Theme song: “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who
I really didn’t want to write about AI again, but I feel so gaslit by the industry.
Right now, most people in tech agree on one thing - AI is here to stay, it’s “the new normal” (as if we haven’t heard that before), and this is the permanent future of work. Yet, everyone’s also acting like they are in a frantic sprint to extract as much value as possible before… what? Before it ends?
If AI is truly here to stay, then why does it feel like a gold rush? Everyone’s determined to deploy and orchestrate dozens of agents, automating everything in sight, and cramming AI into every workflow as fast as possible. This isn’t what you’d expect of people building for a sustainable future. This is the behaviour of people who know the free lunch is ending.
Let’s at least agree on one thing: we’re using massively subsidised AI services. These models cost enormous amounts to run, and they’re priced far below their true cost. Everyone’s quietly aware that at some point, the economics will have to make sense. So, we’re sprinting, building brittle systems that depend on cheap API calls that might cost 10x more next year.
Otherwise, if AI were truly here to stay, wouldn’t we be pacing ourselves? Wouldn’t we try to find ways of using it that actually make us more productive, rather than just creating more work?
Right now we’re all sprinting, and I think we know why - it’s basically Black Friday at the LLM store and we are trying to extract maximum value from the subsidy before it ends. Before the APIs get expensive. Before reality catches up with the hype.
To me, this raises some uncomfortable questions: If AI is really as transformative as claimed, why the rush? If these tools make us more productive, why does everyone feel more busy? If this is sustainable, why does it feel like a bubble?
I may not have the answers to any of those questions, but when everyone’s acting one way while saying something else, things stop adding up. With the entire industry sprinting toward a “permanent” future, I find myself wondering who’ll be left holding the bag when the music stops.