New Delhi, Oct. 9 -- Every major technological boom attracts sceptics. Today, that chorus is growing louder around artificial intelligence (AI). Critics are right about one thing: there is excess. Accounting tricks, circular investments and heroic revenue projections all deserve scrutiny. But the mistake is to assume that financial excess equals technological emptiness.

To confuse the investor story with the innovation story is to misunderstand how value is now created and where it truly resides.

Noise versus the signal: The financial system around AI contains a rising number of excesses that would have been unacceptable to regulators or markets in bygone eras.

Capital moves in loops: a large company invests billions in a partner, at t...