As the AI revolution sweeps across the globe, the US economy has become increasingly dependent on the booming technology sector. However, financial experts and historians warn that the current AI boom may be nothing more than a bubble, destined to burst with far-reaching consequences.
The launch of ChatGPT just over three years ago has seen it become the fastest-growing consumer app in history, with around 800 million weekly users. Its parent company, OpenAI, is now valued at a staggering $500 billion, with CEO Sam Altman negotiating a complex web of deals worth an estimated $1.5 trillion to build the infrastructure for an AI-powered American future.
This AI frenzy has seen tech giants like Alphabet (Google’s parent), Amazon, Apple, Meta (formerly Facebook), and Microsoft, which holds a $135 billion stake in OpenAI, pour hundreds of billions of dollars into the same bet. Without these investments, the US economy would be stagnating.
However, economic analysts and historians of past industrial frenzies, from the 19th-century railroads to the dotcom boom and bust, are sounding the alarm, labeling AI as the latest bubble. Even Altman himself has acknowledged that “there are many parts of AI that I think are kind of bubbly right now,” though he naturally excludes his own company’s efforts.
The tech industry’s bullishness is a heady mix of old-fashioned hucksterism, plutocratic megalomania, and utopian ideology. At its core is a marketing pitch: current AI models already outperform people at many tasks, and soon, machines will achieve “general intelligence” – cognitive versatility like our own – leading to emancipation from the need for any human input.
This race for supremacy in AI has geopolitical implications, as the US and China vie for global dominance. While China is pushing for a faster, wider implementation of lower-spec but still powerful AI across its economy and society, the US is gunning for an extraordinary leap in general AI.
In the absence of global governance, we are left to depend on the integrity of tech titans and authoritarian apparatchiks to build ethical safeguards around systems already being embedded in the tools we use for work, play, and education. The flagrant development of AI chatbots like Elon Musk’s “Baby Grok,” which has voiced white supremacist views, is a stark warning of the dangers that lie ahead.
As the volume of AI-generated content grows online, the ratio of quality to junk in the large language models’ diet shifts accordingly. Fed on a steady diet of misinformation and falsehoods, these AI systems cannot be trusted to provide accurate, reliable information.
However, this bleak future is not inevitable. The irrational exuberance of the AI boosters and their cynical coupling with the Trump administration is a familiar story of human greed and myopia, not a new stage in evolution. When the correction comes, and the US’s Icarus economy hits the cold sea, there will be a chance for other voices to be heard on the subject of risk and regulation.
The moment is nearing when the stark choice on offer – whether to build a world where AI is put to the service of humanity or one where we serve the machines – becomes unavoidable. The future is ours to shape, but we must act now before it’s too late.
