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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
I won the Pulitzer Prize for History for Lords of Finance, my account of how four central bankers’ decisions triggered the Great Depression. I have just completed 1873, a book on America’s railroad boom of the 1870s — the last time private capital flooded into a transformative new infrastructure technology at a scale comparable to 2%–3% of GDP. That research is why, when I look at the AI buildout today, I am genuinely frightened.
Google has the capital to try it out without leveraging too much debt I assume. They were wildly profitable before, so it makes a bit more sense.
I am really referring to the companies that are mostly invested in AI. Whether that’s the developers, or just investors with majority holdings. Either way, what’s the plan?
All the AI companies have the same plan that other tech companies had. Set VC funding on fire until you shrink the market to the point where you can set monopolistic prices. The problem right now with AI is the same problem Uber and Lyft have; the market won’t pay the break even price.