This is one of the most underrated observations in tech right now. if AI commoditizes software, what's actually safe?
- regulated and liability-bearing businesses (someone has to be on the hook)
- anything touching the physical world (hardware, manufacturing, energy)
- proprietary data sets (AI makes your data more valuable, not less)
- marketplaces and businesses with network effects (liquidity > software)
- operationally intense businesses (the "bad" businesses become the best ones)
- cybersecurity and physical security (more AI = more attack surface)
For 50 yrs we treated the supremacy of asset-light businesses as a permanent economic law
But if AI commoditizes asset-light businesses, we’d just be reverting to the historical mean where value accrued to atoms, infrastructure, energy
It would be a 50 year blip. An anomaly