Investment legend Howard Marks just dropped a warning that's got everyone talking. He's calling the AI explosion a bubble—straight up. But here's the twist: he's equally worried about people who sit on the sidelines completely.

Marks describes what we're seeing now as textbook irrational exuberance. Money flooding in, valuations going vertical, everyone afraid to miss out. Sound familiar? Yet he argues this frenzy differs fundamentally from previous manias. Unlike the dot-com craze or the NFT rush, AI is actually building something with genuine long-term infrastructure potential.

So what's an investor supposed to do? Chase the hype and risk getting burned? Or stay away and potentially miss a generational shift in technology? Marks suggests neither extreme makes sense. The real challenge isn't whether AI is overvalued today—it probably is. The question is whether avoiding it entirely leaves you even more exposed when the dust settles and real applications emerge.

This tension captures the brutal reality of bubble markets: being right about timing means almost nothing if you're wrong about the underlying transformation. The infrastructure being laid today could define the next decade, even if current prices prove insane.