As for AI, after decades of research and development, its immense and previously speculative promise is beginning to become manifest. Again and again, AI has solved complex problems that were beyond conventional means.
The current investment boom is based on the application of AI to both high value scientific and commercial targets and to the lesser ones that we all deal with every day. There is no doubt considerable money to be made eventually in both applications and at every level in between.
This is similar to what happened with the automobile, with fortunes made at both the high end and in the mass market that Henry Ford pioneered and first perfected with his Model T after a series of inadequate previous models. The massive AI investment boom is based on the assumption that a Model T version of AI is now ready for market.
In effect, the AI business is spending now in order to make AI widely available. They are, collectively like Henry Ford and his competitors spending vast sums to build the assembly lines, factories, and supply chains that, within a few short years, made and sold millions of affordable cars to ordinary Americans.
Will our massive investment in AI pay off as expected? I see reasons for doubt, but I believe on balance that that it will. My question for determined doubters is if they would have also rejected Henry Ford if he had come to you to finance the factories and assembly lines to produce the Model T. If not, how is AI different?
“””In effect, the AI business is spending now in order to make AI widely available. They are, collectively like Henry Ford and his competitors spending vast sums to build the assembly lines, factories, and supply chains that, within a few short years, made and sold millions of affordable cars to ordinary Americans.”””
And then came the 1930’s Dirty Thirties Depression and nobody had money to buy these affordable cars.