[thinkzilla]

The comparison to railroad infrastructure is interesting.

I think the author is wrong on this point however: > Today’s tech just cannot do what will be required of it (AI shouldn’t be dispensing medication when it can’t even count to 7).

The failures of AI are thought provoking, and more so when considered together with other results where AI performs at near expert level on challenging benchmarks. However, perfect reasoning is hardly a requirement. Most humans are not particularly good at reasoning, and most jobs do not need it. Both humans and AI can use calculators and other tools. All that's needed is that the AI is more or less as good as a human, while requiring much less pay.

A good exercise to appreciate the current state of AI might be to ask AI to write an essay about this topic ("how much revenue is needed to justify current AI spend, and draw parallels to the dotcom boom and building the transcontinental railroad"). Try it with two different models, using the deep research mode. I expect the results would be humbling.

[aworks]

ChatGPT re: your essay suggestion

... So, in summary: We likely need on the order of hundreds of billions to low-trillions of dollars annually in AI revenue to justify the present level of infrastructure and model investment. Current realized revenues are many orders of magnitude below that.

But that’s the cold math. History suggests that such math often overlooks strategic externalities, spillover effects, hype, and speculative capital flows.