AI: Victors and Carnage

Winners will emerge from the Artificial Intelligence (AI) boom, but there will be "carnage along the way", the boss of a US tech giant has warned.

Chuck Robbins, chairman and chief executive of Cisco Systems, told the BBC the technology will be "bigger than the internet", but the current market is probably a bubble and some companies "won't make it".

Cisco, one of the world's leading technology companies, is behind some of the critical IT infrastructure enabling day-to-day use of AI.

Robbins said some jobs will be changed, or even "eliminated", by AI, particularly in areas like customer services where companies will need "fewer people", but urged workers to embrace, not fear, the technology.

His comments follow a series of warnings over the recent surge in investment in AI, with some claiming the sector amounts to a bubble set to burst, rocking markets and bankrupting companies.

The BBC has been told of similar concerns by leading figures in finance and tech. JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon said some of the money invested in AI would "probably be lost", while Google parent company Alphabet's chief executive Sundar Pichai said there was some "irrationality" in the AI boom.

Sceptics compare the supposed bubble to the dotcom boom and bust of the late 90s.

Cisco was the world's most valuable company in the year 2000, but saw its value fall by 80% when the dotcom bubble burst.

It has since rebuilt, and now partners with firms such as Nvidia, providing the essential infrastructure underpinning AI.

Despite having £1.3bn in orders in the current quarter alone, Robbins is alive to comparisons with the dotcom collapse.

- Authors: Faisal Islam, Economics editor and Oliver Smith, Business reporter (BBC)