Boom And Bust: Is AI The New Dotcom Bubble?
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Right now, Artificial Intelligence feels unstoppable. Investors are piling in, expectations are sky-high and claims about a radically different future are everywhere. To anyone who remembers the late 1990s, it all feels strikingly familiar.
Back then, the internet sparked the dotcom boom - a frenzy of big ideas, easy money and soaring valuations. When the bubble burst in 2000, billions were lost and companies wiped out. Yet the core idea proved right - the internet did transform lives, just more slowly and messily than expected. And there are important lessons to be learned.
Evan Davis talks to Ernst Malmsten, co-founder and CEO of boo.com, one of the most high-profile startups of the dotcom era. From his frontline seat in the boom and bust, he shares what really happened and what today’s AI moment can learn from it.
Guests: Ernst Malmsten, co-founder and former CEO, boo.com Gretchen Morgenson, business reporter at the New York Times during the dotcom bubble, now senior financial reporter, NBC News Investigations David Pringle, tech writer and former Wall Street Journal reporter
Production team: Presenter: Evan Davis Producer: Sally Abrahams Production Co-ordinators: Katie Morrison and Jack Young Sound: Dave O’Neill and Rod Farquhar Editor: Matt Willis
The Bottom Line is produced in partnership with The Open University.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Hello, I'm Greg Jenner, and good news, |
| 0:09.5 | Your Dead to Me, is back for a new series. |
| 0:11.6 | Here we go. |
| 0:12.1 | Yes, we'll explore Emperor Nero's notorious reign with Professor Mary Beard and Patton Oswald. |
| 0:16.9 | I would not want my daughter having the remote control, not alone an empire. |
| 0:38.6 | We'll dissect the decadent life of Philippe Duke-Dolion with Tom Allen. I've often tried to pretend I'm an aristocrat and being very quickly knocked down. And there'll be so much more with comedians like Olga Koch, Mike Mosniak and Rihelina. I'm excited. You're dead to me, the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:44.3 | Hello there. Thank you for listening to The Bottom Line. We're here every week and on Radio 4. |
| 0:49.9 | Today we're talking about the dot-com bubble and what it can teach us about the hype around artificial intelligence today. But before that, let me tell you about a recent episode on introverts and how |
| 0:56.5 | they can flourish at work. In a world that often rewards outward confidence, we offer some |
| 1:01.5 | useful tips to help quieter voices be heard. Anyway, let's get to the main episode. And we are going |
| 1:08.0 | back to the 1990s today to an era of excitement. |
| 1:11.3 | An excitement reflected in soaring prices on stock markets. |
| 1:15.3 | It reflected in an optimistic belief in a new technology, |
| 1:18.9 | a technology that would revolutionise everything. |
| 1:21.7 | It was the dot-com boom, the internet boom. |
| 1:24.3 | There are lots of parallels to the AI boom underway today, and we on the bottom line |
| 1:30.1 | want to remember the past in order to learn the lessons relevant to today. Now, back in 1999, |
| 1:36.4 | as the dot-com party was getting out of hand, they were making lots of mistakes, but they were |
| 1:41.8 | actually right about one thing. The internet did change everything. |
| 1:46.7 | It was just a messier and longer process than they perhaps thought at the height of the bubble. |
| 1:53.1 | In 2000, the bubble deflated, billions were lost, companies were wiped out, but the dot-coms |
... |
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