A bursting bubble would be great for AI

“Bubbles are great. May the bubbles continue,” Eric Schmidt, Google‘s former chief executive, recently said. For artificial intelligence to advance, companies must continue to pour record-breaking investments into A.I. infrastructure — or so the thinking goes. Build more data centers, and A.I. will find a cure for cancer, reach artificial general intelligence and beat China.

But progress usually happens under pressure. When energy gets expensive, people invent energy-saving methods. When there’s a worker shortage, they invent labor-saving machines. A…