There’s a lot of talk about AI hype. I don’t know enough about the financial bubble aspect of this (though I thought Azeem’s framework was helpful). But, as far as its impact on the products we use go, it is understandable to see it dismissed as hype because it feels just like a technology wave we’ve seen in the past two decades – like mobile or cloud.
But I think there’s a difference. Mobile and cloud changed what was built. They didn’t fundamentally change how software was built.
The internet, on the other hand, changed both what was built and how it was built. Software built for the web was fundamentally different than software built for Desktop applications.
The AI wave, to me, feels closer to the internet wave. We’ll see new kinds of products and new ways of building.
When you combine those shifts and remember that the scale of this wave builds on the scale of the mobile internet, it becomes easy to imagine just how much disruption lies ahead.
It’ll take a while to play out. But play out, it will.
