Revenge of the AI bubble

The AI bubble debate has lurched through at least three frenzied phases in the span of three years:

1. Suspicion: Historic sums of capital poured into AI before anyone proved it could reliably automate work. A violent market correction felt inevitable.
2. Mania: Claude Code and autonomous agents made the early skepticism look outdated, fueling a corporate scramble to embed AI everywhere and maximize usage.
3. Reckoning: Companies discovered that AI can be extraordinary when aimed precisely—and ruinously expensive when treated as a universal productivity machine.

The first phase doubted the technology. The second phase worshipped it. The third phase—currently gaining steam across Corporate America—questions whether AI's immense power is worth the price.