It is a bubble.
A rather classic one, in fact.
And like every bubble before it, it will eventually burst.
That is the least interesting part of the story.
Now, some of you may conclude that I dislike artificial intelligence.
You could not be more mistaken.
I do not believe AI is inherently dangerous, unrealistic, or some passing technological curiosity destined for the museum of failed ideas. Quite the opposite. I believe it is one of the most consequential technologies humanity has ever developed.
What I question are the expectations.
More precisely, I question the astonishing business valuations and effortless profit projections that seem to accompany every major technological revolution. We have convinced ourselves that because a technology is transformative, every company associated with it must therefore become fantastically valuable.
History is considerably less generous.
Do you remember the dot-com bubble?
I certainly do.
I was working for an internet startup when the market finally collided with reality. Thousands of companies disappeared almost overnight. Mine among them. Billions upon billions evaporated as investors suddenly remembered that enthusiasm is not the same thing as profitability.
The internet boom deflated far more quickly than anyone believed possible.
For a while, many people concluded that the internet itself had been little more than a fashionable illusion.
They were spectacularly wrong.
The internet of the year 2000 was a slow, awkward, primitive skeleton compared with what surrounds us today. Looking back now, it almost feels prehistoric.
Back then I was teaching myself HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP because building a website meant understanding every moving part yourself.
A decade later I had largely stopped writing code from scratch. Content management systems had matured enough to make life dramatically easier.
Today I find myself writing code once again.
Everything has changed.
HTML and CSS now accomplish tasks that once demanded elaborate JavaScript workarounds. PHP has evolved into a vastly more capable language. Entire workflows that once consumed days can now be completed in hours.
And AI has become an extraordinarily capable companion for finding my way back into a craft I had partially left behind.
That alone tells me something important.
AI is not going away.
It will become more capable.
More accessible.
More deeply woven into everyday life.
In twenty years, we will probably look back on today’s systems with the same affectionate amusement that we reserve for dial-up internet connections and blinking websites from the late 1990s.
But none of that guarantees today’s valuations.
None of it guarantees that every AI company will survive.
None of it guarantees that investors will earn fortunes.
The current bubble will almost certainly leave a trail of bankruptcies, abandoned projects, broken promises, and spectacular financial losses.
That is simply how technological revolutions behave.
Speculation arrives first.
Reality arrives shortly afterwards.
The technology survives.
The mania rarely does.
And that is perfectly fine.
Progress has always left wreckage behind.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/27/tech-ceos-are-apparently-suffering-from-ai-psychosis/