I think what's lost on the general public who mainly thinks AI is ChatGPT, is that these companies are gunning for knowledge worker salaries. That by itself is ~$30T/year globally. Nothing else justifies the infra spend. Data center investment is a bet that they will be able to virtualize knowledge workers in the next 5 years.

Warehouse and factory labor is the next largest market for AI/robotics, at about $7T/year globally.

The bubble question is really about the target year. Will these companies start on a trajectory where AI begins eating these massive markets before investors lose faith?

To me it looks like one of these is true:

(1) this is indeed a bubble, and AI will turn into a useful tool integrated into everything but fall short of expectations. We'll see some significant multiple compression in the share prices of these core AI companies, but they'll remain good investments in the long term.

(2) this is a real transformation, the investment was worth it, and these companies will earn massive revenue while causing Depression-era levels of unemployment (24% if half of knowledge workers and factory/warehouse workers can get jobs).

Basically, the revenue required to justify the infra spend requires that they start eating existing industries, because that's certainly not going to come from ChatGPT/Claude subscriptions.

> these companies are gunning for knowledge worker salaries

I think there's a kind of arrogance involved here in how they value what "knowledge workers" do. On the the outside they see some documents written, spreadhsheets filled out, forms submitted, emails sent and conclude AI could do all of that.

It's true AI can do a lot of the mechanics of it, but the assumption that there is nothing beyond the pure mechanics of it to me is highly untested and history would bet against it. Some significant part of it sits genuinely within the human relationship component that is almost definitionally not doable by a computer.

there‘s another option. It could be both. The labs are never able to recoup their massive investments, eventually causing a huge loss on the stock market, AND the efficiency gains from tech they pioneered but failed to capitalize on wipes out millions of jobs.

(3) it could be real but with new jobs and increased output rather than depression era unemployment.

> I think what's lost on the general public who mainly thinks AI is ChatGPT,

There are so many people who have never used Claude Code or Codex who think that Google's AI results are representative of what AI can do.