The end of the network effect

For some industries, a world-changing new technology really is just a useful tool, and for others it changes everything. How did that work for the internet, and how will it work for AI? Where's the point of leverage? 

Anthropic’s S1 is a Rorschach test - what do you want to see? And does this have any predictive value? 

How much consumer spending and how many business models are locked up by friction, inertia and complexity that AI might reduce or remove? How many businesses depend on making it too hard to bother? What happens if ‘the marginal cost of arguing goes to zero’?

Every big company deployed Copilot. Hmm. That doesn't seem to have changed everything, so now what? How does this work, how do change management and 'AI deploycos' turn out, and how does this fit into 'normal technology'? 

AI makes it easy for anyone to build tools to automate their work... except most people and most companies aren't tool-builders, don't think like that, and can't and won't do that. This is why software companies and consultants exist - AI changes the thresholds but not the problem. 

AI is in a supply crunch today, but what happens when we come out of it? How and where will supply, demand, price, capacity and capex get back into equilibrium? Today, model labs can name their price, but why won’t they end up as low-margin commodity infrastructure?

Twice a year, Benedict publishes a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry, and the latest came out a few weeks ago. These days, that means AI. What's new and what are the big questions? 

How do you know what AI will do to your industry? Your company? Your job? The easy, obvious answer is to add up the things you do that can be automated, but it’s probably better to ask how the job will change, and to ask what your job really means. Is AI tackling the easy part or the hard part? What are your customers really buying? 

OpenAI has some big questions. It doesn’t have unique tech. It has a big user base, but with limited engagement and stickiness and no network effect. The incumbents have matched the tech and are leveraging their product and distribution. And a lot of the value and leverage will come from new experiences that haven’t been invented yet, and it can’t invent all of those itself. What’s the plan?

What does AI do to software? What's a more interesting answer than 'no, this won't kill SaaS'? And what comes after the euphoria?