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If the chatbot can do the job, and if the chatbot costs less than the worker who does the job today, then the chatbot company can profitably sell services more cheaply than anyone who presently employs that worker, because the chatbot company already owns the chatbot. If you were really on a glide path to creating an all-powerful deity and just needed cash to keep the venture going until the cancer-curing word-guesser awoke from its long slumber, then wouldn’t you want as much cash as possible?
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An excellent counterpoint for anybody who claims that AI will become profitable eventually, and agrees with the hype assertion that the things that it’s capable
of automating always represent better value than human workers doing the same tasks.
Why sell picks and shovels if you’ve already struck gold?
But of course you already know the answer. The big AI companies are currently funded by moving-money-around. They do not have a clear path to profitability, and it’s not certain whether or not they ever will. So selling their service, rather than competing with their customers, allows them to hedge their bets for as long as possible.
Maybe in that time they’ll find a way to bring their costs down. Maybe they won’t. But they’re clearly not confident enough that they will that they’ll bet on their own long-term future.
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