AI Eats the World | Benedict Evans

About this video

• Video Title: AI Eats the World | Benedict Evans
• Channel: Slush
• Speakers: Benedict Evans
• Duration: 18:36

Overview

Benedict Evans discusses the concept of platform shifts in the tech industry, using AI as the current example. He explains how these shifts lead to new dominant players, destruction of old markets, and significant investment. Evans touches on the uncertainty surrounding the ultimate impact and scale of AI, the challenges in its deployment and value capture, and how it might fundamentally change industries and internet platforms.

Key takeaways

• Platform Shifts: The tech industry experiences platform shifts where innovation, investment, and company creation concentrate on new technologies, leading to the emergence of new gatekeepers and the decline of old ones.
• Generative AI as a New Platform: Generative AI is identified as the latest platform shift, prompting significant investment and company creation, but also uncertainty about its final form and impact.
• Historical Precedents: Past platform shifts (PC, web, mobile) demonstrate that early entrants are rarely the ones who capture the most value, and that new technologies often involve a period of hype, noise, and uncertainty before their true utility and market position become clear.
• Investment and Infrastructure: The current AI boom is driving massive investment in infrastructure (data centers, chips), with hyperscalers spending billions and facing challenges in keeping up with demand, even outstripping the availability of electricity as a bottleneck.
• Uncertainty in AI's Future: Unlike previous technological shifts with known physical limits, the future trajectory and potential of AI models are unclear, leading to a "vibes-based forecasting" that makes it difficult to predict its exact scale or impact.
• Internal vs. External Impact: Within the tech industry, there's immense capital expenditure and competition. Externally, AI is initially being absorbed through automation of existing processes, with a slower adoption into new products and revenue streams.
• Value Capture and Business Models: The key question for AI is where value will be captured – in the models themselves, in capital, or in traditional software companies leveraging AI. The speaker suggests the latter might be the most sustainable path.
• Transformation Beyond Automation: While AI currently facilitates automation, its potential lies in fundamentally changing industries by unbundling physical assets, creating new aggregation models, and altering how we discover, recommend, and purchase goods and services.
• The "Forgotten" Automation: Throughout history, technologies that become deeply integrated and essential are eventually forgotten as novelties, becoming simply "the way things are done" (e.g., automatic elevators), and AI is likely to follow this pattern.