Comment by missedthecue a day ago
Not even. Tulips were non-productive speculative assets. NFTs were what the tulip was. The AI buildout is more like the railroad mania in the sense that there is froth but productive utility is still the output.
Non sequitur of the day?
Anyone who owns shares in US companies (most people here) both are ‘going home with’ the companies involved, and are buying ‘the bags’.
Not to mention all the people buying the bonds used to fund the whole AI data center buildout, which is a ton of probably pension funds and old folks planning for retirement (also probably more than a few millionaire/billionaires!).
Tulips also grew and could be bred.
The actual underlying models of productive output for these AI tools is a tiny fraction (actually) of the mania, and can be trivially produced at massive quantity without the spend that is currently ongoing.
The big bubble is because (like with tulips back then), there was a belief in a degree of scarcity (due to apparent novelty) that didn’t actually exist.