There seems to be a cyclical pattern to Americans... and maybe others. Use IBM as an example. In the 1960s & early 70s IBM focused on efficiency, efficiency in hardware, efficiency in software. Then it came to a dominant position. It peaked about 1980.
IBM realized that it billed and made money on the basis of CPU and hardware used. So new development was towards inefficiency that used more billable CPU and hardware. In the short term, that is the way it made profit. IBM fought against us techies that improved the efficiency.
Although the details are now different, the game is the same. AI is trying to convince society that BIG IS BETTER.
AI seems relatively unconcerned that AI input data and algorithm are incomplete, biased. AI seems unconcerned that output is biased, incomplete, inaccurate. Hallucinations are a feature, not a defect. (How many times did IBM tell us a defect was a feature?)
AI is bloated with unnecessary expense. It is not lean n mean. It is the vulnerable giant now. It doesn’t need to be that way.
In US society there is an increasing gap between the Stock Market rich and the stable wages middle class. When the correction comes, will the rich who lose stock market value be willing to take the hit? Or will they try to shift the cost of their wasteful inefficiency on the rest of us?
Politicians and demagogues will twist the narrative.
Not helping is the fact that 1) The Hormuz adventure has been very costly. There seems to be no face-saving way to change course. 2) Apart from Hormuz government at all levels is extremely inefficient and a big drag on the economy. DOGE was a start. But there is much left to be done. We are nipping at the small fry, the Somalis when the big waste is accepted as business as usual.
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?