In his new book, the Reverse Centaur\u2019s Guide to Life After AI, the man who coined the word \u201censhittification\u201d says the question isn\u2019t \u201cAre we in an AI bubble?\u201d but \u201cWhen will the bubble burst?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing about bubbles is that after they burst, we look back and we say, \u2018Well, obviously that was the weak link,\u2019\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The AI bubble is being kept afloat through the massive investments being made from Gulf sovereign wealth funds and billionaires into new datacentres, Doctorow says. If some of those deals begin to collapse, so could the bubble.<\/p>\n
The circular investment in the AI sector \u2013 between the chip manufacturers, AI companies and tech companies using AI<\/a> \u2013 \u201ccould easily\u201d be the first domino to fall, he adds. Or if the AI companies including Anthropic and OpenAI continue to delay their initial public offering<\/a> and struggle to get new funding.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWe can see in retrospect, when we don\u2019t have to continue pretending that this thing is going to go on for ever, that it was always very, very brittle,\u201d Doctorow says. \u201cIt was always very fraught.\u201d<\/p>\n Executives in industries that were promised by those selling AI that the technology could cheaply replace their workers will find those skills hard to bring back when the dust settles. Workers fired, pushed into retirement or retrained in other fields will leave gaps of knowledge.<\/p>\n Doctorow in his back-yard bar. Photograph: Jessica Pons\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Detailed knowledge of business processes can\u2019t be readily transferred or recovered, he says, \u201cand you can\u2019t just recover it like the workers who have it when you scatter them to the four winds\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a bit a little like Fury Road where there\u2019s just going to be stuff you have but we don\u2019t know how to do again. And it\u2019s going to take a really long time to figure out how to do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n Copyright fix on AI \u2018won\u2019t solve anyone\u2019s problems\u2019<\/p>\n Albanese last week said<\/a> the Australian government would have \u201cplain as day\u201d laws on copyright to ensure AI companies that train their models on music, books, news and other creative works pay to use it. This followed reports the government was being lobbied by AI companies to introduce a text and data mining exception into Australian copyright law.<\/p>\n The announcement was broadly welcomed by creative sectors in Australia. Doctorow argues that using copyright law \u201cwon\u2019t solve anyone\u2019s problems\u201d \u2013 a position he says doesn\u2019t put him on the side of the AI companies but also doesn\u2019t put him on the side of the large media companies.<\/p>\n
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