I don't think I understand your first sentence. Big tech wasn't invested in crypto in the way it is in AI. For a few days Meta pretended they were going to lau

I don't think I understand your first sentence. Big tech wasn't invested in crypto in the way it is in AI. For a few days Meta pretended they were going to launch a cryptocurrency, but that's kinda it. Whereas in this case all the biggest tech players are making a lot of noise about how AI is The Future and investing a tremendous amount of resources into trying to make their AI be The Future. Big tech investment into machine learning didn't need walking back because machine learning morphed smoothly into AI. Big tech investment into "Web 2.0" didn't need walking back because "Web 2.0", to whatever extent it was a definite specific thing, was a huge success and now we just call it the web. (If you meant "Web 3.0", that didn't need walking back for the same reason as crypto didn't: it was never a very big thing for very big tech.) So I'm not seeing how any of those things was like AI today. If it turns out that present-day AI is a bubble and it bursts, it will not be like crypto or "Web 3.0" for the big tech companies because those were only ever fads that the big tech companies didn't particularly tie themselves to. It won't be like machine learning because it will be the same bubble, just later on. And it won't be like "Web 2.0" because that wasn't a bubble and didn't burst.