As experts differ on AI trajectory, markets can only reflect collective expectations of the present

Within the span of a single conversation, one can hear sharply different versions of the future of artificial intelligence (AI). In one, executives at large IT services firms speak with quiet confidence about AI-assisted delivery expanding margins and deepening client relationships.

In another, engineers wonder whether they are training the very systems that might one day replace them. Both views can be true. And that is precisely the problem for investors trying to price the impact of artificial intelligence. Markets, after all, do not struggle with change so much as with uncertainty.