Signal President Calls Generative AI a 'Bubble,' Foresees Nvidia Market 'Dying for a Second'

Signal President Meredith Whittaker has labeled the generative AI craze as a bubble, warning that Nvidia's market could "die for a second" as investor enthusiasm wanes.

Signal President Warns of AI 'Bubble'

One could call the current frenetic dash to create generative AI a long-term opportunity, while others would call it an "arms race." But for some, it's just a temporary bubble.

"I think this generative AI moment is definitely a bubble," Wired was informed by Meredith Whittaker, president of communications app Signal. "You cannot spend a billion dollars per training run when you need to do multiple training runs and then launch a fucking email-writing engine. Something is wrong there."

AI Sector May Reach a Tipping Point

So, to paraphrase Whittaker, the sector will reach a tipping point when the amount of money being invested does not correspond to the production, according to Business Insider.

When major tech companies like AOL invested billions in artificial intelligence (AI) earlier this month with little to show for it, investors' worries showed up in the stock market. Despite the departure of prominent researchers from OpenAI, who are worried that the company is pushing artificial general intelligence (AGI) too far, investors are still pouring money into the industry leader.

Whittaker isn't sure when the bubble will pop, but she's putting her money on the American chipmaker Nvidia, which is driving a lot of the AI work, to show the first signals.

Nvidia’s Market Valuation Hits $3 Trillion

"I do think you're going to see a market drawdown. Nvidia's market cap is going to die for a second," she claimed. According to Yahoo Finance, Nvidia's market valuation is now just over $3 trillion, surpassing both Alphabet and Amazon earlier this year.

In any case, she stressed the importance of AI industry regulation.

"Things like structural separation, where we begin to separate ownership of the infrastructure from the application layer, would perturb these businesses," according to her. "I think meaningful privacy regulations could go a long way." Restricting the data collection capacity of firms and their ability to influence its future usage is one of these measures.

Regulation Could Address Surveillance Capitalism

The AI bubble, she argues, shouldn't stop us from addressing the problems with surveillance capitalism through regulation. "There's nothing natural about the paradigm that exists," she pointed out.