The Dow Jones closed 1,153 points lower than it opened at, which is a 2.2% drop. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite also suffered smaller setbacks Wednesday, with the S&P dropping 1.5% and the Nasdaq falling 1.7%.
The AI bubble debate has lurched through at least three frenzied phases in the span of three years: - Suspicion: Historic sums of capital poured into AI before anyone proved it could reliably automate work. A violent market correction felt inevitable. - Mania: Claude Code and autonomous agents made the early skepticism look outdated, fueling a corporate scramble to embed AI everywhere and maximize usage. - Reckoning: Companies discovered that AI can be extraordinary when aimed precisely — and ruinously expensive when treated as a universal productivity machine. Why it matters: The first phase doubted the technology. The second phase worshipped it. The third phase — currently gaining steam across Corporate America — questions…