Remember, investment is for the future. It would seem riskier if progress was flat, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

What makes it seem like progress isn't flat?

Largely speaking across technological trends of the past 200 years, progress is nowhere near flat. 4 generations ago, the idea of talking with a person on the other side of the country was science fiction.

You might want to recheck your example. Four generations ago would be my great-grandfathers. They were my current age around 1920. The first transcontinental (not just cross-national!) telephone call took place in 1914.

The same way that NFTs of ugly cartoons apes were a multi-billion dollar industry for about 28 months.

Edit: People are downvoting this because they think "Hey, that's not right, LLMs are way better than non-fungible apes!" (which is true) but the money is pouring in for exactly the same reason: get the apes now and later you'll be rich!

It's not really like punters hoping to flip their apes to a greater fool. A lot of the investment is from the likes of Google out of their own money.

I don't think Softbank gave OpenAI $40 billion because they have a $80 billion business idea they just need a great LLM to implement. I think they are really afraid of getting left behind on the Next Big Thing That Is Making Everyone Rich.

true but AI replacing search has a much better chance of profitability than whatever value Nft’s were supposed to provide.

So just like any investment?

That's because it isn't. What's happening now is mostly executive fomo. No one wants to be left behind just in case AI beans turn out to be magic afterall...

As much as we like to tell a story that says otherwise, most business decisions are not based on logic but fear of losing out.