AI and the automation of work by Benedict Evans is a great read about the potential future with Generative AI. Overall, the sentiment is optimistic: while a new wave of automation would eliminate whole classes of jobs, it also creates new classes of jobs. Two theories to back this up:
- Lump of labour fallacy: the amount of work is not fixed.
- Jevons Paradox: if a work becomes cheaper, it creates more demands for it.
At the same time, the current generation of Generative AI (diffusion models, LLMs, etc.) cannot fully replace humans in the loop.
It’s just more automation. The machine lets a person do 10x the work, but you need the person.
While it already boosts individual productivity, it is still not clear how to integrate it with complicated business yet. And the interaction speed of enterprise software is slow.
One of the most basic challenges in building an enterprise software startup is that startups run on an 18 month funding cycle and a lot of enterprises run on an 18 month decision cycle.