Nokia CEO Justin Hotard says investment in AI is unlikely to slow down because the technology is in the middle of a “super cycle.”
Hotard spoke with CNBC on Thursday and was asked about the prospects for investing in AI.
“I think this has been a secular growth trend for many years,” Hotard said. “The reason I say that is because if you look at what we’re doing today in AI, we’re using LLMs extensively for language-based applications.”
“Autonomous vehicles are still in the early days of penetration. Augmented and virtual reality, smart glasses. Very low penetration. Robotics. Very low penetration. There are so many applications coming that I think we are really in the early days,” he continued.
Hotard took over as CEO of Nokia in April. Prior to Nokia, he was executive vice president and general manager of the Intel Data Center & AI Group.
Hotard told CNBC on Thursday that AI has created a “huge demand around building the network.” He added that people take a short-term view when they describe AI as a bubble.
“Yes, we had an internet bubble, but even if you look at that over a two-, three- or five-year period, you see that bubble burst, and then you see enormous growth way above where the bubble was,” he said.
“It is difficult for me to predict what exactly will happen in the AI field on a quarterly or annual basis, but I think the long-term prospects are huge,” he added.
Hotard’s representatives at Nokia did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Meta’s former president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said in an interview with CNBC on Oct. 15 that AI has “certainly some pretty significant characteristics of what looks like a bubble.”
Clegg served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2015. He joined Meta in 2018 and left the social media giant in January.
“There’s just kind of an absolute spasm of almost daily, hourly trading. Of course, you kind of have to think, ‘Oh wow, this could be a correction,'” Clegg said of AI investments.
Tech companies have poured billions of dollars into their AI investments. In September, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company would spend at least $600 billion on data centers and infrastructure in the United States through 2028.
Zuckerberg told the “Access” podcast in an episode aired Sept. 18 that while an AI bubble is “entirely possible,” he would rather err on the side of caution and overinvest rather than underinvest.
“If we end up wasting a couple hundred billion dollars, I think that’s obviously going to be very unfortunate. But what I would say is I actually think the risk is higher on the other side,” he said.
