... With urgency and fervor, mankind is devoting heart, sweat and capital on an incomprehensible scale to artificial intelligence. The promise of this technology is infinite, its evangelists insist. This will solve intractable scientific mysteries, cure disease, eliminate drudgery, eradicate poverty, abolish hunger, and usher in a post-scarcity era of boundless creativity, cosmic exploration and human flourishing. They say that this is bigger than the internet, more disruptive than railroads, more transformative than electricity.
One catch is, AI also consumes like a black hole. It demands manufacturing, network and power infrastructure of staggering scope. But rich investors and corporate behemoths are up to the challenge. Last year, global corporate AI investment exceeded a quarter of a trillion dollars. We're just getting started. A JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysis in November said that over the next five years, the money thrown at global data centers and AI infrastructure and related power-supply expansion will surpass $5 trillion. That's 100 Apollo moon programs. That's half of what the entire world will spend on its militaries over that span -- but mostly private money. These financiers, moguls and visionaries want to ensure that nothing, nothing, slows this train bound for utopia.
AI is reshaping industries and rewiring people's brains. It's capability and power are advancing at breakneck speed - people are constantly finding new applications; the technology continually exhibits new capabilities. In some ways, the advancement has been so rapid that it is slipping the leash. Astoundingly, not even the most brilliant engineers, living on the bleeding edge of this technology, quite understand how it works, - J. Hilliker
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