Benedict Evans: Why AI Isn’t What You Think

Shane Parrish: I want to start with your most controversial take on AI. 

Benedict Evans: It’s funny. I suppose my controversial take on AI, rather like my controversial take on crypto, is being a centrist in that seems to me very clear that this is the biggest thing since the iPhone, but I also think it’s only the biggest thing since the iPhone. There are a bunch of people who think, “No, it’s much more than that.” At minimum, it’s more like computing. And then you’ve got people going around and saying, “No, this is more like electricity or the industrial revolution or transhumanism or something.” My sort of base case is to say this is kind of another platform shift, and all the new stuff will be built around this for the next 10 or 15 years, and then there’ll be something else. So the impact on employment will be kind of like the impact on employment from the other platform shifts, [along with] the impact on the economy and productivity and intellectual property. And there’ll be a whole bunch of different weird, new questions, just like there were a bunch of different weird, new questions before. And then in 10 years’ time, it’ll just be software.