[nwmcsween]

If anyone was around for the dot-com bubble any company internet related or with a web like name was irrationally funded, P/E didn't matter, burn didn't matter, product didn't matter.

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.

[ido]

"The Web" and "E-Commerce" ended up being quite gigantic "unmet niches" though!

[mazurnification]

If smth is bubble it does not mean that said smth has no value. It just means that there is over investment and thus inefficient investment. Like housing bubble - nobody argues that houses are not needed and are not big part of economy.

[julkali]

Yes, but only 15-20 years later in the extent expected for 2000. The technology wasn't there yet, just like with LLMs.

[cheschire]

Right, one could say it was actually the smartphone that made the Internet as successful as it was being pitched to be in the late 90’s.

[irishcoffee]

From where I sit, smartphones completely ruined the internet.

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.

[cheschire]

We're in complete agreement.

[kjkjadksj]

The tech was there. The websites worked fine. The issue was number of internet users was too low. Look at number of internet users today vs 1999…

[fc417fc802]

> The issue was number of internet users was too low.

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.

[rollcat]

The technology was there all along, and it's ironic that we're discussing it on this website of all. Look up ViaWeb.

[rsynnott]

Yes, but generally not for the companies who were closely involved in the dot-com bubble; Amazon is probably literally the only exception of any significance.

And, well, not all bubbles go as well as that. See the cryptocurrency one, say. Or any of a number of _previous_ AI bubbles.

[WackyFighter]

The startups/businesses that provided value survived the bubble bursting.

[throwaway777x]

I had a job at a small investment firm at the time in college and to me it is nothing like the dotcom bubble.

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.

[nitwit005]

There were front page news stories about a possible bubble back then.

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.

[mazurnification]

"the old economy had changed forever and was dead."

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.

[squidbeak]

> Ehem - what is the difference compered to now? Wasn't programmers obsolete by 6mths ago and nobody would work so we do need UBI?

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.

[mazurnification]

Sorry but that was not my point. My point was refuting of the thesis (in the comment that I am replying to) that nobody was making grand claims about AI contrary to grand claims about internet pre dot com. Obviously in both cases there were/are grand claims made.

[phantasmish]

Have you considered that your investment firm and other peers at the time were in an information bubble?

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.

[kakacik]

> practically everyone thinks we are in a bubble

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.

[phatfish]

25 years time. "I remember the LLM bubble, everyone knew we were in a bubble but they carried on as if the music would never stop. Don't worry, our situation is nothing like that, there is no talk of a bubble."

[Marciplan]

regardless if you were around or not, this take has been repeated a quintillion times by now

[passwordoops]

Because it's the correct take

[hobofan]

Doesn't mean it's a valuable take.

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).

[red-iron-pine]

> It doesn't even significantly matter whether it's a bubble or not, but whether its a "bad" bubble.

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...