📈 The business of AI: My interview with technology analyst and investor Azeem Azhar

My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world:

Artificial intelligence is expected to transform the economy, but what about the AI industry itself? Companies across the AI supply chain are now valued in the trillions of dollars. But do the data and current demand justify such lofty expectations, or are investors getting ahead of reality? And when will the AI economy finally begin to live up to the hype?

Today on Faster, Please!—The Podcast, I am joined by Azeem Azhar, a Digital Fellow at Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab, the founder of Exponential View, a research platform focused on helping leaders understand emerging technologies and their impact on society. He is also the author of The Exponential Age and the co-author of The State of the AI Economy, one of the first serious attempts to measure the size and trajectory of the AI economy from the demand side and know what customers are actually paying for.

We discuss where the AI economy stands today, why businesses are still struggling to realize AI’s full potential, who stands to capture the greatest gains from the technology, and the roles different countries could play in the “AI Race” between the United States and China.

In This Episode:

* The AI Economy (0:44)

* AI’s Return on Investment (6:40)

* Will AI Bring an Entrepreneurial Wave? (12:41)

* When AI Hits the Bottom Line (17:53)

* Who Wins the AI Economy? (23:48)

* Europe in the AI Race (30:20)

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation will appear in my Week in Review issue on Saturday. (Another option is using the Substack auto transcript function.)