On the edge | Law of history?

The Industrial Revolution was not as cheerful for everyone involved as it appears in this 19th century engraving. Photo: Imago Despite wars, inflation and industrial overproduction, stock market prices have risen to lofty heights. The reason is speculation on artificial intelligence, which not only causes stock prices to rise, but also the production of the “real economy”. US companies' investments in IT currently account for around half of US economic growth.

The big question being debated on the world financial markets is whether there is a speculative bubble that will burst at some point. The answer to this question depends on whether the expectations reflected in the stock market prices will also be realized, i.e.: Will AI attract such high demand that the trillions invested in its development will be worthwhile? The analysis firm Gartner is skeptical. AI sales from the corporate and private customer sectors would probably “not be sufficient to achieve profitable returns on all planned AI investments during this period.”

Will AI be worth it? That is the question for investors. The subsequent question for wage earners is whether AI will increase their labor productivity to such an extent that masses of jobs will become capitalistically superfluous. Kai-Fu Lee, former president of Google China, thinks this is conceivable. He sees a “fundamental threat from automation: public unrest caused by widespread unemployment and grotesque inequality.”

So is there a risk of the AI ​​bubble bursting, a crisis plus mass misery? Most economists wave it off: no danger! Her justification for this is remarkable. Firstly, there is no AI bubble, as a lot is being invested, but not as much as in previous boom phases such as the Internet euphoria of the 1990s or the British railway boom of the 19th century. “The current investment cycle does not appear to be exaggerated,” says Commerzbank. Secondly, the warning of mass unemployment is countered with historical comparisons: "Never in modern history has technological progress affected the overall demand for human labor," writes the British "Economist." And Neil Thompson from the US bank Goldman Sachs says: "Previous waves of automation created many new jobs, which offers a certain level of reassurance."

The argument shows the entire helplessness of economic expertise, which relies less on economic connections than on accepted laws of history according to the motto: Things used to work well! All differences between railways, steam engines, the Internet or AI as well as between the different phases of capitalism are eliminated - ultimately, according to economists, history repeats itself again and again. This fiction does not give them faith in the controllability of capitalist events, but at least in their predictability.

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