A few things:
- I think nation states anticipate this new wave of machine learning will enable unfathombly large surveillance and a new age of hurk cyber warfare.
- Some investors seem to believe that basically all fields will adopt "ai" with the same enthusiam and level as software. The film industry alone would need a hideous amount of computer hardware if that disturbing fantasy of everyone living in their own solipsistic culture bubble came to life.
- Humanoid robot wierdos are anticipating applying deep learning and computer vision to copy movements etc from humans with camera's strapped to their faces (part of the reason glasses are being pushed again). Some of the anticipate enormous fleets of robots doing everything from manufacturing to warfare. This would need a lot of compute
- Nobody actually has any idea how to direct businesses or run nations, and a considerable amount of people at just following everyone else because everyone else can't be wrong.
Oh also it's entirely possible to make huge amounts of money in a bad idea as long as you get out first. I suspect a lot of investors and banks are anticipating being that person. Capitalism is hilarious.