Weekend reading: Is AI a Boom, a Bubble or just Business as usual?

Value Creation Plan Newsletter #112

Here are some good reads to decode what is going on in AI ... and sound smart at your next dinner party:

💡 The Economist’s View
Azeem Azhar (Exponential View) offers a balanced essay in “Is AI a bubble?”, arguing that “genAI remains in a demand-led, capital-intensive boom rather than a bubble.” He cautions, though, that booms can sour quickly and recommends staying vigilant.
Link


🧗 The Builder’s View
Daniel Hulme (cofounder Faculty.AI, now Chief AI at WPP) compares the AI cycle to climbing a mountain: steep, painful, but full of hidden riches. “Technologies DO become overvalued... but that’s how progress works.” The takeaway: hype is a feature, not a bug - if you’re actually building.
Link


🎭 The Cultural View
Joshua Rothman (The New Yorker) dives into how AI is reshaping art, creativity, and meaning in his fascinating essay “AI Is Coming for Culture”
His reflection: “The danger isn’t that machines will replace us - it’s that we’ll start creating like them.” As AI floods the world with infinite imitation, the real challenge becomes keeping human imagination original, intentional, and alive. Link


💰 The Market View
Ian Harnett (Absolute Strategy Research) warns in the FT that AI firms are increasingly “doing deals between themselves, inflating valuations, and buying each other’s products.” It’s a familiar dance of excess capex, vendor financing, and balance sheets stretched thin.
Link

The band is still playing, but no one knows when the lights will come up.

Enjoy the weekend,

Juan

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