The pillars of AI are shaking beneath our feet

I've spent far too much of my life covering the rampant ascent of AI. A juggernaut of tech development, destined to change the world into some sort of sci-fi utopia (if you believe its advocates) or fated to come crashing down around our ears, taking a large chunk of the world economy with it. Or the end of the world as we know it, according to some.

And now, the pillars upon which the AI revolution sits seem to be shaking beneath it. The most recent tremors began with the wobbling of US AI-led tech stocks in mid-October, after a similar descent in China earlier this year. Then at the end of the month, while many tech companies reported huge amounts of revenue in their quarterly financial results, some AI tech share prices still slid under a black cloud of investor doubt.

None more so than Alphabet, the owner of Google. …