Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque said that he believes that artificial intelligence “will be the biggest bubble of all time.” during a conference call with UBS analysts.
He said that the AI industry was still in its infancy but that the pace at which it is growing will eventually lead to overhyped stock prices of companies in the AI space. “I call it the ‘dot AI’ bubble, and it hasn’t even started yet,” he said referencing the dot com boom and bust of tech companies in the 90s.
He said that while AI technology had already undergone significant developments it had some way to go before widespread adoption in business could take place. “It’s not quite ready,” said Mostaque but emphasized the need for companies to think carefully about how they would begin integrating AI into their businesses.
He warned that companies that failed to properly implement AI in their operations would be “punished” in the stock market as Google was in February this year. Google’s demo of its chatbot Bard didn’t go quite as planned and its share price tanked 7%, or $100 billion in one day.
“I think this is real. I think that there aren’t many investable opportunities here, and you’ll see people moving from the best chip manufacturers to companies that are using this to impact their bottom line and their top line appropriately. And you will see the market punishing those that don’t use this,” Mostaque said.
He said that the anticipated AI investment bubble was inevitable, but it was some way off. While he felt it was difficult to identify solid AI investments, AI would “be one of the biggest investment themes over the next few years,”.
Mostaque said it would take a total investment of $1 trillion to get AI to the point where adoption at scale in sectors like banking was possible. He said the staggering amount was justified though as he believes AI is “more important than 5G as infrastructure for knowledge.”
He’s made some bold claims before like that AI would replace programmers completely in 5 years. He also recently had to defend himself against claims about his education and work background. But as CEO of the company behind Stable Diffusion, Mostaque’s views warrant attention.
Are you impressed by the incredible things AI can already do? In a sign of things to come, Mostaque said that the technology was only in the “early stages” of development.
