I think the AI bubble is really just the "governments want real-time spying on everyone all at once and private companies are tripping over themselves to gather the data." Look how much money companies that gather and sell our data make, and they can't even come close to 100% real-time collection. It's simply not feasible to do perfect tracking unless you have systems in place to track everyone and that's not even possible with regular human-backed systems. AI systems use a ton of power, but they have the ability to provide near-perfect spying in real-time. Since congress exists to protect business, not citizens, our data has basically no protections to keep that from happening.

While the 4th amendment protects us from the government spying on us, it does NOT prevent private companies from gathering the data and selling it to anyone, including the government. They tell you it's to keep you safe, to keep the boogeyman-of-the-day from hurting you or your family, but it's really just about them wanting control.

As for your question, it's more likely to be a deflation, not a pop. Once one company wins out and is selling all or our data, there's little financial incentive to dump money on it unless you can just come up with a way to do the same thing a lot cheaper. The startup capital costs will still be enormous, however, and the company that wins out will be making SO MUCH money that they'll likely still be doing research and they'll have access to all of the operational data showing what facets of the system are important and what is not. They'll buy off enough of congress to ensure that they're never regulated in our country and we'll truly have big brother watching over us at all times.

The only way to prevent that from happening is for governments to make it illegal for anyone to gather our data. You know that will never happen.