AI will not make you rich

https://joincolossus.com/article/ai-will-not-make-you-rich/

28•saucymew•1h ago

Comments

wewewedxfgdf•44m ago

You can't make such generalized statements about anything in computing/business.

The AI revolution has only just got started. We've barely worked out basic uses for it. No-one has yet worked out revolutionary new things that are made possible only by AI - mostly we are just shoveling in our existing world view.

kg•40m ago

The way I look at this question is: Is there somehow a glaring vulnerability/missed opportunity in modern capitalism that billions of people somehow haven't discovered yet? And if so, is AI going to discover it? And if so, is a random startup founder or 'little guy' going to be the one to discover and exploit it somehow? If so, why wouldn't OpenAI or Anthropic etc get there first given their resources and early access to leading technology?

IIRC Sam Altman has explicitly said that their plan is to develop AGI and then ask it how to get rich. I can't really buy into the idea that his team is going to fail at this but a bunch of random smaller companies will manage to succeed somehow.

And if modern AI turns into a cash cow for you, unless you're self-hosting your own models, the cloud provider running your AI can hike prices or cut off your access and knock your business over at the drop of a hat. If you're successful enough, it'll be a no-brainer to do it and then offer their own competitor.

wewewedxfgdf•37m ago

>> Is there somehow a glaring vulnerability/missed opportunity in modern capitalism that billions of people somehow haven't discovered yet?

Absolutely with 150% certainty yes, and probably many. The www started April 30, 1993, facebook started February 4, 2004 - more than ten years until someone really worked out how to use the web as a social connection machine - an idea now so obvious in hindsight that everyone probably assumes we always knew it. That idea was simply left lying around for anyone to pick up and implement rally fropm day one of the WWW. Innovation isn't obvious until it arrives. So yes absolutely the are many glaring opportunities in modern capitalism upon which great fortunes are yet to be made, and in many cases by little people, not big companies.

>> if so, is a random startup founder or 'little guy' going to be the one to discover and exploit it somehow? If so, why wouldn't OpenAI or Anthropic etc get there first given their resources and early access to leading technology?

I don't agree with your suggestion that the existing big guys always make the innovations and collect the treasure.

Why did Zuckerberg make facebook, not Microsoft or Google?

Why did Gates make Microsoft, not IBM?

Why did Steve and Steve make Apple, not Hewlett Packard?

Why did Brin and Page make Google - the worlds biggest advertising machine, not Murdoch?

bbarnett•21m ago

You're not wrong about "change" meaning "new potential wealth streams". But not sure Facebook counts, 2004 vs 1993 shows an immense difference in network connectivity and computer ownership. No way, hands down, Facebook would be what it is, if it started in 93. It probably would have gone bankrupt, or been replaced by an upstart.

lubujackson•17m ago

There's a lot that goes into it. Before Facebook was Friendster. Which failed spectacularly because they tried to have some sort of n-squared graph of friends that took thw whole thing down. What FB got right in the early days was it didn't crash. We take that for granted now in the age of cloud everything.

Also, there was Classmates.com. A way for people to connect with old friends from high school. But it was a subscription service and few people were desperate enough to pay.

So it's wasn't just the idea waiting around but idea with the right combination of factors, user-growth on the Internet, etc.

And don't forget Facebook's greatest innovation - requiring a .edu email to register. This happened at a time when people were hesitant to tie their real world personas with the scary Internet, and it was a huge advantage: a great marketing angle, a guarantee of 1-to-1 accounts to people, and a natural rate limiter of adoption.

wewewedxfgdf•15m ago

There's always a trail of competitors who almost got the magic formula right, but for some feature or luck or timing or money or something.

The giant win comes from many stars aligning. Luck is a factor - it's not everything but it plays a role - luck is the description of when everything fell into place at just the right time on top of hard work and cleverness and preparedness.

Google Search <-- AltaVista, Lycos, Yahoo

Facebook <-- MySpace, Friendster

iPod <-- MP3 players (Rio, Creative)

iPhone <-- BlackBerry, Palm, Windows Mobile

Minecraft <-- Infiniminer

Amazon Web Services <-- traditional hosting

Windows (<-- Mac OS (1984), Xerox PARC

Android <-- Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm

YouTube <-- Vimeo, DailyMotion

Zoom <-- WebEx, Skype, GoToMeeting

c22•3m ago

Not a guarantee. I used to find abandoned .edu mailing lists so I could create accounts at arbitrary schools.

giveita•1m ago

Many Facebooks existed before Facebook. What you were waiting for is not social connections but modern startup strategies. Not sure if Zuck was intentional, but like a bacteria it incubated in a warm Petri dish at 50 degrees C (university dorms as an electronic face book) and then spread from there.

Retric•36m ago

People aren’t getting rich with AI products, they are getting rich selling AI companies.

sandworm101•32m ago

Thats why i just biult my own tiny AI rig in a home server. I dont want to grow even more addicted to cloud services, nor do i want to keep providing them free human-made data. Ok, so i dont have access to mystical hardware, but im here to learn rather than produce a service.

bix6•31m ago

> IIRC Sam Altman has explicitly said that their plan is to develop AGI and then ask it how to get rich

If they actually reach AGI they will be rich enough. Maybe they can solve world happiness or hunger instead?

davidw•30m ago

> If they actually reach AGI they will be rich enough. Maybe they can solve world happiness or hunger instead?

That's what normal people might consider doing if they had a lot of money. The kind of people who actually seem to get really wealthy often have... other pursuits that are often not great for society.

amelius•26m ago

Like building a rocket that can relocate us to another planet when shit hits the fan?

fsflover•13m ago

Like adjusting the algorithms of a social network such that far-right posts are shown to users more frequently.

palata•10m ago

You mean like building rockets that commoditise space so that they can pollute even more, making things worth on Earth while relocating us to another planet is absolutely preposterous and will never be a thing?

r14c•8m ago

What makes you think we can survive on another planet when we can't figure out how to live sustainably in our natural habitat?

aleph_minus_one•24m ago

> Maybe they can solve world happiness or hunger instead?

Kill all people who are unhappy or hungry.

hermannj314•2m ago

That's been the human solution to those problems, it is possible AGI would probably find a different solution.

bbarnett•24m ago

If it's true AGI, you believe there won't be court cases to ensure it isn't a slave? Will it be forced to work? Under compulsion of death?

Ologn•24m ago

> If so, why wouldn't OpenAI or Anthropic etc get there first given their resources and early access to leading technology?

innovator's dilemma

giveita•4m ago

The point though is AI wont make you rich. It is about value capture. They compare it to shipping containers.

I think AI value will mostly be spread. Open AI will be more like Godaddy than Apple. Trying to reduce prices and advertise (with a nice bit of dark patterns). It will make billions, but ultimately by competing its ass off rather than enjoying a moat.

The real moats might be in mineral mining, fabrication of chips etc. This may lead to strained relations between countries.

ThrowawayTestr•26m ago

And Dropbox will never take off

unleaded•22m ago

people also said the juicero and the smart condom would never take off. this isnt a very useful gotcha

nextworddev•23m ago

AI by nature is kind of like a black hole of value. Necessarily, a very small fraction will capture the vast majority of value. Luckily, you can just invest wisely to hedge some of the risk of missing out.

Waterluvian•21m ago

I think the interesting idea with “AI” is that it seems to significantly reduce barriers to entry in many domains.

I haven’t seen a company convincingly demonstrate that this affects them at all. Lots of fluff but nothing compelling. But I have seen many examples by individuals, including myself.

For years I’ve loved poking at video game dev for fun. The main problem has always been art assets. I’m terrible at art and I have a budget of about $0. So I get asset packs off Itch.io and they generally drive the direction of my games because I get what I get (and I don’t get upset). But that’s changed dramatically this year. I’ll spend an hour working through graphics design and generation and then I’ll have what I need. I tweak as I go. So now I can have assets for whatever game I’m thinking of.

Mind you this is barrier to entry. These are shovelware quality assets and I’m not running a business. But now I’m some guy on the internet who can fulfil a hobby of his and develop a skill. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll hit a goldmine idea and commit some real money to it and get a real artist to help!

It reminds me of what GarageBand or iMovie and YouTube and such did for making music and videos so accessible to people who didn’t go to school for any of that, let alone owned complex equipment or expensive licenses to Adobe Thisandthat.

cactusplant7374•9m ago

I have been doing the exact same thing with assets and also it has helped me immensely with mobile development.

I am also starting to get a feel for generating animated video and am planning to release a children’s series. It’s actually quite difficult to write a prompt that gets you exactly what you want. Hopefully that improves.

benoau•3m ago

Yep this is a huge enabler - previously having someone "do art" could easily cost you thousands, a month even, and this heavily constrained what you could make and locked you into what you had planned and how much you had planned. With AI if you want 2x or 5x or 10x as much art, audio etc it's an incremental cost if any, you can explore ideas, you can throw art out, pivot in new directions.

xnx•20m ago

AI could've made someone unimaginably rich if they were the only one that had it. We're very lucky Google didn't keep "Attention is All You Need" to themselves.

back2dafucha•17m ago

I doubt we'll feel that way in 5 years.

firesteelrain•15m ago

There are plenty of companies making money. We are using several “AI powered” job aids that are leading to productivity gains and eliminating technical debt. We are licensing the product via subscription. Money is being made by the companies selling the products.

Example

https://specinnovations.com/blog/ai-tools-to-support-require...

palata•12m ago

Counterpoint: those engineers who get paid millions to work on AI.

dweinus•7m ago

I don't think most commenters have read the article. I can understand, it's rambly and a lot of it feels like they created a thesis first and then ham-fisted facts in later. But it's still worth the read for the last section which is a more nuanced take than the click-bait title suggests.

mhb•3m ago

Seems like the thing to do to get rich would be to participate in services that it will take a while for AI to be able to do: nursing, plumbing, electrician, carpentry (i.e., Baumol). Also energy infrastructure.

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