AI Isn’t a Bubble-It’s a Wildfire. And We’re Already in It.

Lately, about half my LinkedIn feed is someone declaring that AI is a bubble on the verge of bursting. Maybe. I love a bit of healthy caution mixed with fear-mongering as much as the next person, but when I look at the pace, the impact, and the way AI is rewiring entire industries, the "bubble" metaphor just doesn’t fully fit.

A bubble inflates, pops, and vanishes. Is that really what we’re seeing?

The bubble metaphor looks pretty in this picture… but does it truly match the scale of what's happening?

I was talking to a friend recently, who compared AI to a wildfire moving through a forest - and honestly, that feels a lot closer to the truth. Here's why.

Wildfires: Nature’s Reset Button

Bubbles pop and disappear. Wildfires don’t.

They build heat quickly, spread unpredictably, and then - seemingly overnight - reshape the terrain. They burn, but not indiscriminately. They burn away what’s brittle, expose structures that can’t hold, and clear space for whatever comes next.

Wildfires - destruction or transformation?

They aren't cute by any means, but here’s the part people forget: in nature, wildfires are regenerative. Entire ecosystems depend on their ability to clear what’s overgrown, return nutrients to the soil, and create the conditions for stronger, more resilient growth to take root.

If you’ve led teams through real change, you’ve seen this pattern before: the old underbrush goes, the pace accelerates, and suddenly you’re forced to decide what’s essential… and what (process, tech, Ways of Working) has been sitting there out of habit.

AI is doing that at organisational scale

It’s clearing out slow systems, collapsing pointless hand-offs, and exposing where human creativity actually matters. It’s uncomfortable, chaotic, but - if we steward it well - deeply rejuvenating.

So is the question really “How do we stop the fire?”  

Or more like “How do we guide it?”

Responsible innovation, clear governance, thoughtful design choices - these are our containment lines. They don’t smother the flames; they shape their direction. The organisations that thrive won’t be the ones trying to stay untouched. They’ll be the ones that prune, rebuild, and grow into the space AI opens.

Example 1: The Human Brain - Synaptic Pruning

Infant face-processing becomes specialised through experience (Pascalis et al., 2005).

The wildfire metaphor immediately pulled me back to another naturally occurring process - synaptic pruning. When we’re born, our brains are wildly over-connected - a fun fact I still remember from my 1st year of studies (despite discovering British Ale in the same month) is that we can apparently tell one monkey face (say Bob) from another (Alan).

But this ability fades. Not because we got worse, but because the brain prunes connections that aren’t useful for survival. Human focus is limited; the world is noisy. So the brain trims aggressively, keeping only what helps us thrive (Sorry Bob, you are still unique, we just can't tell by just looking at you).

This is exactly what I think AI is doing to organisations: clearing the clutter so the strongest, most meaningful capabilities can strengthen.

Example 2: The Stock Market - Dot-Com Firestorms

Apple not only recovered, but soared after Dot Com: by 2025 its stock had risen by 10,000% since March 2000 (Yahoo Finance)

We’ve seen the same pattern in the markets. When the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, the market was overpopulated and strangled, but this overgrowth vanished almost overnight. The fire cooked the weeds. Thousands of companies disappeared, but the companies with strong fundamentals - Amazon, Apple, SalesForce - didn’t just survive. They used the cleared landscape to become category-defining giants.

The crash looked like devastation. In hindsight, it was also restructuring.

Putting It Together: AI as a Natural Landscape Reset

Seen through these lenses - ecosystems, brains, markets - the AI surge looks less like an unprecedented inflation doomed to burst and more like a natural process of pruning, resetting, and reshaping.

It’s clearing space.  

It’s refining systems.  

It’s strengthening what matters and exposing what doesn’t.

The work won't be easy, but it can be simple:

Prepare. Adapt. Rebuild.  

Grow forward, not back.

If you want help turning the heat of AI into something usable - something that strengthens your organisation rather than scorches it - that’s exactly the kind of work we LOVE doing at Agilicist.

The fire is not the end. It's the beggiing of new growth.