AI as a technology is so far not profitable for anybody. The hardware AI runs on is profitable, as might be some start ups that are heavily leveraging AI, but actually operating AI is so far not profitable, and because increasingly smaller improvements in AI use exponentially more power, there’s no real path that is visible to any of us today that suggests anyone’s yet found a path to profitability. Aside from some kind of miracle out of left field that no one today has even conceived, the long term outlook isn’t great.

If AI as a technology busts, so does the insane profits behind the hardware it runs on. And without that left field technological breakthrough, the only option to pursue to avoid AI going completely bust is to raise prices astronomically, which would bust any companies currently dependent on all the AI currently being provided to them for basically next to nothing.

The entire industry is operating at a loss, but is being propped up by the currently abstract idea that AI will some day make money. This isn’t the “AI Hater” viewpoint, it’s just the spot AI is currently in. If you think AI is here to stay, you’re placing a bet on a promise that nobody as of today can actually make.