I think your point about being too far gone into the business model is right. But directors and investors should be asking the question, regardless. Point taken on Amazon, I was only pointing it out as a comp. whose business model called for massive capital investment for their larger aims.
Fair; my point is where the comparison breaks is Amazon had a path to profitability — build it to scale basically. AI has already been shoved in every corner of the internet and still can’t make money. It’s been stringing investors along on “R&D will release magic soon” but signs point to no.
That’s a good point. Even as an online bookseller, you can argue Amazon would have been profitable. I think what they’ve become, outside of Bezos, his management team, and probably a select group of private equity investors, was completely outside the scope of what we could imagine.
The cost structure required (or at least that were told is required) of AI doesn’t seem sustainable at all to me. But it certainly seems to me like something the tech industry at large and its investor base are full systems go on.
Investors are in on it because from the mid 20th century until ~2020 the law held that hardware improvements meant whatever tech was up to would sort itself out eventually; this created a perception that it’s a land of wizards who will always innovate. People don’t realize the party is over.