New Economics Podcast: Is the AI bubble about to burst?

It’s a new technology that everyone’s desperate to get a piece of. CEOs say it’s going to change how we work, access information, and even relate to each other. Investors are showering companies with money — even when they aren’t turning a profit.

You might think this is the story of artificial intelligence. But it’s actually what happened during the dotcom bubble, back in the late nineties. When the frenzy of investment ended, the bubble burst. Companies went bust and trillions of dollars of investment capital evaporated.

Today, AI companies are raising over a trillion dollars in investment, with very little revenue to show for it.

Is the dotcom bubble a vision of our future? Has the AI hype outpaced its profits? And if the bubble bursts — what does it mean for the rest of us?

This week Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is joined by Eleanor Shearer, senior research fellow at Common Wealth and Carsten Jung, interim associate director for economic policy and AI at the Institute for Public Policy Research.

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