Alright, the article has a ton of holes. I found it amusing when it paraded the increase in new business creation since 2020 as proof of increased business investment, as if the vast majority of those new businesses were not gig economy pseudo-ownership.

Technological diffusion has historically followed an S-curve. Early adoption is slow and expensive. Growth accelerates as costs fall, and complementary infrastructure develops.

This stood out though, because it’s old thinking. Tech diffusion has completely changed, with early adopters getting it at low cost (thanks to venture capital funding) and prices rising not as function of cost to produce, but as greed demands.

I think what the article is seeing is that the hype around the productivity gains from GenAI is finally falling flat. With that, it’s becoming clearer that you can’t replace a large part of your tech workforce with it, and worse the existing workforce is not going to drastically be more productive because of it. It’s nothing more than a nice-to-have, and ultimately the rising cost is not justified.

Couldn’t come at a worse time for Altman, Musk, and Nadella, because they artificially reduced the price upfront. They expected their nice-to-have product to become essential and hence they would be able to demand whatever price they want, but if the product isn’t essential at subsidized prices, then it will be discarded at cost, let alone at the margins they typically demand.

No