Why would some of the most profitable companies in the world feel the need to load up on debt? Why would some of the most creditworthy companies in the world borrow money at a higher interest rate?

Back a couple of years or so ago, when the evidence of an AI bubble was just starting to accumulate, the standard rebuttal to skeptics broke down into two basic categories. One was that large language models were going to have such a huge impact and make so much money that a massive ROI was all but guaranteed.The second argument, specifically addressing the comparisons to the dot-com bubble, was that this time the capital expenditures were coming from some of the biggest and most successful companies in the world, run, almost universal belief had it, by some of the smartest people. Even if large language models turned out to be a commercial disaster worse than the metaverse, it's not like these companies would notice an extra $100 billion here and there.It was an enormously effective one-two punch of an argument: immense potential rewards, minimal risk. What's more, it was an argument that lots of people really, really wanted to believe (such as Ezra Klein of The New York Times, but…