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Signal CEO says generative AI is ‘definitely a bubble’

The mad dash to develop generative AI has received several labels: A long-term opportunity, for some, or an “arms race.” For others, however, it’s a bubble that may be short-lived.

“I think this generative AI moment is definitely a bubble,” Meredith Whittaker, president of messaging app Signal, told Wired. “You can’t spend a billion dollars per practice run when you have to do multiple practice runs and then launch an email writing engine. Something is wrong there.”

In other words, Whittaker believes that the industry will reach a point where the amount of money that is poured into it is not reflected in its output.

Earlier this month, the stock market revealed some concern among investors as Big Tech spent billions on artificial intelligence while showing little promise of returns. Investors, however, continue to pour money into industry leader OpenAI even as its top researchers leave, citing concerns that the company is moving too aggressively into general artificial intelligence.

Whittaker isn’t sure when the bubble might finally burst, but she’s betting that Nvidia, the US chipmaker that powers much of AI development, will reflect the first signs.

“I think you will see a reduction in the market. Nvidia’s market cap is going to die for a second,” she said. Nvidia’s market capitalization surpassed both Amazon and Alphabet earlier this year and is now just over $3 trillion, according to Yahoo Finance.

Either way, she said regulation of the AI ​​industry will be critical.

“Things like structural unbundling, where we start to separate ownership of the infrastructure from the application layer, would disrupt these businesses,” she said. “I think meaningful privacy regulations could go a long way.” These include reducing the amount of data companies can collect and their authority over how it will be used to shape the world.

Her point is that the AI ​​bubble shouldn’t prevent us from regulating the problems of surveillance capitalism. “There is nothing natural about the paradigm that exists,” she said.

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