AI Hits 'Mania' Phase

Artificial intelligence ('AI') is everything, everywhere, all at once, and it's happened so fast that it's hard to keep up...

In writing these missives, I always worry about crossing the line between adding value versus contributing to the noise.

It was easy “in the old days,” when there was no social media, and daily “newspaper columns” I wrote were about as noisy as things got.

Now the last thing anybody needs is just one more person telling them something they already know.

But as they used to teach in journalism school, no question is a stupid question because if you’re asking it, somebody else is probably thinking it. The same goes for overly hyped and discussed investment themes…

Which gets us to AI...

Nobody is more sick of reading about it, let along writing about it, than I am. And silly me, I thought we had hit peak AI – you know, that point where nobody wanted to hear about it anymore – a few months ago.

But here we are. We've reached the point where every public company suddenly is an AI play, almost out of nowhere.

It's so reminiscent of the dot-com days, when every company became a dot-com, regardless of what it did.

Or during the blockchain frenzy, when even Long Island Iced Tea Corporation conveniently rebranded itself to Long Blockchain Corporation. (Never mind that a year later the Nasdaq delisted it and three years after that, the Securities and Exchange Commission delisted it, too.)

And, wait, this just in from Seeking Alpha: “AI is coming to restaurants,” as they add AI to drive through ordering.

It's so transparent, and seems so obvious, yet investors and even companies fall for it over and over and over again – all in effort to join whatever parade is marching down the street.

Or as tech maven Roger McNamee said on CNBC the other day...

The mania that's going on here and right now it is a mania because journalists, politicians and corporations have all embraced this stuff without thinking through the lessons we've already learned through recent technologies that have the same roots.

Roger's comments are especially worth heeding. As a Silicon Valley veteran and an early investor in the likes of Meta Platforms (META), back when it was called Facebook, he has the perspective that comes from decades of analyzing and investing in tech companies.

I used to interview Roger decades ago, when he was running the Science and Technology Fund at T. Rowe Price (TROW)...

He was a voice of reason back then, but even more so today, for one simple reason: He's not trying to sell anything. He's not an investment banker or even a full-time analyst. These days, he spends most of his time focused on music and philanthropy. In other words, he's not conflicted.

Among the highlights from his CNBC interview as it relates to AI... (To read the rest of this essay for free, please click here.)

(I write two investment newsletters for Empire Financial Research, Empire Real Wealth and Herb Greenberg’s Quant-X System. For more information, click?here?and?here.)