AI stocks fuel much of bull run since 2022

BIG TECH HAS STAKED SOME OF ITS FUTURE ON AI

- JERAN WITTENSTEIN

IN THE TWO years since ChatGPT burst onto the scene, artificial intelligence has come to dominate investor consciousness more than any other technological breakthrough in the past two decades. Tech giants are spending tens of billions of dollars per quarter to beef up the computing power needed to develop and run AI systems.

To its biggest boosters, the impact will be astonishing: AI will replace legions of workers, help researchers discover life-saving drugs, enable companies to push into new markets and unleash vast efficiencies that will juice corporate profits for years to come. As a result, AI-related stocks have been responsible for much of the bull market that began in October 2022.

While AI is surely promising, it isn't generating much revenue relative to the cost. A recent Gallup poll found that only 4% of US workers use AI every day. More than two-thirds said they never do. Daron Acemoglu, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and MIT professor, has argued that common expectations around AI advances are overly optimistic. "The models we have right now are pretty impressive in some respects," he says. "They're still not usable broadly."