AI investment has helped keep markets and economic growth ticking along, but the IMF fears the boom could quickly turn to bust if the promised profits fail to materialize. With tech giants borrowing billions and investors piling into the same handful of companies, a selloff could leave more than just Silicon Valley nursing a hangover.

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[–] 17 points 20 hours ago

The lack of progress is one thing.

The value for money is another: AI companies are still burning through vast sums of capital, while users are indeed using the products more and more... but still nowhere near at a price that would even cover the companies’ costs, let alone be profitable. If each token costs a few dollars, demand is likely to shrink significantly again... because as long as the systems operate stochastically and, logically, produce erroneous results, it may take a very large number of tokens to obtain a result that’s actually usable (this is especially true when using AI to replace workers whose tasks and skills you actually have no clue about).

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