In the prisoner’s dilemma, individuals who would do best by co-operating instead turn on one another, with less than optimal results. Something like that is playing out on a grand scale as giant technology companies such as Google parent Alphabet and Meta Platforms, both reporting earnings this week, duke it out for supremacy in artificial intelligence.
These so-called hyperscalers, part of a group that also includes Microsoft and Amazon, have gone all-in on servers and data centres used for cloud computing and large language models. By 2026 the foursome will have amassed nearly $1tn in capital expenditure over five years, based on consensus estimates from Visible Alpha.
