> Was dot-com a bubble? I don't know, if you were transported to peak 2000 hype, would you argue "you guys are in a bubble, and the internet impact on the economy will be no greater than that of the fax machine"?

I am old enough to remember this. As a young guy who was on BBSes and IRC, it was obvious to me that the Internet was going to be huge. At the same time, it was obvious that the "dot com bubble" was a real problem. We had that story about Allbirds closing up shop and claiming to be an AI company and their stock went up 300% or whatever - those stories were everywhere in 2000. Companies were IPOing like mad, doubling or more as soon as they launched, no one was making any revenue. It was obviously a house of cards. But year after year, this was true and you were an idiot for not jumping on boad and making free money... until the carousel stopped.

There are definite similarities, but now those risks are all concentrated into a few companies with illogical valuations that are consuming the market. Yes, there are a bunch of AI-using companies, but they are much narrower in their impact and not nearly as many IPOs.

The true world-changing stuff is slow and takes a decade to permeate, and it happens regardless of the investment nonsense. Building up fiber networks, sorting out SSL, simplifying hosting, better software dev tools for the web, etc. For AI that looks like changing organizational structures, adding consistent safeguards, task-aligned workflows. There are much fewer physical changes, but the organizational differences are quite pervasive and will take time.

Still, there is no doubt this is a bubble and it will pop. My assumption is that can't happen until all the big players IPO and pension funds are left holding the bag. This has been PE's playbook for decades.