AI has all the same markers of a the dot com bubble and eventually venture capital will dry up and many AI companies will go bust with a few remaining that make something useful with an unmet niche.
If you're defining "successful" in the sense of people-making-a-lot-of-money I completely agree.
If you're talking about the internet in 2005 vs 2025, smartphones completely ruined the internet. At one point I had half my high school using HTML in their AIM profiles because they thought mine was cool.
Now kids can hardly even type on an actual, physical keyboard.
I'd argue that's because the tech wasn't there yet. Not the network or other web tech itself but rather the average-person-using-a-computer tech.
And, well, not all bubbles go as well as that. See the cryptocurrency one, say. Or any of a number of _previous_ AI bubbles.
The dotcom bubble was the "new economy", the old economy had changed forever and was dead. No one thought it was a bubble. Even when the bubble popped it took until 9/11 to wake us up from the mass hysteria.
I can't think of another "bubble" that practically everyone thinks we are in a bubble. To the point that I think many would find it irrational to believe we are not in a bubble. That is not what bubble is. A bubble is the madness of crowds, not the wisdom of crowds and the crowd certainly believes we are in a bubble.
Ehem - what is the difference compered to now? Wasn't programmers obsolete by 6mths ago and nobody would work so we do need UBI?
However your point that if everybody are thinking there is buble there is none is valid. Ironically your whole post undermine this point. And you are not alone in your analysis. General bubble wisdom is not settled as one might think.
Plus famous Alan Greenspan "irrational exuberance" was in 1996. And AFAIK in 1999 everybody know there is buble but it busted only in 2000. On top of that I have seen overlying plots of stock prices now and before dot com suggesting there is 1-2 years of increases still to go.
You're applying an arbitrary time constraint to the realization of AI's promise in order to rubbish it. This is a logical mistake common among critics: not yet, so never. It doesn't seem as if there is a near limit to the tech's development. Until that changes, the potential for job wipeouts and societal upheaval is real, whether in 5 or 50 years.
Very untrue, economy doesn't happen on online forums in echo chambers but out there. Every major company invests into AI however they can for the classical FOMO emotion.
This is how movers and decision makers think. No CEO thinks - this will crash, so lets invest into it massively and spread our company finances more thinly when the SHTF comes.
In fact outside of tech if the dotcom bubble wasn’t being discussed it’s because most folks—being not, or barely, online yet—weren’t paying any attention to it per se. The bubble they cared about was the broader stock market bubble, which was definitely widely perceived as a bubble.
The chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, famously made a speech warning of "irrational exuberance". It can't get much more direct than formal government warnings at the highest level.
It doesn't even significantly matter whether it's a bubble or not, but whether its a "bad" bubble.
I think Steve Eisman (of housing bubble fame) recently made the argument that it's probably a bubble, but it doesn't seem to have the hallmarks it would have to turn it into a crisis. e.g. no broad immediate exposure for the general populace (as in housing/crypto bubbles).
there are billions and billions of dollars invested in there -- it matter significantly to a lot of people.
the bubble popping may trash the US and possibly global economy. "it doesn't matter" has to be one of the worst AI takes I've seen...