Is It All Over for Artificial Intelligence?

Take a look at the worst performing stocks of the past two weeks and they all have one theme in common: artificial intelligence.

You can trace the beginning of the move back to the Arizona crash by an Uber AI autonomous driven car that killed a pedestrian.

As all those who have studied chaos theory in mathematics, it's like the proverbial butterfly that flapped its wings in a Brazilian rain forest, which then triggered a typhoon in Japan.

Never mind that the pedestrian was jaywalking at night wearing dark clothes. AI is supposed to see this. My guess is that only a sensor failure could have caused the accident, a dud $5 part, which means it has nothing to do with AI.

This is the second autonomous driving death in three years. The last one, involving a Tesla Model S-1 in Florida, didn't see the back of a white truck while driving into the sun, and crashed into it, killing the driver.

And here is the problem if you are a trader or investor.

Autonomous driving has been a major theme in the entire tech sector for the past two years.

You can start with the car companies, Tesla (TSLA), Uber, and Google's (GOOGL) Waymo, and extend all the way out through the entire ecosystem.

That would include the chip makers, NVIDIA (NVDA), which is suspending its autonomous program, Intel (INTC), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and the chip equipment maker Lam Research (LRCX).

So, is it game over for these companies? Is it time to pick up our marbles and play elsewhere (there is nowhere else)?

I don't think so.

Let's look at the hard numbers involving automobile accidents. During the same three-year period that AI cars killed two people, human drivers killed a staggering 100,000, and left millions with injuries.

So there is absolutely no doubt that AI is the superior technology. AI-driven cars don't text while driving, drink, take drugs, drive while tired, overdo it with an afternoon of wine tasting in Napa Valley, or look down at their cell phones, as did the safety driver in the ill-fated Uber car in Phoenix.

AI is not just a self-driving car theme. It is permeating every aspect of the modern economy and will continue to do so at an accelerating pace. It is no one-hit wonder.

All that is happening now is that AI and tech stocks in general are backing off from grievously overbought conditions.

As we approach the next round of earnings reports in a month, the market focus rapidly will shift back from tedious and distressful technicals. That's when they will rocket again.

There is an old market term for the current state of technology stocks. It is known as a "Buying Opportunity."

I haven't been able to touch stocks I love for months because they were completing upward moves of 50% to 300% over the past two years.

They have just become touchable once again.

To watch the video of the Phoenix crash and the expression of the clueless safety driver, please click here.