Reference News Network, October 22 report: The German news television channel website published an article titled "The U.S. Gambling on Artificial Intelligence" on October 19, the following is a translated version:
The risk of a major crash is suffocating: nearly one-third of the total market value of the top 500 American companies is related to tech giants. "Artificial intelligence optimists" believe that once the bubble bursts, although investors will suffer significant losses, other areas of the economy will not be greatly affected. In their view, after all, the huge investments have flowed into physical assets, so they will not disappear completely. Even if the owners of data centers go bankrupt, the demand for data centers will still exist. But it's not that simple.
The artificial intelligence craze has long stopped being just a stock market bubble. Jerry Kaplan, a technology pioneer, said that once the bubble bursts, "the consequences will be very serious, and not only for people in the artificial intelligence field. It will drag other areas of the economy into the abyss." JPMorgan Chase estimates that investments by tech giants in artificial intelligence have driven U.S. economic growth by more than 1% this year. Harvard economist Jason Furman even believes that 92% of U.S. economic growth during the same period was created by such investments.
This craze masks big problems: employment growth in the U.S., at best, is unstable. Inflation is constantly rising, severely weakening consumer confidence. The cost shocks from President Trump's global trade war have not yet fully impacted the U.S. economy, and the U.S. government is also burdened with massive debt approaching collapse.
Without the artificial intelligence craze, the U.S. might already be in an economic recession. Artificial intelligence is seen as a panacea for all problems: Goldman Sachs is worried that the crackdown on illegal immigration initiated by Trump will soon lead to labor shortages, which could reduce the U.S.'s growth potential by one-fifth. However, since artificial intelligence will significantly increase productivity, the demand for labor will eventually decrease dramatically in the future.
The current debt ratio of the U.S. is comparable to the peak during World War II. Nevertheless, some analysts believe that once the expansion of artificial intelligence leads to an economic boom, the U.S. can easily get rid of its debt problems.
But historical experience shows that the U.S. gamble on artificial intelligence cannot continue indefinitely: there has never been an investment frenzy that only continued to add more. Similarly, the fact that the artificial intelligence fever is limited by physical bottlenecks, such as power supply, grid, and cooling issues of server clusters, also shows that this gamble is unsustainable. The time required to significantly increase power generation capacity, expand the grid, and solve cooling problems may far exceed the duration of the stock market frenzy. But this stock market frenzy is different from before. If investors are wrong, there will be something to see. (Translated by Wang Qing)
Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7563963331074146825/
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