Which would you rather back with your money: artificial intelligence or natural stupidity? Do you stand with Demis Hassabis — a Nobel prizewinner and chief executive of the AI researcher Google DeepMind, who last week expressed cautious optimism that AI “will be ten times bigger than the industrial revolution” — or the losers venting cheap cynicism online?

Several pessimists said I was too late and predicted doom. Some of them might have felt justified, briefly, when the arrival of DeepSeek, China’s AI champion, wiped nearly $1 trillion off American tech giants’ stock market value last January. It’s early days yet, but those Microsoft shares were trading at $525 on Wednesday and are now the ninth most valuable holding in my 50-stock forever fund, so I really mustn’t grumble.

Less happily for society as a whole, it remains unclear whether the commercialisation of AI will lead to the “radical abundance” predicted by Hassabis or mass unemployment. Here and now, Alphabet (GOOGL) is extending its AI search facility to Britain this month, after launching in America and India.

Unlike conventional Google, which has proved so successful that its brand has entered the language as a verb, Google AI can answer complex questions at length and in plain English, instead of providing a list of links.

Never mind, for now, that this business is essentially disrupting itself, with some advertisers grumbling that fewer folk are linking through to them than they did before. Google had to go higher up the AI ladder to avoid being rendered obsolete by ChatGPT, one of the most successful app launches ever. There’s no need to take my word for this, Google AI reports that its rival ChatGPT “achieved a remarkable feat by reaching 100 million users in just two months after its November 2022 launch”.

• Google has signalled the death of googling. What comes next?

Unfortunately for investors, ChatGPT is owned by OpenAI, a company that is not listed on a stock exchange. Fortunately, news that Microsoft had invested $10 billion in its unlisted Californian technology competitor in January was enough to prompt this small DIY investor to take the plunge and buy a stake in the future via Microsoft.

The company combines long-established streams of revenue — including the world’s most popular desktop operating system, Microsoft Windows, plus PowerPoint and Word — with substantial exposure to capital growth in future, through its stake in OpenAI and ChatGPT.

Microsoft’s modest dividend yield of 0.63 per cent has increased an eye-stretching annual average of 17 per cent over the past five years, according to LSEG, formerly the London Stock Exchange Group.

Dividends are not guaranteed and can be cut or cancelled without notice. However, if that rate of ascent could be sustained, it would double shareholders’ income in less than four and a half years. So this investor, who hopes to fund an enjoyable retirement, sees it as a relatively safe each-way bet.

By contrast, my biggest technology shareholding, Apple (AAPL), has largely failed so far to make the AI trend its friend. Worse still, most iPhones are made in China, and so this business is extremely exposed to the unpredictable trade war between America and China, causing Apple’s share price to plunge 12.5 per cent since the start of this year.

That plucked it off the top slot in my forever fund, pushing it down to third place by value. But, having originally invested in Apple at $23.75 in February 2016, as reported here at that time, allowing for a subsequent stock split, I remain sanguine about these shares, which were trading at about $212 on Wednesday.

One reason is that I suspect Apple Vision Pro, an augmented reality (AR) headset, has been widely misunderstood. This company has long-established success in selling technology to people who aren’t that keen on technology, so I think Apple may be first to achieve commercial success with AR — which enhances the real world by overlaying graphics and information — when the price comes down and the choice of apps goes up.

This would be a good time to confess that my cerebral software dates from the 1950s. So I can’t claim to understand the more technical aspects of these trends, which was why I began my exposure to this sector with an investment trust more than a decade ago.

Polar Capital Technology (PCT) shares were trading at 43p each, allowing for subsequent stock split, when I transferred them from a paper-based broker in September 2013. They were trading at £3.97 on Wednesday and may have further to go. Better still for bargain-hunters, shares in the £5.1 billion fund continue to be priced 10 per cent below their net asset value. Fund management charges of 0.8 per cent seem reasonable for professional stock selection in a sector where older investors may struggle to keep up with the pace of innovation.

• Read more money advice and tips on investing from our experts

For example, when I worked in the City office of another newspaper, three people were employed in the library just to collate clippings about companies listed on the stock exchange. Now all that information, and much more, is available on my mobile.

Returning to where we began, I take contrarian comfort from the fact that many critics claim AI is all hype. As I may have pointed out before, perennial pessimism is an easy way to simulate wisdom about the stock market, but it ain’t the way to make money.

Exposure to Musk is a must-have

Space is the final frontier for new technology, and few have gone there more boldly, albeit by proxy, than the eccentric billionaire Elon Musk. Even if you wouldn’t dream of getting into one of his rockets, with their star-studded passenger lists, there is good reason to consider gaining exposure to Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, as an investment.

Musk’s antics with the equally eccentric President Trump may have distracted attention from the fact that SpaceX has lifted more than 8,000 satellites into low earth orbit. This has already extended the internet to parts of our planet that were previously offline. Most importantly, from a commercial point of view, if data capacity can be expanded sufficiently, SpaceX and its Starlink wi-fi subsidiary could eventually replace every internet service provider on Earth.

Coming down from the clouds of technical speculation, small investors willing to accept high risks can gain a ground-level stake in SpaceX via a handful of investment trusts holding these unlisted shares. To be specific, just more than 14 per cent of Edinburgh Worldwide’s £770 million assets is invested in two tranches of SpaceX stock. I paid £1.52 an Edinburgh Worldwide share in January 2024. It has been a bumpy ride, as you might expect, and there are no dividends, but I am happy to hang on to shares trading at £1.94 on Wednesday.

Drawing inspiration from the Spitfire that flew over my head a few moments ago, I am reminded of the Royal Air Force motto, per ardua ad astra, which means through adversity to the stars. Perhaps even more appropriately, this small shareholder could say: “Beam me up, Musky!”