Opinion: History’s biggest AI spending boom: Opportunity or overhype?

Joe Shearrer

Just recently, my typical Wednesday morning started differently than expected. After a virtual visit with my daughter’s doctor, we learned she may have chickenpox. As any parent knows, moments like that come with a lot of uncertainty. Are you sure it’s chickenpox? How severe will it be? How long will recovery take? Will anyone else in the house get sick? You don’t have all the answers immediately, but you still have to make decisions and move forward.

Interestingly, I was already planning to write about the massive investment in artificial intelligence. While the topics couldn’t seem more different, they share something in common: uncertainty.

Gold rush in digital age
A gold rush is unfolding right before our eyes. This time, prospectors aren’t heading west with pickaxes and wagons. They’re building data centers, buying computer chips and spending unprecedented sums on AI. Companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta are investing hundreds of billions of dollars.

The excitement is understandable. AI has the potential to transform how businesses operate, how consumers interact with technology and how work gets done across nearly every industry. But before investors assume AI is a guaranteed path to profits, history offers an important reminder: Revolutionary  technologies don’t always produce revolutionary investment returns.

Familiar story
Every generation experiences a breakthrough that promises to change the world. Railroads connected the country. Electricity transformed daily life. The internet reshaped communication, commerce and entertainment.

In each case, the technology ultimately delivered on its promise. Yet many investors who rushed into those trends failed to achieve the returns they expected. Innovation and investment success aren’t always the same thing. The challenge is that some of history’s greatest innovations created enormous economic value, but not necessarily for every investor who rushed to participate.

Today’s AI boom presents a similar challenge. The spending is massive because the opportunity is massive. Will the enormous investments being made today generate enough future profits to justify current expectations?

Determining the winners
One lesson from previous technological revolutions is that the biggest winners aren’t always the companies making the loudest headlines. During the California gold rush, many prospectors spent years chasing fortunes they never found. Meanwhile, businesses selling picks, shovels and supplies often generated more reliable profits.

The same dynamic may be unfolding today. While investors focus on AI software and chatbots, the infrastructure supporting the AI revolution may prove just as important. Semiconductor manufacturers, data center operators, cloud providers, utilities, and power generation companies all stand to benefit from the enormous buildout occurring behind the scenes.

For many investors, the rapid rise of AI creates a familiar fear: What if I miss out? It’s a reasonable question. AI may become one of the most important technological developments of our lifetime and the opportunities are enormous. However, history teaches us that technological revolutions often create both tremendous wealth and tremendous speculation. The challenge isn’t determining whether AI will change the world. The challenge is distinguishing between genuine opportunity and excessive enthusiasm.

As a parent, I would love a crystal ball that could tell me exactly how the next week with potential chicken pox is going to unfold. Unfortunately, that isn’t how life works. Investing is no different. We don’t know exactly how the AI revolution will play out, which companies will ultimately benefit the most, or whether today’s expectations are too high or too low. What we can do is prepare for a range of outcomes rather than bet everything on a single prediction.

Joe Shearrer is a vice president and wealth adviser at Fervent Wealth Management LLC in Springfield. He can be reached at joe@ferventwm.com.