The Trillion-Dollar AI Hallucination
Computerworld, Monday, June 22nd, 2026
AI infrastructure spending is fueling memory shortages and consumer price hikes amid unsustainable economics.
Memory suppliers redirecting manufacturing toward AI servers are causing RAM shortages, pushing 2026 PC shipments down 10.4% and smartphones down 8.4% while prices rise.
AI firms face broken business models, with users burning thousands in monthly tokens as Anthropic and OpenAI weigh price cuts and banks see little return on $1 billion in AI experiments.
An AI tax is hitting hardware makers, raising console and device prices.
Apple pursues on-device edge AI through partnerships and acquisitions, and as edge AI matures, expensive cloud AI infrastructure risks obsolescence before turning a profit.