For more than a year now, all investors and businessmen have been watching the development of the artificial intelligence industry with open-mouthed wonder. They seemed to be caught in some kind of gold rush. However, if a few months ago, AI itself and its development looked rather mysterious, the true state of affairs has recently become a bit clearer. It seems that 2024 will be a watershed year for the AI industry, as leading business representatives have already begun to realize what AI is capable of. 

Not to be baseless, let’s take the most recent earnings data from Microsoft and Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Alphabet reported very strong quarterly results: this year’s revenue exceeded last year’s figure by 13 percent and amounted to USD 86.2 billion. The very next day after the data was released, the company’s shares fell by more than 7 percent. Similarly, Microsoft reported that its net profit grew by 33 percent, after which its shares also fell, although only by 2 percent. 

“We’ve gotten very frothy very quickly,” says Mark Shmulik, an analyst at Bernstein. Some investors and analysts have analogized AI to the early internet, which puts a lot of weight on the shoulders of AI companies. “But we’ve already lived through a few of these cycles, with crypto and the metaverse, that we’ve discarded quickly.”