India, Nov. 6 -- Big Tech is betting its future on bigger artificial intelligence (AI) data centres, with Alphabet disclosing more than $1 trillion in commitments. India is joining the spending frenzy, with the Adani group pledging $100 billion and Reliance $110 billion for AI infrastructure. These bets could become monuments to a disastrous assumption that growing demand for intelligence guarantees demand for the infrastructure being built today.

AI use will surely increase exponentially, but much of that intelligence will move into people's hands. Companies counting on keeping it centralised could become toast, and India should study what happened to earlier computing pioneers before buying its own toaster.

Exponential technologies be...