| It is honestly hard to predict. We are currently in everyone is building website/mobile app/gadget era of AI. Very few places are questioning what is worth building. Short term, we can compare this to 2-3 recent (mini) revolutions: internet, mobile, cloud. Then the answer is somewhat predictable and (somewhat sad personally). Companies owning the main distribution of intelligence (big labs) or distribution of the app/cloud layer (Google, MSFT, AWS) will make most of the money. In fact Google looks well positioned that way with owning intelligence, cloud (and even hardware, if they can get TPUs right as commercial product). Long term view is interesting and somewhat satisfying (again, personally). We can compare this to industrial revolution, but for intelligence instead of physical labour. I hope, to borrow from Alan Kay's words, the total value generated will be more than what few big labs can capture. Though we will also see normal market dynamics of boom and bust in play. Companies building something useful, patiently will keep winning the markets. But only to get challenged by newer modes of the technology emerging. In this long term view, the technology per se doesn't offer monopolistic profits to big labs. I think Anthropic is well aware of this and they are trying to extract as much cash from white collar work automation as they can before things are democratised. Contrary to popular opinion, they are also trying to seek a regulatory capture here by to maintain monopolistic position in the US market by scare mongering about China and open source. Its a case study how they managed to keep the good boy image of themselves while doing this. In the end, I hope the technology emerges as electricity or combustion engine cars. Yes early pioneers (e.g. Ford) were perhaps able to make lot of money. But eventually, the technology was too important to allow one party to have monopoly and we had an abundance market which enabled jobs and money for a lot more people. Edit, postscript : Dario, Sam and even Jensen will end up looking like the new the John D. Rockefeller's of this era. I'm personally hoping Demis Hassabis actually solves something much more important (problems in diseases, biology etc) with AI. |
I would not put "cloud" at the same level as Internet and mobile. Cloud is just a layer on top of hardware that in the end makes almost no difference for Internet to exist and operates. Said differently: I doubt the world would be different nowadays without "the cloud". But it would definitely be different without Internet or mobile (smart)phones.