Artificial intelligence used to be a thing of the future, seen in comic books and sci-fi movies. Just a few decades later, it’s become our reality and a daily tool used in day-to-day life. There are many mixed opinions on AI: the tool that simplifies jobs by writing English essays but also takes away from them by literally replacing people’s jobs. 

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When it was first introduced, it was all the craze, and everyone wanted to get their hands on it. Before, AI made things more accessible and were used to improve education experiences, like homework assistance. Now, to some, it is perceived as a cheating tool: a homework-doer that strips humanity from art, opinions, writing, and even jobs, yet billions of dollars are still poured into it. 

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Many tech companies like Nvidia, Amazon, and Microsoft are betting all of their money on AI. There are even smaller companies following in pursuit, scared of missing out on this AI gold mine. This surge in AI investments is causing an “AI bubble”– a market crash theory that all the companies invested in AI could cause a dip in the market if AI doesn’t meet its through-the-roof expectations, which experts say is bound to pop. 

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AI is supposedly our future. It is the shared belief (and money) of many. Nvidia has recently invested $5,000,000,000 USD in Intel, combining their computer technology with Intel’s CPU chips. They have also invested $100,000,000 USD into OpenAI. Oracle has also invested $300,000,000,000 USD into a partnership with OpenAI. Through the interconnectedness of these big tech companies, they are inflating each other’s stock prices as well as the public perception of AI’s power.

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With billions, maybe trillions of dollars, and the expectation of the entire world on AI’s shoulders, this pressure could be enough to pop this bubble, causing markets to crash and economies to crumble.

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We’ve seen market crashes before - one of the biggest ones being the Great Depression in the 1930s, where over-purchasing and buying on credit caused an inflation of stock prices that eventually crashed. This is no indication that the burst of this AI bubble will last over a decade like the Great Depression, but history is bound to repeat itself. 

The “AI bubble” is something never seen before, but a market crash isn’t. The question is: Will we recover from this?

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That is, if it even pops.