The AI bubble debate has lurched through at least three frenzied phases in the span of three years:
- Suspicion: Historic sums of capital poured into AI before anyone proved it could reliably automate work. A violent market correction felt inevitable.
- Mania: Claude Code and autonomous agents made the early skepticism look outdated, fueling a corporate scramble to embed AI everywhere and maximize usage.
- Reckoning: Companies discovered that AI can be extraordinary when aimed precisely — and ruinously expensive when treated as a universal productivity machine.
