I’ve gotten on an AI kick this past week, and that means writing about the AI bubble that has been forming — see here, here, here, and here — as well as some severe risks of AI and this fun idea to replace CEOs with AI. But the fact of the matter is: tons of people are buying the hype, literally. How much money has been invested into AI by retail investors, institutional investors, VCs, and corporate executives? How much have people bought into the hype that 1) they can become a billionaire by jumping into the AI bubble now and 2) there will be no need for money in a decade because we will be living in an age of abundance thanks to robots and AI doing everything for us? As I dove more and more into discussions about the AI bubble that’s been forming, I was increasingly just in awe and wonder around what is happening. I started thinking about how prone we are to “magical thinking” and absurd fantasies. A few things came to mind. Conspiracy theories came to mind. One of the things that has struck me the most in the 17 years I’ve been covering climate and cleantech news is how much people are prone to believe conspiracy theories. I still remember well when this first hit me — when I started noticing how much people were eagerly reading and spreading wild conspiracy theories. For some reason — and I really can’t explain it — a large portion of humanity is super eager to believe wild, unrealistic conspiracy theories. Even crazier, many of these people won’t believe basic facts and truths. It’s not that they are gullible and just believe anything. They have a desire and tendency to believe crazy things and to be skeptical about stuff that is really basic, straightforward, and actually important. Why? I don’t know. Because it’s more interesting and exciting? And that’s what matters most to people? Bitcoin. Sorry, some of you aren’t going to like this, but Bitcoin also came to mind. Yes, it’s worth a large fortune now (or a small fortune — I see it’s dropped 44% in the past year), but it’s still just a fantasy currency. It’s never going to replace money. People don’t use it like normal money. So, in essence, it’s just about speculation and investment. But it only grows in value based on the idea that it should. If people just stop believing that it should be valuable, it will drop in value. It has no intrinsic value. It’s very much like NFTs, except its story has been compelling to many people and they have put a lot more money into it. AI is actually useful, and real. It does stuff, very useful stuff, and can help people in a broad variety of fields. But it is in no way perfect, it can’t replace a lot of work, it hallucinates, you have to check that it hasn’t made mistakes, and, I’m sorry, it’s not replacing industry after industry of human workers. The idea that it is going to create an era of abundance and utopia is pure fantasy, akin to some of the wilder conspiracy theories that are out there. Additionally, as I’ve been covering, the enormous amount of money being invested in AI with no clear path to a positive return on that investment is basically the same kind of fantasy and magical thinking. Where is all of this leading? Well, we’ll see…. Featured image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay