Kevin Mayer, former CEO of TikTok and co-CEO of Candle Media, thinks the excitement surrounding artificial intelligence has reached a peak, with firm valuations looking “astronomical.”
Speaking to CNBC’s Karen Tso at the VivaTech conference in Paris on Friday, he stated that there is underlying value in AI, as demonstrated in past developments such as the metaverse and Blockchain, but warned of a “stabilization” of valuations.
“AI has capabilities that have not previously been seen and are quite valuable. But the hype cycle has been extreme,” Mayer stated.
“I think we’ll see a peak of that, of the hype within AI, the valuations, and everyone talking about how it’s gonna disrupt every single corner of our economic universe and personal lives.”
Since OpenAI’s ChatGPT was initially exposed to the world in November 2022, authorities and technology leaders have grown increasingly concerned about the risks associated with advanced AI systems. At the same time, the space has generated investor interest, resulting in much higher valuations in some situations. OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, and Mistral have raised billions of dollars from venture capitalists and received attention and investment from major IT companies like Microsoft and Amazon.
Some prominent voices have backed the technology and its growth in popularity. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is among them, telling CNBC in February that AI is more than just massive language models like ChatGPT. He also compared the current situation to the tech bubble that arose at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
However, Mayer told CNBC on Friday that it is “vastly overhyped already.”
“Too many companies are raising too much capital at exorbitant valuations. So there will be a stability. AI’s benefits will be seen in a variety of industries, but I believe the excitement is currently at an all-time high.
— CNBC’s Jesse Pound and Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.
Former TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer says AI hype is at an all-time fever pitch right now
