GoKawiilAmazon founder Jeff Bezos shrugged off concerns of a looming artificial intelligence bubble on Wednesday, telling CNBC that the massive investments will ultimately help push the technology forward in the long run.
"Even if it does turn out to be a bubble, you shouldn't worry about it because the bubble is driving investment and a lot of the investment is going to turn out to be very healthy," Bezos told CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin in an interview on "Squawk Box."
Record valuations and deals driven by hefty investments in AI have fueled the AI boom, leading some to wonder if it's the makings of a bubble that will eventually burst. Meanwhile, hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft and Google continue to invest billions on AI infrastructure, with spending expected to cross $700 billion this year.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has also warned investors may be "overexcited about AI." The ChatGPT maker, whose chatbot kickstarted the generative AI boom, has seen its valuation balloon to more than $850 billion and it's earmarked billions for data center development.
Bezos acknowledged that the excitement around AI has meant that "every experiment is getting funded," including potentially bad ideas.
"It's because investors at this moment haven't learned yet how to discriminate between good ideas and bad ideas, and that's OK, because the good ideas will pay for all of the losers," Bezos said. "So from a point of view of civilization, of society, these kinds of industrial cycles can actually be very healthy because they drive the technology forward."
Bezos, who stepped down as CEO of Amazon in 2021, likened the fervor around AI to the biotech bubble in the 1990s, when excitement around the technology led to a market frenzy, followed by a crash.
"A lot of investors lost money on certain things, but we still got to keep all the life-saving drugs that they had invented," Bezos said.