We don’t know if the AI bubble is beginning to burst in the financial world. For one thing, there are so many billionaires out there now with money to burn that it might take a long time for the effect to be noticed among those who must pay attention to the price of bread or gas.

But here is an intriguing snippet from Fortune Magazine’s tech newsletter from Andrew Nusca:

As some of the largest corporations in the U.S. tout the efficiencies and opportunities of artificial intelligence, they’re quietly asking their legal departments to list AI as a disclosed risk in their financial filings. Three in four corporations listed in the S&P 500 have reportedly done so.

The concern doesn’t stop there, by the way: One in 10 of those companies also acknowledged in their filings that they may never see ROI on their AI spending. Beats M&A, I guess. [M&A = Mergers and Acquisitions]

We keep asking esteemed readers to remember that at least some analysts’ predictions sound suspiciously like they are aimed at convincing shareholders to invest more money in AI companies — or else they rebrand slow hiring and layoffs due to industry sluggishness as an AI takeover of jobs.

An observation from technology consultant Jeffrey Funk last September is worth heeding:

Ask yourself, how many of today’s AI applications can even remotely compare to the convenience we got from buying things on the Internet in 2000? Could you imagine being forced to go through a travel agent for all your trips today? Maybe if you have a dedicated assistant but not if you are traveler who wants to get a decent deal.

Even the first items purchased with e-commerce, books, are as good an application or better than most of today’s AI applications such as writing e-mail or reports or generating ideas. I remember the challenge of finding specialized books before the Internet and the joy of finding them on Amazon. Another memory for academics: remember the library copying services of the 1990s that enabled us to read hard copy journal articles in our offices? “No, the AI Bubble is Nothing Like the Dotcom Bubble.

Don’t listen to the tech bros on this one,” September 17, 2024

In short, apart from students learning how to get ChatGPT to write their essays for them (not a goal of the system!), it is not clear how the new AI world is creating advances that many people would recognize as such.