What happened to the AI investment boom?

MANY economists believe that generative artificial intelligence (AI) is about to transform the global economy.

A paper published last year by Ege Erdil and Tamay Besiroglu of Epoch, a research firm, argues that “explosive growth”, with GDP zooming upwards, is “plausible with AI capable of broadly substituting for human labour”. Erik Brynjolfsson of Stanford University has said that he expects AI “to power a productivity boom in the coming years”.

For such an economic transformation to take place, companies need to spend big on new software, communications, factories and equipment, enabling AI to slot into their production processes.