War for superintelligence: Are the huge investments in AI unprecedented?

Are the enormous numbers being thrown into AI unprecedented?

Last week, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg said he would rather risk “mis-spending a couple of hundred billion dollars” than be late to the artificial intelligence (AI) race. Read that again: He said a couple of hundred billion. The cavalier manner in which Mr Zuckerberg is willing to admit the possibility that a sum of that size might be wasted in pursuit of superintelligence is a reminder of the scale at which investment in the sector is being made at the moment — as well as why an increasing number of people believe that AI is a bubble.