For sure a great infrastructure build out -- lets hope the leftover are better energy infrastructure so that whatever comes next in 7 years after the flame out has some great stuff to build on (similar to telco bubble 1.0) and less damaging to planet earth in the long arc.
Yep. The Telco Bust 1.0 along with the Dotcom Bust is what enabled the cloud computing boom, the SaaS boom, and the e-commerce boom by the early-mid 2010s.
I think the eventual AI bust will lead to the same thing, as the costs for developing a domain-specific model have cratered over the past couple years.
AI/ML (and the infra around it) is overvalued at their current multiples, but the value created it real, and as the market grows to understand the limitations but also the opportunities, a more realistic and permanent boo' will occur.
Yeah - no doubt on the eventual productivity gains due to AI/ML (which are real, of course, just like the real gains due to telecom infra buildup), but must an economy go through a bubble first to realize these productivity gains??
It appears that the answer is "more likely yes than not".
Counting some examples:
- self driving / autonomous vehicles (seeing real deployments now with Waymo, but 99% deployment still ahead; meanwhile, $$$ billions of value destroyed in the last 10-15 years with so many startups running out of money, getting acquihired, etc)
- Humanoid robots... (potential bubble?? I don't know of a single commercial deployment today that is worth any solid revenues, but companies keep getting funded left / right)
I think you make a very interesting observation about these bubbles potentially being an inherent part of new technology expansion.
It makes sense too from a human behavior perspective. Whenever there are massive wins to be had, speculation will run rampant. Everyone wants to be the winner, but only a small fraction will actually win.
