DAMBISA MOYO
The rapid pace of technological advances over the past year, especially in artificial intelligence, has provided many reasons for optimism. But as we head into 2025, there are signs that AI’s momentum may be waning.
Since 2023, the dominant narrative has been that the AI revolution will drive productivity and economic growth, paving the way for extraordinary technological breakthroughs. PwC, for example, projects that AI will add nearly $16 trillion to global GDP by 2030 – a 14% increase. Meanwhile, a study by Erik Brynjolfsson, Danielle Li, and Lindsey R. Raymond estimates that generative AI could boost worker productivity by 14% on average and by 34% for new and low-skilled workers.
Recent announcements by Google and OpenAI seem to support this narrative, offering a glimpse into a future that not long ago was confined to science fiction. Google’s Willow quantum chip, for example, reportedly completed a benchmark computation – a task that would take today’s fastest supercomputers ten septillion years (ten followed by 24 zeros) – in under five minutes. Likewise, OpenAI’s new o3 model represents a major technological breakthrough, bringing AI closer to the point where it can outperform humans in any cognitive task, a milestone known as “artificial general intelligence.”
But there are at least three reasons why the AI boom could lose steam in 2025. First, investors are increasingly questioning whether AI-related investments can deliver significant returns, as many companies are struggling to generate enough revenue to offset the skyrocketing costs of developing cutting-edge models. While training OpenAI’s GPT-4 cost more than $100 million, training future models will likely cost more than $1 billion, raising concerns about the financial sustainability of these efforts.
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