Jeremy Siegel: The AI Revolution Will Not Happen Overnight

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Siegel is skeptical that AI is quantitatively different from the continuous technological revolution experienced over the past 50 years.
The current market frenzy over AI technology won’t be anything close to the dot-com bubble, the economist says.

Economist Jeremy Siegel isn’t convinced that artificial intelligence will be as revolutionary as some expect but doesn’t consider the current market frenzy over the technology anything close to the dot-com bubble.

Siegel, a Wharton School finance professor emeritus and WisdomTree senior economist, spoke on a WisdomTree webcast last week, asking whether AI is quantitatively different from the continuous technological revolution society has experienced for the past 50 years.

“Is this a break, in other words, that is going to accelerate the replacement of people, disrupt entire industries?” he posited, and then answered, “I would say the jury is out on that. I may be one of the more skeptical that it is going to be a revolutionary change as we’ve never seen before.”

Society will see AI’s potential, as it did with the internet, and some people will have to find new work, but it’s uncertain now whether the technology will bring a break from history, Siegel said.

“A seismic shift at this point doesn’t really seem to me to be in the cards,” he said.

While the internet did change the world, Siegel noted that many of the industry’s big “first movers” were superseded or ceased to exist.

“What I’m saying is that there’s always a rotation that goes on. The first movers don’t always survive,” Siegel said.

While the AI frenzy may feel similar to the 1998-2000 dot-com bubble, today’s tech companies are different, he said.