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It might just be the industry I'm in and the chatter I'm most surrounded by, but there does seem to be a lot of anti-AI sentiment of late. In particular, there are very reasonable concerns that the AI industry might be a bubble that's getting ready to pop. One person who isn't quite so pessimistic, though, is the CEO of IBM, Arvind Krishna.

Krishna recently spoke with Nilay Patel, EIC of The Verge, on the Decoder podcast and sounded optimistic about the future of AI—which is, to my ears at least, quite refreshing, even if I don't agree on all points. In particular, although he does explicitly say "no", we're not in an AI bubble, his explanation, at least on my listening, doesn't seem to completely rule out this possibility; rather, it explains how such things aren't all-or-nothing.

I say this is "refreshing" just because of how one-dimensional a lot of AI talk can be: either 'AI sucks and the bubble's going to burst' or 'AI is an amazing innovation that will revolutionise everything.' The IBM CEO's perspective, however, injects what I think is a little more nuance and realism into the debate, by reminding us of a very simple fact: in industry, there are often some winners and many more losers. That's not how he phrases it, of course, but that's what I'm taking from it.

That's another useful reminder for us: The extra returns that are needed if the AI industry is to not be a bubble must come from getting more users on board. There's no way around that. This is a simple point that's often lost in the bigger, more macroeconomic discussions. Whether those users can be captured is an open question, though, as far as I can tell.

Krishna does admit, however, that there's no telling who will be the winner here. Reading between the lines here, perhaps this is what contributes to the view that the AI industry is obviously in a bubble, because people focus on the current big players such as OpenAI. But even if OpenAI can't recoup its investments, someone else might be able to as the technology develops.

He goes on to explain that some of the capital expenditures on AI seem, at present, unable to be recouped, as you'd need hundreds of billions "of profit just to pay for the interest." Sam Altman, the interviewer notes, seems to think he can get these returns.

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"But," the IBM CEO replies, "that’s a belief. It’s a belief that one company is going to be the only com

Source: PC Gamer