For months there have been fears that artificial intelligence is a bubble and that it is about to burst.

As the Guardian US tech editor Blake Montgomery explains, the magnificent seven – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla – make up one-third of the value of the S&P 500, the index of the 500 biggest stocks in the US market. All are heavily invested in AI.

Never before has so much of the economy been dependent on one technology. And despite the trillions of dollars invested, AI is yet to show a way it can sustainably turn over profits.

So what happens, asks Nosheen Iqbal, if one day the faith falters, the money stops coming in and the bottom falls out?