According to Ken Griffin, investors are "almost certainly" in an artificial intelligence bubble. The founder of hedge fund Citadel and operator of Citadel Securities said this on Tuesday at the Future of Global Markets conference in New York. At the same time, he said, the technology could create opportunities for entrepreneurs and rewrite competition across many industries.
However, he said, companies in the USA are paying for AI models without getting balanced value from them. "American companies are very uneven in their ability to extract value from their AI models," Griffin said.
The AI bubble: what Anthropic's plans reveal
Anthropic's plans hint at how much capital the development of AI will absorb. The company is expected to publicly file for a stock market listing in the coming weeks, which could be one of the largest in history. The money is to go to chips, data centers and talent. According to The Wall Street Journal, Anthropic could spend 750 billion dollars on additional computing power in the coming years.
A comparison to the dotcom era and a shift in views
Griffin recalled the dotcom era, when money flowed into airy business models and some companies remained market leaders after the bubble burst. "The companies that are on the other side of that bubble are market leaders for a decade ahead," he said. "I just wish I had held on to Amazon stock back then."
According to him, the speculative boom does not rule out lasting technological change. "Any radical transformation of our economy is usually linked to a bubble. These bubbles, if we want to use that word, often merge with giant technological transformations," he said.
He also mentioned the impact on work. According to him, the threat to "white-collar" jobs is visible, and companies' competitive advantages are being bulldozed. "At the same time, you tell yourself that this will be a golden era for entrepreneurs," he added.
His stance shifted over the course of the year. At the start of the year in Davos, he called AI "garbage"; in May at Stanford Business School, he said he was depressed by everything the technology is capable of.
In recent weeks, investors have been nervous about how long it takes for the money spent to pay off. According to qz.com, earlier this month Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio called AI a "classic bubble" at a conference in Singapore.