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When the artificial intelligence sector’s overwhelmingly dominant chipmaker, Nvidia, announced quarterly results this week, many took this as a reason for confidence in the economic future of AI. Not me. My primary reflex, in fact, was fear.

On their face, Nvidia’s results were unambiguously spectacular. Reported net profit doubled from a year ago to roughly $60 billion, compared with $6.2 billion just three years ago. The company’s revenues have doubled accordingly, soaring to $96.22 billion. Although it is already the world’s largest company in terms of its $5 trillion-plus stock market value, Nvidia said that it expected next fiscal year’s revenues to rise by a further 70 percent.

When the artificial intelligence sector’s overwhelmingly dominant chipmaker, Nvidia, announced quarterly results this week, many took this as a reason for confidence in the economic future of AI. Not me. My primary reflex, in fact, was fear.

On their face, Nvidia’s results were unambiguously spectacular. Reported net profit doubled from a year ago to roughly $60 billion, compared with $6.2 billion just three years ago. The company’s revenues have doubled accordingly, soaring to $96.22 billion. Although it is already the world’s largest company in terms of its $5 trillion-plus stock market value, Nvidia said that it expected next fiscal year’s revenues to rise by a further 70 percent.

I am not rooting here for a comeuppance for Nvidia. Whatever I might think of AI as an intellectual problem or public policy matter, my pocketbook, like that of many millions of Americans (and others) who now own small portions of the company as direct shareholders or as retirement account and fund investors, depends on it sustaining its value. Beyond personal finance, though, as a global financial danger, Nvidia’s outsized heft has become a big and multidimensional problem.

In the narrowest terms, our sudden collective Nvidia dilemma is almost child’s play to describe. Nvidia’s chips are expensive and in extremely high demand, but the companies buying them may not........

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