The future is here (or there)
This post isn’t going to be very technical, unlike most of my posts. Today I want to talk about the future. Sounds big, right? “The FUTURE!” … well, it’s something we all probably think about.
It might scare you or get you excited, but either way it’s on your mind if you’re in the tech industry.
I’ve been working as a software engineer for a while now (mainly at startups), and I like to follow global markets. It’s not a secret that it all runs on expectations. Startups raise money with the promise that the investment will pay off further down the road. Public companies announce that they’ll have an edge because of some deal or feature, trying to drive the stock up.
Sure, sure…
Of course, you already know all that.
And yet, people are scared.
We “tech people” have our own jargon that might sound weird to other folks… “money people” have their own. Bulls, bears, squeezes, P/E, stairs, elevators, and of course, bubbles.
Are we in 1993? 1997? A gold rush? Making shovels?
I say - don’t tell me about bubbles!
People are afraid of an “AI bubble,” and I get it. But let’s, as “tech people,” call it what it is. It’s a market race. Yeah, the new models are cool, but they’re already becoming commodities. The giants will all compete to offer the best models, and they’ll probably all remain relevant, as they are now. Think about clouds as an example: all the big tech giants have their own clouds and make good business. There wasn’t a single winner whose success burst everyone else’s bubble.
Products
Others — let’s call them “product companies”—are in a different game. Everybody’s trying to utilize that awesome technology that is now available, and the ideas are great and many. And that’s the problem we’ve always had: tech is great, and it’s been getting easier to build products. But— You have to deliver value to someone with your product. You have to solve someone’s problem. That hasn’t changed and isn’t going to change. For sure, AI is not going to change that.
Who cares if it’s easy to build software that no one needs?
Or maybe you are solving a problem for someone — but the solution is already good enough as it is. An awesome model or agent will make it better, but just a little.
Alrighty
So, let’s not get carried away with the hype, folks. This era is awesome, and it presents many new opportunities. But “what to build” and “who to invest in” remain unanswered questions.
