Michael Hiltzik: Artificial intelligence chatbots are spreading fast, but hype about them is spreading faster

Those of us who have spent the last few decades reporting on technology have seen fads and fashions rise and fall on investment bubbles.

In the late 1990s it was dot-com companies, more recently crypto, blockchain, NFTs, driverless cars, the "metaverse." All have had their day in the sun amid promises they would change the world, or at least banking and finance, the arts, transportation, society at large. To date, those promises are spectacularly unfulfilled.

That brings us to artificial intelligence chatbots.

Since last October, when I raised a red flag about hype in the artificial intelligence field, investor enthusiasm has only grown exponentially (as have public fears).

Wall Street and venture investors are pouring billions of dollars into AI startups — Microsoft alone made a $10-billion investment in OpenAI, the firm that produced the ChatGPT bot.

Companies scratching for capital have learned that they need only claim an AI connection to bring investors to their doors, much as startups typed "dot-com" onto their business plans a couple of decades ago. Nvidia Corp. has acquired a trillion-dollar market value