Bubbles pop when no one is looking

Feb 15, 2026

I see plenty of long-term worries about AI—how it affects our craft, society, the earth, and humanity. There’s also day-to-day anxiety that it’s a constantly inflating capital bubble that will eventually pop. Some people see it as a chance to go back to what we were doing in the pre-GPT-3 era. Others see it as a threat to their livelihood. Market crashes are not a nice thing to observe, especially when you’re caught in the middle of one.

To both groups—participating but scared, and rejecting but hopeless—there’s one perspective about tech bubbles that holds true: they burst when people start losing interest. Crypto, Clubhouse… you name it. The correction came when we found something more interesting, more entertaining, or when world events grabbed our attention.

Tech pessimists will see this as an endless cycle of the capitalist machine: we shouldn’t have any bubbles. Tech optimists will point to a beautiful cycle of technology pushing humanity forward: the bubble was needed—from its ashes, better soil for humanity to grow. Realists will sit back and simply watch where attention shifts, trying to predict the pops to protect themselves, or even better, benefit.

You could argue realists are lazy, and ethically bad. Sit back, relax and see the world burn? I asked no one to create AI, and influence my life so much! True. But let’s be real. Did you influence the creation of the iPhone, or the computer you’re reading this on? Did you take part in building the Internet? You think those were white-glove, perfectly executed changes?

We are all growing on the pain of previous generations’ tech advancements.