Late last month, Goldman Sachs published a remarkable, 32-page report wondering aloud whether all the investment in AI is worth it.
It asked, “GenAI: too much spend, too little benefit?” and placed a skeptical interview with MIT economist Daron Acemoglu right at the top. In the conversation, Acemoglu questioned the scaling laws boosted by GenAI research labs and said he doubted any transformative applications of the technology would take hold within the next decade.
Goldman knew exactly what it was doing. As money’s flooded into GenAI projects — funding chips, model training, startups, and big tech companies — it’s been somewhat heretical to ask whether (or when) the investment would net a return.