John Rapley, contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail, joins Stephen LeDrew to discuss one of the biggest economic questions surrounding artificial intelligence: is the AI boom actually a bubble?
Rapley argues that enormous amounts of money are flowing into AI infrastructure, data centres and technology companies, but the productivity gains needed to justify today’s valuations still haven’t clearly materialized.
He says AI is already useful in many everyday tasks and can improve individual productivity, but questions whether those gains are large enough across the broader economy to support the scale of investment now taking place.
The conversation also turns to data centres, credit, corporate losses and what could happen if the current AI investment boom slows sharply.
Rapley’s view is not that AI disappears. Quite the opposite. He argues that a bursting bubble could ultimately redirect money toward more practical and commercially useful applications of the technology.
LeDrew and Rapley also discuss another unexpected consequence of AI: as synthetic, created content and misinformation become more sophisticated, could trusted media organizations become more valuable again?
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