The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday, July 15, edition that the economy of the future is facing challenges, highlighted by IBM's Black Tuesday, the worst trading day in the company's 115-year history. The Globe's Tim Shufelt writes that IBM's shares plummeted 25 per cent to $217.07 (U.S.), wiping out nearly $70-billion (U.S.) in market value in minutes. As a software provider to the artificial intelligence ecosystem, IBM's nosedive says a lot about how the limitless potential of artificial intelligence is colliding with physical constraints. There is a worsening global shortage of memory chips, causing prices to soar as cloud providers and data centre operators scramble for supplies. IBM was surprised by the swift shift in corporate spending priorities, leading to reduced budgets for the enterprise software it offers as the competition for storage and memory intensifies. The memory supply crunch is causing significant disruptions, leading to consumer inflation, turmoil in the electronics industry -- described by Apple's Tim Cook as a "hundred-year flood" -- and a reshuffling in financial markets. The scale of the AI buildout is leaving plenty of unintended consequences in its wake.