Artificial Intelligence: Surfing the Next Big Wave in Tech

Artificial intelligence hype has reached a peak in recent months with the growth of chatbots and programs like ChatGPT, Bard, and Bing Chat, among thousands of others. ChatGPT alone is approaching 1 billion users a month and had a 54.21% traffic increase in May 2023. The growth of this revolutionary technology has commenced a paradigm shift that has rippled across the economy, prompting industries to implement AI strategies. 

Impact on the Global Economy

Globally, according to Goldman Sachs, the consequence of this could be a 7% increase in global GDP, amounting to nearly $7 trillion, and a 1.5 percentage point increase in productivity rate. Furthermore, 300 million full-time jobs in the global economy will be exposed to automation. Of the nearly 900 occupations that the bank examined two-thirds were susceptible to yielding a quarter or half of their workload to AI. However, such technology may potentially create just as many new occupations as those that are automated. This is evidenced by the statistic that nearly 60% of today’s jobs didn’t exist in 1940, suggesting that a significant portion of employment growth is technology-driven. Although, this idea that AI will create new positions depends on the assumption that the past predicts the future. This may not be the case, especially given the potential of artificial intelligence and its more powerful, theoretical older brother, AGI.

Opportunities for Businesses

AI appears to be the next wave of global enterprise innovation, following the establishment of the internet, mobile phones, and cloud computing. Thus, this era of artificial intelligence poses significant changes for software, healthcare, financial services industries, and countless others as well. Businesses in these areas have positioned themselves to take advantage of this technology, as demonstrated by tech giants rolling out their own generative AI applications. Smaller startups and software companies are leveraging these technologies to improve customer retention and expand or improve SaaS product offerings. This has been achieved by…

1. 1. Launching new applications and products
   2. Upselling AI-integrated products for a premium
   3. Gradually increasing prices as products are added with AI-features

The aforementioned Goldman Sachs article mentions, “GS Research estimates the total addressable market for generative AI software to be $150 billion, compared with $685 billion for the global software industry.” This market is profound and will likely grow rapidly should the technology continue to advance at its current pace. 

Opportunities for Investors

The number of use cases of AI is too many to count, spanning from AI-powered tax apps to AI legal advisors to automated teachers. The hype around artificial intelligence has proven itself to not be completely unfounded, and the technology has significant long-term prospects. As such, a long-term investment opportunity has presented itself. This comes amid discussions of entering a bull market as the S&P 500 is up 20% from October 2022 lows, which was largely supported by tech stocks such as Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, Meta, Google, and Microsoft. These companies along with others such as Palantir are primed to benefit from the long-term growth of AI; however, ETFs will allow for broader exposure to the entirety of the industry. Such investment vehicles, including the likes of QQQ, SPY, ARKQ, BOTZ, ROBO, and XT, track major companies and players within the S&P 500, Nasdaq, or the robotics and automation field.   This investment playing field will continue to evolve as the market flushes out the winners and losers. As such, investors should tread carefully to avoid being sucked into the hype since this technology is not immune from speculative bubbles and is no different from blockchain, crypto, and the metaverse in this regard.