AI Will Bloom When the Grifters Leave
What comes after generative AI (PART III: SPRING)
You Guys Didn’t Need to Sell AI So Hard (PART I: REQUIEM)
The World Runs on the Losers’ Money (PART II: RENAISSANCE)
Spring is beautiful. My favorite season.
It’s the time of low-profile, anonymous engineers who are driven not by profit but by a genuine love for the craft, their passion for technology, and a profound desire to make the world a better place.
It’s the time for enterprises to dare take a bite of the forbidden fruit in blossom: Entire work processes will be updated, creating gradual increments in TFP (total factor productivity) and GDP that will make their dent in economy graphs and standard of living statistics.
It’s the time when the general public adopts AI. They may not go to AI but AI will go to them. That’s just the history of consumer technology. To those who still deny this, let me remind you of the gratitude you feel when you bathe in the comfortable calm of modernity. Look around! All these things in your office and at home—the chair under your ass, the clothes you’re wearing, the lightbulb in the ceiling, and the screen you’re reading this on—you didn’t go to them either, they came to you.
AI is the same. An indelible piece of a vernal future.
If they do it right.
A requiem followed by a renaissance—which I pointed to in parts I and II—is a good thing. It’s optimism. But it’s hollow without action—the world isn’t built on promises and hype, but neither is it built on good vibes alone. It needs conscious effort and then, boom! Unsuspecting adoption. The link between those things—which should never be broken—is trust.
After the generative AI bubble pops (it will) the AI guys will have another chance to get things right. Imagine the worst-case scenario—which I don’t think will happen but we gotta be on guard—the bubble pops, a recession ensues, and progress stops. An absolute halt. Even then spring can still come. The overhang of untapped AI applications could fill every news column for ten years.
If they do it right.