Is AI a Trillion-Dollar Bubble or a World-Changing Juggernaut?

As October began, The Washington Post business columnist Bethany McLean cited these two seemingly contradictory quotes about the future of AI:

“AI could eventually cure cancer, end poverty, and even bring world peace.”
— Anthropic founder Dario Amodei (on his blog one year ago)

And:

“The amount of money being spent is not proportionate to the money that’s coming in.”
— Dr. Sasha Luccioni, AI researcher at Hugging Face (talking to The New York Times)

Then, she reminded readers that “Two things can be true at the same time. Bets…