{"id":270605,"date":"2026-06-11T16:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T20:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/11\/friday-essay-despite-the-ai-hype-some-experts-warn-of-a-bubble-what-happens-if-it-pops\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T16:45:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T20:45:16","slug":"friday-essay-despite-the-ai-hype-some-experts-warn-of-a-bubble-what-happens-if-it-pops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/11\/friday-essay-despite-the-ai-hype-some-experts-warn-of-a-bubble-what-happens-if-it-pops\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday essay: despite the AI hype, some experts warn of a bubble \u2013 what happens if it pops?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday essay: despite the AI hype, some experts warn of a bubble \u2013 what happens if it pops?<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/theconversation.com\/friday-essay-despite-the-ai-hype-some-experts-warn-of-a-bubble-what-happens-if-it-pops-283903<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-06-11 16:11:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: theconversation.com<\/a><\/p>\n

In the last few years, the hype around artificial intelligence has become stratospheric. Riding a wave of venture capital, tech leaders promised us AI would revolutionise work, boost productivity and lead to incredible new breakthroughs. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, set a new record when it attained US$110 billion in investments several months ago \u2013 and its CEO, Sam Altman, recently claimed Australia could become a \u201cdata capital of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sky-high promises have been accompanied by sky-high investment in data centres, the sprawling server farms that power the training, execution, and maintenance of these models. A monstrous new hyperscale facility proposed for Sydney\u2019s west \u2013 1 gigawatt across 52 hectares \u2013 would rank among the world\u2019s biggest. It will join 162 existing centres and 90 in the works across Australia, which is projected to be the world\u2019s third largest data centre market by the early 2030s.<\/p>\n

But if AI backers are all in, public sentiment is far more mixed. A new study ranked Australia equal lowest on the scale of global AI sentiment, with 81% supporting stronger rules for how organisations use AI and 68% worried about losing control over decisions made by AI on their behalf.<\/p>\n

Grassroots movements against AI are growing. Last month, a \u201cStop the Slop\u201d event challenging the Sydney data centre was relocated to a larger venue due to high interest. It joins other campaigns like StopAI and PauseAI that aim to slow down data centre development, ask how AI is impacting jobs and the environment, and consider more equitable and sustainable alternatives. <\/p>\n

And in the last few months, videos have begun surfacing of students at commencement ceremonies booing speakers like former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, who speak in rapturous tones about \u201cstanding on the edge of technological transformation\u201d and how AI will touch \u201cevery profession\u201d, \u201cevery classroom\u201d, and \u201cevery relationship\u201d. <\/p>\n

Faith in these…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday essay: despite the AI hype, some experts warn of a bubble \u2013 what happens…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":270606,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/741156\/original\/file-20260610-57-awj9mm.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&rect=0%2C923%2C6192%2C3096&q=45&auto=format&w=1356&h=668&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-270605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270605"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270607,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270605\/revisions\/270607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}