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Pop Quiz – Is AI Heading For A Bubble Burst?

It might be wise to think of the possible (and pending) AI bubble, much like past tech bubbles.

They come… it destroys a lot of venture capital and hype, but the tech simmers and finds the market.
For my dollar, I don’t believe we can lump artificial intelligence into these parameters.

AI is going to change things fast, drastically and be all-encompassing.

This won’t be dotcom, blockchain, or big data all over again.
We may, in fact, look back on this moment and wonder why we didn’t treat AI with a vastly different temperament.
Still… the media (and others) are chanting “bubble bursting.”
It could be nothing.
It could be a correction.
It could be a bubble bursting (and I could be wrong).

Can we see beyond this initial wave of inflated expectations?

Nvidia has been riding the AI wave to unprecedented heights, with its GPUs becoming the backbone of AI processing.
But now, there’s competition from the likes of AMD and others developing cheaper, more efficient alternatives, Nvidia’s once unassailable market position is under threat.

Let’s take a step back.

Are we confusing a necessary correction with a catastrophic burst?
Gartner’s recent projections and insights from IBM’s Maryam Ashoori suggest that while one in three AI projects might be abandoned after the pilot stage, the other two are making it through and finding real value.
This isn’t so much a collapse as it is a fast maturing process – shedding the hype to focus on what really works.
With a different lens, we could be witnessing the shift from wild speculation to practical application.

So, is the AI bubble about to burst?

I could be wrong, but I do not think so.
What we’re seeing is more of a reality check – the overinflated expectations are coming back down to earth, and while that might mean some pain in the short term, it’s likely to lead to more sustainable growth in the long run (if we can do this without having an extinction level event).

In fact, this is still the early days of AI.

It’s just the beginning of a more grounded, practical approach to what it can really do.
And don’t forget that super intelligence might be just around the corner.

If that development becomes a reality, what we’re seeing now won’t even be considered a rounding error.

This is what Elias Makos, and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM. Listen in right here.

Mitch Joel · Pop Quiz – Is AI Heading For A Bubble Burst?

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Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.