The AI Industry Is Built on a Big Unproven Assumption (1)

The AI boom has many people asking scary questions like, “Is this technology going to take my job, and if so, how soon?” Some accountants are asking their own frightening question: “Are tech companies improperly calculating the depreciation cycles of graphics processing units?”

Although this one doesn’t have the same existential ring to it, answering the question could go a long way toward understanding the financial sustainability of the artificial intelligence market.

Photographer: Felix Decombat for Bloomberg Businessweek

GPUs, the chips used to train and run the most advanced large language models, are one of the biggest costs for AI companies. Most of them are ...