There is an emerging debate across my feeds and chat groups as to whether “this time is different” with AI as a disruptive technology. Analyst Ben Bajarin previously summarized the gist of this debate: “Every transformative technology arrives twice. First as hardware and headlines—motors, wires, GPUs, data centers—then, years later, as redesigned work that finally shows up in the productivity numbers.”
Electricity followed this arc in the 19th and early 20th century. Bajarin and many other folks in my feeds and chat groups argue the build-out of today’s AI infrastructure now follows the same arc. Cynics counter that the inflated valuations of AI companies are a bubble like crypto, which also arrived as a buildout of “hardware and headlines” to replace traditional finance. 20 years into that marketplace, there are only $20 billion in onchain fees.
The clearest signals from the advertising marketplace that “this time is different” with AI. Last week I argued that brands leveraging AI to build their own entertainment infrastructure will drive ad dollars out of the traditional advertising value chain altogether. I cited an argument that the barrier is lower for brands not to just become creators but to “develop original IP, put it in front of an audience, learn in real time, and iterate — the same way a tech company ships and improves a product — rather than betting everything on one expensive, slow-moving campaign.”
