Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble — but the payoff for society will be 'gigantic' (www.businessinsider.com)

Jeff Bezos told an Italian Tech Week audience that AI is in an "industrial bubble"—characterized by valuations disconnected from fundamentals, investors throwing money at every idea, and tiny teams attracting huge capital—but stressed the technology itself is real and will "change every industry" with "gigantic" societal benefits. He compared the current mania to the dot-com and 1990s biotech booms: many firms and valuations will fail, but the surge of investment can accelerate breakthroughs and leave durable winners once the dust settles. For the AI/ML community this is both a warning and an opportunity. The investor frenzy makes it harder to separate genuinely promising research and products from hype, distorts talent and capital allocation, and raises the odds of boom-and-bust cycles—but it also funds rapid experimentation, infrastructure, and commercialization that can speed adoption. Bezos and other leaders (Sam Altman, Joe Tsai, Ray Dalio, Thomas Siebel, and Goldman’s David Solomon) urge focus on fundamentals and enduring principles: build substantive technical value, measure metrics, and prepare for a market reset even as the underlying AI capabilities continue to advance.