AI faces closing time at the cash buffet

opinion It is the season of overindulgence, and no one has overindulged like the tech industry: this year, it has burned through roughly $1.5 trillion in AI, a level of spending usually reserved for wartime.

Between 2001 and 2014, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost the US an estimated $1.5 trillion to $1.7 trillion in direct spending. Global AI spending, according to Gartner, is forecast to reach nearly $1.5 trillion this year, putting today's AI boom in the same cash-burning league as two major wars.

What's missing now - like in the last few wars - is a reason for spending this money at all. Some people are starting to ask uncomfortable questions like "When you invest all the money in the bank on a perishable technology, how many years will it take to see a return on that investment?"

Yep. It's looking like ...