Questions are continuing to crop up whether there is a real return on investment for AI. One company is trying to insist that it is not.
It seemed like there was nothing stopping the AI hype train for a while. There was a nonstop drum beat of self-proclaimed “experts” saying that AI will mean the end of humanity. Another set of self-proclaimed “experts” were regularly declaring that we are on the verge of the next big industrial revolution and that AI was going to take over everything.
Indeed, there have been a number of wild claims about AI over the years. For example, when there were several AI deployments to create art, there were many claims about how AI was going to completely replace artists and that being an artist was a dead profession walking. Artists, so they claimed, basically had weeks left before the work completely dries up because anyone can write a prompt and get any kind of art they ask for within minutes – nay seconds. So, why pay artists at all any more? Well, more than a year later and artists are still happily taking commissions. Sure, some people produce AI art, but most people are simply utilizing human artists to generate images they are asking for.
Even more famously proclaimed was that writing is also not something humans will be doing much of any more. Generative AI such as ChatGPT was going to take care of all of that. So, if your profession involves writing in any way, well, your days are numbered. Heck, by the end of the year, people like myself will be seeking new jobs because everyone will have shifted over to much more cheaply produced AI content such as news. Well, fast forward to today and not only am I still writing news articles, but people are still willing to read articles written by a human.
This is not to say that there weren’t attempts by any means. There was the famous attempt by CNET to replace their journalists with AI and that worked out about as well as you can imagine. Another example was Gannet doing the same thing. The fail on that attempt was even more spectacular than the CNET example thanks to the attempt to hide the fact that they were using AI in the first place. Also, who could forget the one company that used AI to predict when the next Nintendo console was coming out? Yeah, that was a spectacular fail. In fact, it was just yesterday that I noted yet another AI journalism fail on top of it all.
Indeed, the history of AI being used to replace humans is packed full of underwhelming results and spectacular fails. Yet, many continue to insist that AI is this perfect creation that is completely error proof and will be replacing humanity, like, tomorrow. Just wait and see!
Now, obviously, there is a massive capitalism element in all of this. A lot of this hype being built around AI is to get investors to doll out huge sums of money with grand promises of incredible returns. Heck, you’d be foolish not to put a mortgage on your house and dump it into a big AI stock (seriously, don’t do that). Those big payoffs are practically just around the corner.
Well, last month, that was heavily shaken when AI stock darling, NVidia, tanked by 14%. This happened because many investors were finally beginning to ask questions on where their return on investment is. After all, if this massive revolution was just around the corner, shouldn’t we be seeing it by now? After all, the promises were happening at least over the last year.
It seemed that this drop spooked the entire AI sector and what followed was a renewed effort to double down on the AI hype (doom or hype, take your pick). Gullible media outlets gobbled up pretty much any talking point by anyone saying how incredible this AI revolution is becoming. Indeed, it appears that the wave of hype worked as investors ended up deciding to pour money into NVidia afterwards, allowing the stock value to recover and reach new highs.
Still, that hasn’t stopped the questions about a return on investment in all of this. This is going to happen soon, right? Well, apparently, faced with even more questions, one AI company is having to flat out insist that AI isn’t a bubble and that the revolution is real. From MarketWatch:
Perhaps this can be explained away as talking his book, but the chief executive of contract microchip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. says the artificial intelligence revolution is for real.
CC Wei, the chairman and chief executive of Taiwan Semiconductor, was asked by JPMorgan analyst Gokul Hariharan on a conference call on Thursday about the return on investment for generative AI and whether it can end up being a bubble.
“We have talked to our customers all the time, including our hyperscaler customers who are building their own chips. And almost every AI innovator is working with TSMC. And so, we probably get the deepest and widest look of anyone in this industry. And what I say it’s real, because we have our real experience. We have [been] using the AI and machine learning in our fab in R&D operations,” said Wei, according to a FactSet transcript.
He estimates a 1 billion Taiwan dollar ($31 million) boost to productivity from using AI.
“This is a tangible ROI benefit,” he said. “We cannot be the only one company that have benefited from this AI application. So, I believe a lot of companies right now are using AI and further on improving productivity, efficiency and everything.”
No really! The AI revolution is real! Yes, this has been promised for the last year or so, but this time is different! You’ll see! Heck, that check is already in the mail! Just hang on for a little bit longer and the benefits of investing is coming down like no tomorrow! Is it hot in here or is it just me? Someone turn on the air conditioning!
Seriously, if this revolution was real, you’d think we’d see some major shifting around in the sector by now. Yes, this is not to say AI doesn’t have some benefit, but I remain highly skeptical that we are on the verge of a massive revolution. I mean, very little has changed in people’s day to day lives (apart from everything getting significantly more expensive of course). If this was a massive revolution, it would be noticeable for average every day people.
Ultimately, it’s good to see that these questions are persisting. These questions are likely going to persist as the promises of a massive revolution continue to get repeated as companies ask people to give them all of their money. Until actual tangible things come out of this, all we are going to get are executives continue to insist that the AI hype is really real for reals this time. If the only thing that is noticeable is the hype being published in the papers, well, I suspect that there is more air than substance beneath all of this.
