Wall Street is hyping AI. This fund manager is betting instead on fires, HVAC and Berkshire Hathaway.

A Heartland Advisors co-portfolio manager is pushing back against Wall Street's enthusiasm for artificial intelligence, arguing that investors may be better served by looking at businesses that can eventually adopt AI tools as their costs decline — rather than the companies selling the technology itself. The manager points to less glamorous areas such as fire protection, HVAC and Berkshire Hathaway as examples of where value may reside.

The argument rests on a familiar distinction: the firms building AI infrastructure attract most of the attention, while the potential beneficiaries are often unglamorous industrial and service businesses that could use the same tools to improve efficiency once they become cheaper and more widely available.

For investors, the takeaway is less about picking winners than about framing. The debate highlights questions worth watching: how quickly AI costs actually fall, whether adoption translates into measurable margin gains, and whether valuations in AI-linked names already reflect years of expected growth.