marco grazzi

Is Generative AI a Bubble? Let me make the contrarian case that we are living in the middle of a generative AI bubble. First, I want to clarify that I am not an AI skeptic or fatalist. I don’t believe AI will take over the world and must be stopped. On the contrary, I am a long time user and fan of artificial intelligence. At the same time, I’ve also been around long enough to know that unbridled enthusiasm and too many Super Bowl ads spell bubble. So let me make the contrarian case that we are living through a generative AI bubble; even though I strongly believe AI is here to stay. My case rehashes ideas introduced by Herbert Simon more than 50 years ago. Basically, the notion that since generative AI supplies content what it demands is attention. And attention, not content, is what’s scarce in our world. So let’s get started. In the last couple of years everybody and their mother has experienced the jaw dropping power of AI generated images, text, and video. And we can all agree that their quality has improved enormously. No doubt, we are moving towards a world that will be inundated by AI generated content. But here is the twist. We can also all agree that six years ago, when these technologies were nowhere near as good as they are today, the world was not suffering from a lack of images, text, or video. Generative AI is cool, but it is not satisfying a need involving a real supply constraint. I love generative AI. It is beautiful and poetic. It is certainly helping online attention junkies & marketing folks generate fleeting waves of engagement. But those generated ads and memes are chasing the same eyeballs and dollars. AI generated video can create beautiful shots and will surely be used in film. But what supply constraint is that truly releasing? Will we watch more films as a result of that? Will we pay more for them? Much of the world is already glued to a screen for 5 to 8 hours a day. By all means we must celebrate advances in AI. Whether in film, the arts, or in other fields. They represent a great triumph of human ingenuity and creativity. But we also need to acknowledge that these triumphs impact specific parts of systems that involve multiple constraints. Our modern knowledge economy has some legit supply constraints that are out of reach from AI technology, because AI does not do what we need. It simply does what it does. Our economy remains largely physical. Despite the growing importance of digital technology, I bet you that housing, taxes, travel, and food still explain most of your credit card bill. To put this in simple terms, consider our knowledge economy’s voracious need for housing. If young professionals want a battle cry for their generation that could well be: we wanted homes, but all we got were more memes. AI is a technology driven by supply side interests, but it is still, a bit like the proverbial hammer looking for a nail. Today, gen AI is a technology that lives primarily on the web, where it is used primarily to generate content. But we need to remember that in the web, content is not always king. One way to conceptualize the modern web, and its economy, is as a symbiotic battle between content engines and attention engines. Attention engines have the traffic. They are mainly search and social media. These are the platforms that have the eyeballs that everyone is competing to attract. If you are not a platform, you are either an eyeball, a content producer, or both. Also, if you are not a platform, you are at a clear disadvantage, as you are one more content producer competing for a tiny share of the attention that platforms have. Generative AI is not a platform. It is a powerful tool to accelerate the production of content. A tool that will increase the competition among content producers. But if the platform/content balance remains, it will be the platforms that will reap the benefit of the added content. So why does all this spell bubble? While I agree that the technology has true potential, I am not sure we need 1,000 companies doing generative images, video, or text. The substitutability among many of them is rather large. Like in the dot com bubble of the early 2000s, we are amidst a Cambrian explosion of firms that will most likely be followed by a mass extinction event. Generative AI may have many potential users, but may not need as many providers. Like it once happened to search, the AI industry will sooner or later start to consolidate. And when it does, it may not be pretty, as the valuations of those being acquired in dire straits may not be the ones that their investors hoped. I know this is a contrarian take. But I feel the tide is starting to turn. On the mean time, sit back, relax, and enjoy the memes.