Bezos-AI boom is a good kind of bubble

General
1

Quote from the FT of Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon:

“This is kind of an industrial bubble as opposed to financial bubbles,” Bezos said at a tech conference in Turin on Friday, drawing parallels with the dotcom-era investment in fibre-optic cable that outlasted many of the companies who deployed it and the “life-saving drugs” that emerged from the 1990s biotech boom and bust. “The banking bubble, the crisis in the banking system, that’s just bad, that’s like 2008. Those bubbles society wants to avoid,” he said. “The ones that are industrial are not nearly as bad, they can even be good. Because when the dust settles and you see who are the winners — society benefits from those inventions,” he continued. “That’s what is going to happen here too. This is real. The benefits to society from AI are going to be gigantic.”

I honestly disagree with him but we are in different economic statuses. For me if the bubble bursts it could take out my live savings and put me in poverty. For him he’s probably going to be bailed out or gain market share in a bubble burst. However this rhetoric is still dangerous but it shows that the billionaires and the market are dedicated to AI.

How will this change the field of AI with the majority focus from the market going towards it?

2

I think the big question is, after the bubble, what’s left? In this case, it’s much more than buried cables or useless credit swaps - it’s data centers, compute technology, and huge computing infrastructure. A layer beyond that is a huge increase in energy (see: US nuclear initiatives), which alone is a giant boost to the economy and individual standards of living. Energy is an input to every economic activity, and if there’s suddenly a huge supply, it can do wonders.

3

These are scary remarks. They are convincing on a level that is very logical, but lacks emotion. I consider Bezos to be more of an authority than myself, so I’m inclined to accept the ‘when the dust settles’ mentality, but not just to see who the winners are. Who are the looser going to be. I don’t want to be one. I hope these remarks aren’t an indication of what is going to happen. I don’t expect people are betting more than they can afford, and hope that will soften any impact a bubble burst may have. Time may tell.