There's probably something to this, and other comments about AI being a source of competition. My experience with generative AI has been that it's neat, the academic papers are always a fun read, but I'm mostly underwhelmed by the output. This will get better with time (Sora is incredible), but it's missing the point. A recent anecdote: I'm in a small startup community and I asked the group what AI tools folks are finding useful. Someone mentioned that copilot makes them 2-3x more productive; personally, my tests with codellama has made me about 0.5-0.75x as productive as normal, mostly because I notice the mistakes and scrutinize the output more - probably a similar experience to folks who have been programming for a while.

But it must feel amazing for that 2-3x guy who is just trying to get his company off the ground, and that's great!

Aside: I recently went down a rabbit hole exploring fast food training videos from the 80s and 90s. It makes you appreciate the engineering (culinary, mechanical, and industrial) that allows a company to make a consistent product at scale, only requiring interchangeable, unskilled labor. Did you know that McDonald's claims that 1 in every 8 Americans have worked at the chain? You can get a fairly pricey jacket celebrating this fact[1]!

Perhaps we're finally at that point with computing. We know the externalities that have resulted from McDonalds and similar chains and, good or bad, we've accepted them. Over the next decade we get to watch the same with commodity knowledge work.

[1] https://goldenarchesunlimited.com/products/1-in-8-alumni-jac...