“Perhaps you have I’m listening that artificial intelligence is a bubble ready to burst“,” writes a Washington Post technology columnist. “Maybe you have I’m listening that it’s not. (Nobody really knows anyway, but that won’t stop the brothers from blabbering about it constantly.)”
“But I can tell you for sure that the money being spent on AI is so huge that the numbers have lost all meaning.”
The companies that invest money are so rich and so power-hungry (in the multiple meanings of the term) that our puny human brains can’t really comprehend it. So let’s try to give some meaning and context to the stratospheric numbers in AI. Is it a bubble? Hey, who knows. But it’s completely crazy. Last year alone, the four richest companies developing AI (Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta) spent approximately $360 billion. combined for high value projectswhich included the construction AI data centers and filling them with chips and computer equipment, according to my analysis of financial statements… How do companies pay for the huge sums they are wasting on AI? For the most part, these companies make so much money that they can afford to go crazy…
Eight of the world’s 10 most valuable companies are American corporate giants focused on or aligned with AI: Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Broadcom, Meta and Tesla. This is according to S&P Global Market Intelligence counts based on the total price of shares of companies held by investors. My analysis of S&P data shows that the collective value of those eight giants, $23 trillion, is more than the value of next 96 the most valuable American companies together, which includes many still very rich names such as JPMorgan, Walmart, Visa and ExxonMobil. The number one on that list, AI computer chip seller Nvidia, last week became the first company in history reach a stock market value of 5 billion dollars. That was just it more than the value of entire stock markets in most countries, Bloomberg News reportedin addition to the five largest (in the US, China, Japan, Hong Kong and India)…
All of the data centers announced or under construction to power AI would consume roughly as much electricity as 44 million U.S. homes if they were running at full power, according to a recent analysis by investment bank Barclays. reported by the Financial Times. For context, that’s almost a third of the total number of residential homes in the entire country, according to the US Census Bureau. housing estimates by 2024.
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