Artificial Intelligence: A Promising Reality or a Silicon Valley-Driven Speculative Bubble

Is AI truly living up to the promises it heralds, or are we witnessing a hype fueled by Silicon Valley giants to maintain their dominant positions in an increasingly saturated market?

The comparison to the dot-com bubble is not without merit. In the early 2000s, a wave of enthusiasm for new internet technologies led to massive investments and overvaluation of numerous companies, only for the bubble to burst. Today, artificial intelligence seems to be following a similar path. The current fervor is so intense that investments are reaching tens of billions of dollars. For instance, Microsoft plans to spend $56 billion on AI, while Google is aiming for $48 billion, amounting to 17% of its revenue.

However, AI is not just another technological advancement. It represents a deeper transformation, one that impacts both our economic structures and our ways of life. Reducing AI to a mere productivity tool would be an oversimplification. AI carries with it changes that challenge fundamental aspects of our humanity: how we make decisions, interact with the world, and even our understanding of work.

What we are seeing today might be an attempt by tech giants to prolong an economic model that is showing signs of strain. As global economic growth slows, AI is being touted as the next frontier, the new gold rush for tech companies. But this frenzy may be hiding a more troubling reality: that instead of liberating humanity, AI risks exacerbating inequalities and concentrating even more power in the hands of a few dominant players.

The most optimistic economic forecasts, which predict massive productivity gains thanks to AI, may well be overstated. Daron Acemoglu, an economist at MIT, warns that AI's actual impact on productivity could be modest, contributing only a small percentage to economic growth over the next decade, far from the figures suggested by more optimistic analyses, such as Goldman Sachs' prediction of a 7% increase in global GDP thanks to AI.

Beyond purely economic considerations, AI raises major ethical and social questions. This technology is not neutral; it is shaped by the economic interests that support it and by the ideologies surrounding it. Its widespread deployment could have profound consequences on how we live, work, and interact with each other. The rising energy costs associated with AI infrastructure, such as the estimated $400 million needed to train models like GPT-4, highlight these underlying challenges.

As the hype continues to grow, it is crucial to maintain a critical perspective on these developments. AI has the potential to transform our societies, but this transformation should not come at the expense of our autonomy, freedom, or humanity. The challenge is significant: how can we develop this technology in an ethical, sustainable, and truly beneficial way for society as a whole, and not just for an economic and technological elite?

The time has come to rethink our relationship with AI, not as a simple market opportunity, but as a civilizational issue. The question is not whether AI will fulfill its economic promises, but what kind of society we want to build with it.