What are the threats to the $1trn artificial-intelligence boom?

“The risk AIAI AIAI AI of under-investing is dramatically greater than the risk of over-investing,” said Sundar Pichai, the boss of Alphabet, on an earnings call last week. He, like lots of executives nowadays, was talking about artificial intelligence (). More specifically, he was talking about building more data centres to serve the customers of the tech giant’s cloud-computing arm. The sums involved are eye-popping. Alphabet’s capital spending is expected to grow by about half this year, to $48bn. Much of that will be spent on -related gear.Mr Pichai is not alone. New Street Research, a firm of analysts, estimates that Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft will $104bn on building data centres this year. Add in spending by smaller tech firms and other industries and the total data-centre binge between 2024 and 2027 could reach $1.4trn.