Concerns about returns on big investments in AI haven’t slowed down the tech giants and AI labs plowing trillions of dollars into the technology.
But here’s a sobering estimate: to justify all the cash being invested in AI, American businesses and consumers would have to spend about as much on AI in 2032 as they do on food.
Is that possible? There is a case that it could be, if AI joins labor and capital as a third factor of production—if, in other words, it completely transforms the economy.
But the history of computing suggests another likely outcome: that people and companies will eventually exhaust the obvious productive uses for the technology, after which additional dollars spent on AI will yield fewer gains.