The world’s biggest tech companies are spending billions to compete in the AI race, but what does the future look like beyond the finish line?
A quarter of a century ago, the world watched as the emergence of the internet infringed on almost every aspect of modern life. What was, at first, laughed off as a fad for nerds fast became the most lucrative advancement of the time. Those that embraced internet integration cashed in and those that resisted were left in the dust.
It should, then, come as no surprise that since the invention of the internet, the biggest tech companies in the world have been funnelling extreme amounts of money, time and resources into being the first to find the next big thing. The next paradigm shifting piece of tech to absorb into modern life.
Examining the numbers, it is clear that the horse to place your bet on in the tech race is Artificial Intelligence, or A.I.
A.I. on its own is something that we are already seeing – Google; X, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Meta and many more tech giants have been integrating their own A.I. systems into their products for a while now. What we mean when we discuss the A.I. race is the competition to create a ‘Super-Intelligence’ – in short, an A.I. that can improve upon its own code, and as a result surpass human knowledge and ability.
Based on their own financial disclosures, in 2025, Meta spent $30.7bn USD on A.I. development, with Mark Zuckerberg reportedly offering $100m USD in bonuses to experts in the field. Amazon’s spending was reported to be around $55bn USD and Microsoft spent $30bn USD on data centres in this quarter alone. Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that tech’s A.I. industry is now valued at $400bn USD. Putting that figure into perspective, it totals more than estimated spending on the education sector in the U.S. and the U.K. last year combined.
With that in mind, what effect is this race for A.I. having on our current society, and, if we succeed in developing a ‘Super-Intelligence,’ what will the world look like after that?
Right now, graduates across the western world are experiencing one of the most challenging job markets in recent history. In the U.K, the leading job board Indeed reported a 33% decrease in roles advertised for graduates over the last five years, combined with a disappearance of mid-level corporate jobs. U.S. graduates seem to be reporting a similar experience, with a graduate unemployment rate of 5.3%, the worst it has been since 2015.
While it is important to note that these are trends and, standing alone, don’t show that A.I. development is specifically to blame for the declining job market, it does suggest that the developments are emerging at a very difficult time, and, if A.I. companies succeed in their quest to build super-intelligent, self-improving programmes, the issues we are seeing emerge within the job market will likely only be exacerbated. The International Monetary Fund, for example, suggested that 60% of jobs in societies like the U.S. and the U.K. are likely to be at risk of A.I. exposure.
Combine this with the environmental impact of the enormous data centres necessary for the maintenance of A.I; the reported effect that interacting with A.I. on a regular basis can have on a human psyche, increased accounts of political bias and misinformation, and reports of A.I. acting maliciously in corporate environments, as it stands right now, the future beyond that finish line is looking a little bleak.
With all of this being said, it is important to understand that, though industry giants like Microsoft, Meta, Google and Amazon are splashing the cash on A.I. development, when we discuss the possibilities of an Artificial Super-Intelligence, we are still talking in hypotheticals.
When you consider the tech industry’s history of over-excitement, you must consider that this huge investment in A.I. could just be another ‘bubble,’ comparable to the dot com bubble of the late 2000s.
During this dot com bubble, the Nasdaq lost almost 80% of its value due to over investment in fledgling internet companies, most of which turned out to be useless. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman seemed to suggest this may be re-occurring today with AI, saying “When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth… are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes.”
Bubble or no bubble, a future with A.I. is, at this stage, certain. But with all this information, it seems the development may be moving faster than it can really hold up, and in order to ensure that future integration is as painless as possible, a lot of work must be done to examine the effects we can already observe, and mitigate the impacts so it doesn’t worsen the issues that we already face.
Image courtesy of 8machine via Unsplash.
