Amazon's Cloud Boss Likens Generative AI Hype to the Dotcom Bubble

As CEO of Amazon's dominant cloud computing platform AWS, Adam Selipsky is one of the most powerful people in computing at a time when the industry is racing to adopt generative artificial intelligence. Although a fan of the technology, he also has a warning for anyone trying to make sense of the moment: Some AI companies at the center of the storm are massively overhyped. Selipsky likens the generative AI rush to the early days of the dotcom bubble, when expectations spread that the internet would transform many industries almost overnight. Although in the long term the internet was indeed transformative, in the short term many projects came to nothing, and swathes of Silicon Valley companies went bust. "If you go back to, say, 1997 and you ask, 'Was the internet underhyped or overhyped?' I would argue it was underhyped," says Selipsky, who spoke with WIRED during a conference at Harvard Business School on February 4. "But if you then ask, 'Were the companies who were the leaders then dramatically overhyped?' Yes, they were."