad Would an AI Bubble Be?

(www.theatlantic.com)
51 points ForHackernews | 1 comments | 07 Sep 25 19:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.201s | source
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dijit ◴[07 Sep 25 20:37 UTC] No.45161904[source]▶
Is it even a question that we’re in a bubble?

The effects of the technology would have to rival that of.. idk, soap and the locomotive combined? In order for us not to be in a bubble.

It has swallowed nearly all discourse about technology and almost all development, nearly every single area of technology is showing markers of recession.. except AI, which has massively inflated salaries and valuations.

I can’t even think of a scenario where we don’t look back on this as a bubble. What does the tech need to be able to do in order to cover its investment?

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usrnm ◴[07 Sep 25 20:49 UTC] No.45161991[source]▶
AI can be a bubble and a real technological revolution at the same time, there is absolutely no reason these two things need to be mutually exclusive. The most recent example is the Internet in the late 90s-early 2000s. It was a bubble, it did crash and it did eventually fulfill all af its promises and more. There is no contradiction here
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1. dijit ◴[07 Sep 25 20:54 UTC] No.45162047[source]▶
The issue is:

1) Overhype can cause a “winter” where the word itself will become toxic once the bubble pops, leading to significant underinvestment for the period following. This actually has already happed twice with AI, and is part of why we use “Machine Learning” for concepts that used to be called AI… because AI was a toxic word that investors ran from.

2) A bubble sucks all the oxygen out of the room for all other technological endeavours. It’s strictly a bad thing as it can crush the entire technology sector (or potentially even the economy).

3) Bubbles might cause a return to form, but the internet was more like the railroads. Once built the infrastructure was largely existing and it being sold “for cheap” lead to a resurgence. AI has fewer of these core bits of infrastructure that will become cheap in a bust.