Article: AI won't collapse like the dot-com bubble — it will collapse to a simpler form
wordgrammer · x · 2026-09-03
- Drawing on the dot-com analogy, the article predicts AI won't crash into irrelevance but will "collapse" into a simpler form, as the internet did.
What the dot-com bubble got right
- The internet would be huge; value scales roughly with fiber laid
- A latent human need to express themselves with technology
What it got wrong
- It assumed HTML/JavaScript would be how ordinary people express themselves (everyone gets a website); in reality people prefer text, images, video
- The first 1% expressed themselves via personal sites, but the internet "collapsed" into social media as the dominant distribution form
Implication
- AI may similarly shed complexity and converge to a few simpler, mass-market forms rather than expanding indefinitely.
More from AGI Musings
- Jimmy Apple mocks AI safety community for 'accelerating' AI with looped transformer hype — apples_jimmy · 2026-09-03
- AI safety researchers clash over figure who 'systematically downplayed' takeover risks — DavidSKrueger · 2026-09-03
- Hypothesis: the better LLMs get at coding, the worse their writing gets — kwangmoo_yi · 2026-09-03
- In early-stage exploratory work, interestingness beats goodness as a signal — AI_Andrew · 2026-09-03
- Gen Z's AI backlash: young people now turn against tech they know and use — clarashih · 2026-09-03
- 'Permanent Butlerian Jihad' isn't a stable equilibrium and cannot hold, argues AI commentator — corbtt · 2026-09-03