Is AI the Next Internet… or the Biggest Tech Bubble in History?
Every few years, technology doesn’t just evolve—it moves. Quietly at first, then all at once. Jobs change, companies rise and fall, and what once felt optional suddenly becomes unavoidable. The big question today is simple but heavy: Is Artificial intelligence the next true platform shift, or are we watching another tech bubble inflate in real time?
The honest answer might be uncomfortable for everyone: it’s probably both.
The Rhythm of Platform Shifts
Technology history follows a rhythm. Roughly every 10 to 15 years, a major platform shift arrives and rearranges the entire industry. Mainframes gave way to personal computers. PCs lost center stage to the web. The web eventually bowed to smartphones. Each time, talent, capital, and innovation migrated almost overnight.
Generative AI fits this pattern too neatly to ignore. It’s not just another feature or tool layered on top of existing systems. It’s the “new thing” that everything else starts bending around. Once a platform shift begins, all innovation follows it—even outside traditional tech. A flower seller experimenting with AI-written ads isn’t a novelty anymore; it’s a preview of what’s coming.
Like past shifts, Artificial intelligence will create new jobs while quietly making others irrelevant. That transition is already underway, whether companies publicly admit it or not.
Why Yesterday’s Winners Panic First
One of the most misunderstood parts of platform shifts is who wins them. History is brutal here. The companies that dominate one era often fail spectacularly in the next.
Microsoft ruled the PC era with near-total control of operating systems for decades. But when smartphones became the new platform, that dominance vanished. Apple and Android rewrote the rules.
That lesson explains today’s aggressive moves. Microsoft’s deep bet on OpenAI isn’t about curiosity—it’s survival. Mark Zuckerberg’s push into AI-powered hardware like smart glasses isn’t random experimentation. It’s an attempt to own the next interface, not rent it from someone else.
When a platform shifts, control matters more than size. Everyone is trying to avoid becoming a passenger on someone else’s road.
The Bubble Question Never Goes Away
Every platform shift arrives wrapped in noise. Hype, skepticism, wild predictions, and louder counter-predictions. Artificial intelligence is no exception.
We’ve seen this before. In the early 2000s, the internet was dismissed as a bubble with little real economic impact. Many believed it would never meaningfully change daily life. That belief aged badly. Over time, the internet didn’t just reshape commerce—it reshaped relationships, culture, and how people meet, work, and live.
Artificial intelligence feels similar today. Yes, there’s excess. Yes, some investments will fail. But when the dust settles, the world will look different. Bubbles can burst without erasing the platform underneath them.
Inside Big Tech: Fear Is the Fuel
Inside the largest tech companies, the dominant emotion isn’t confidence—it’s fear. Specifically, fear of underinvesting.
Executives openly acknowledge that the risk of spending too little on AI is greater than spending too much. The threat isn’t abstract. Artificial intelligence directly challenges core businesses, especially search and advertising. Missing this shift could mean irrelevance.
Unlike past revolutions, AI development doesn’t have clear physical limits. Large language models improve with scale, and that uncertainty drives massive capital expenditure. In 2025 alone, the biggest players—Microsoft, AWS, Alphabet, and Meta—spent around $400 billion on AI.
This spending shows up physically too. Data centers are rising faster than office buildings. The AI boom isn’t just software hype—it’s concrete, steel, and power consumption.
What’s even more fascinating is the circular economy forming around AI. Companies fund each other to keep the system running. Chipmakers, cloud providers, and AI labs are financially intertwined, creating a feedback loop that sustains momentum—at least for now.
When Models Become Commodities
Here’s the uncomfortable truth inside AI labs: the models themselves are starting to look the same.
Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini—differences exist, but they’re narrowing fast. Leadership shifts weekly. Performance edges disappear almost as soon as they appear. This is classic commoditization.
Unlike previous platforms, AI models lack strong network effects. There’s no equivalent of “all your friends are here” or “all your software depends on this.” Switching costs are low.
That’s why distribution matters more than technical perfection. ChatGPT’s dominance isn’t just about being better—it’s about being everywhere. Brand awareness and access are winning the race.
To justify enormous spending, OpenAI is expanding across the entire stack: infrastructure deals, e-commerce integration, consumer apps like social video, and even hardware. Owning the experience, not just the model, is the new strategy.
High Curiosity, Low Habit
Despite impressive weekly usage numbers, daily usage tells a different story. Consumer AI tools are still not deeply embedded in everyday life for most people.
This suggests something important: people are experimenting, not committing. AI is exciting, useful, and impressive—but not yet indispensable.
The open question is whether AI becomes a daily habit on its own or whether it needs to disappear into tools people already use. Messaging apps, task managers, and workflows may be the real gateways to habit-forming AI.
Outside Tech: The Age of Infinite Interns
For non-tech companies, the smartest AI strategy is surprisingly simple and brutally practical.
First: absorb. Automate obvious tasks like coding assistance, marketing content, and customer support. These are clear wins.
Second: innovate. Use AI not just to optimize old processes but to redefine the problem itself.
AI functions like a team of “infinite” interns—energetic, fast, and slightly error-prone. That error rate matters. The earliest successful use cases accept small mistakes in exchange for massive cost savings.
Marketing content tolerates minor imperfections. AI-generated video can survive slight lip-sync errors. In fields like 3D modeling, especially background elements, perfection isn’t required. Acceptable error unlocks scale.
Where Real Value Will Live
As AI technology commoditizes, value won’t come from raw capability alone. It will come from what surrounds it.
Curation will matter more than creation—filtering signal from noise. Experience will matter—products people actually enjoy using. And authenticity will matter most of all—honesty in a world flooded with synthetic content.
Advertising offers a glimpse of this future. AI enables personalized ads generated in real time, tailored to context and relevance. The winners won’t be the loudest or flashiest, but the most thoughtful and human.
So, is AI a platform shift or a bubble?
It’s both. And that’s not a contradiction.
AI carries the excess, speculation, and confusion of a bubble—but underneath it sits a genuine platform shift that’s already reshaping how work, creativity, and business function.
The mistake isn’t believing too much in AI. The real mistake would be assuming the world will look the same after it settles. —but
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