Neither OpenAI nor other tech giants have produced systems capable of doing much, but that hasn't stopped them from pushing for massive new investments.
The timely bursting of the AI bubble is seeing investors finally wake up and smell the coffee. That was briefly reflected by the stock performance of players in the AI arms race during the Aug. 5 market crash, when stock prices for Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Meta plummeted — even if they did undeservedly recover the next day.
Some of the companies are making massive investments in AI. Meta has indicated through recent earnings reports that it expects to spend up to $40 billion on AI R&D in 2024. Microsoft has spent $56 billion, and the number is rising. Google is projecting an expenditure of $12 billion per quarter.
These are enormous numbers — even for Google — and investors have so far seen nothing for it. According to both Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the risk of underinvestment in AI can’t be understated. They argue that building out data stores to train AI models takes time and resources, and being unprepared for the future isn’t a position they want to be in.
