Friday 26th June 2026 Please note this communication is not a research report and has not been prepared by NAB Research analysts. Read the full disclaimer here. Is artificial intelligence on track to save mankind, or is the relentless hype hiding a massive financial crash and an ultimate existential threat? This weekend Phil tackles these profound questions with BCA Research&#x27;s Chief Global Investment Strategist, Peter Berezin, following his controversial paper, “Boom Before Doom: The Terrifying Reason to Be Bullish on AI”. Drawing sharp parallels to the 2000 dotcom bust, Peter challenges the &quot;winner-take-all&quot; assumptions fueling today’s record data centre investments. He warns that computing power is rapidly becoming a commoditised, low-margin utility akin to historical railroads, canals, and airlines—destined to lose investors billions even as it reshapes society. But if the financial structural risks aren&#x27;t enough, the episode pivots to a chilling medium-term outlook: if first-mover tech giants fail to generate sustainable profits, what happens if they intentionally give AI models full autonomy over real-world infrastructure and corporate operations simply to slash human labour costs? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Weekend Edition: AI - Revolution, bubble or doomsday?

NAB Morning Call

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** NAB Morning Call

## Participants

- **Phil Dobbie** (NAB)
- **Peter Berezin** (BCA Research)

## Transcript

AI, will it be our saviour? It's already changing the way we work, but are we talking about something akin to the Industrial Revolution in terms of economic shift? Or is all the investment a bit of a bubble like the dot-com bubble? Or could it all grow so much that it actually becomes an existential threat to mankind? Or possibly all three of those things? That's this week. The Morning Call from NAB with Phil Dobbie The Weekend Edition

Now we should add that the views and ideas that you hear expressed on the Weekend Edition, unlike on our weekday podcast, do not necessarily represent the views of NAB. We're here just to investigate ideas and opinions from outside the bank. And with that in mind, a research report from BCA Research on AI recently forebodes that AI will advance so rapidly and become so powerful in the near term that it could end up destroying human beings.

In the medium to long term. Wow. The paper, Boom Before Doom, The Terrifying Reason to be Bullish on AI, was published back in May. Since then, we have seen tech stocks go down a bit. Well, except SpaceX, which is up about 35% or so since its float in there just a couple of weeks ago. Although it did have a bit of a retracement this week when they asked for even more money.

So should we be afraid of AI? And in the meantime, is it a bubble? Should we hold off investment? Or is it going to grow so rapidly we should all be ploughing money into it? Here's Peter Beresin. He's Chief Strategist for Global Investment Strategy at BCA Research, who are an independent investment research company.

Before we look at that doomsday scenario, is this thing going to level off the rate of growth? At the moment, it shows no sign of slowing. How long is this growth curve, at least for AI investment? We'll talk about what it's actually delivering. When does that slow down?

I don't think it slows down anytime soon. I think a good parallel is with the internet. Back in 2000, the prevailing wisdom was that internet traffic would grow exponentially and that companies such as Cisco would end up dominating the market.

The first of those predictions turned out to be correct. Traffic growth over the internet has been averaging around 42% for the last 26 years. So that's a cumulative increase of half a million percent.

The second prediction that the investment in internet infrastructure remains strong. That actually turned out to be false. As a share of GDP, internet infrastructure investment has actually gone down over time and hasn't gone up.

Yeah. So because we're doing more with less. So we've got that growth in the investment that enabled this big growth. I used to work in the telecoms industry around in the early 2000s. And yeah, a lot of money was being plowed into the industry. But the cost of that infrastructure has come down. There's been more competit...

Weekend Edition: AI - Revolution, bubble or doomsday?

Transcript

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Weekend Edition: AI - Revolution, bubble or doomsday?

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.