Continuing my thoughts after my previous article, and having too much free time lately, I have been spending more time than I should browsing LinkedIn, the place where the jobs descriptions die, but the AI influencers thrive.
After reading too many AI posts, followed by too many anti-AI posts, I’ve started to forming some kind of belief that the AI psychosis we’ve seeing over the last year is- at least some extend of it- a direct consequence of something that started long before AI was there: the endless subscription models that almost every major or minor company has imposed on us.
For years, we’ve gradually moved from buying software to renting it (who remembers the good old days that when you bought a laptop, it was also included the actual CDs to install Word?). Instead of paying once for a product, we now pay a monthly subscription to keep accessing it. Yes, we are paying for infrastructure (since everything seems to be on the cloud), ongoing development, support, content or a service that has recurring costs.
But sometimes it feels like our money goes to something that it is more like a collection of features wrapped in a nice-ish interface.
The first group has realised that they can build a spinoff of an application they need/want/like for a fraction of the cost. They don't necessarily need to build something sophisticated, with the best architecture or commercially viable. They just need something that solves their particular problem and AI helps them to achieve their goal.
The second group has a different thought model. They have realized that they can build a spinoff of an application they need/want/like, and then they assume that because they were able to build it more or less cheap and easy, there must also be an opportunity to monetize it.
In my humble opinion this second group is where some of the current enthusiasm around AI starts becoming disconnected from reality. Being able to build something in a low price does not mean that someone is willing to pay you for it or you solve any particular novel problem.
So, did AI unlock our potential to democratize code or reduce (finally) the prices? Absolutely not.
What AI has done is reduce the cost and effort required to produce certain types of software. We have to consider the difference between the cost of creating that said software and the value that this software provides.
If the software is just an interface around something easy to reproduce, then yes, AI can make it much less valuable. But there are plenty of businesses where the software itself isn't the main reason people buying it. That could be the trust in brand or the security promise etc.
Software Isn't Always the Product There are some services that you can’t really hurt and it doesn’t even matter if they use AI or not. Their value comes from something the average person can’t reproduce: their content.
Streaming services are a good example. Netflix can charge (or change whenever they want) a monthly subscription not because the application is difficult to recreate (the contrary), but because its value is the content available inside the app.
Yes, you could build your own basic streaming application version very easy. But that doesn’t give you access to the catalogue of movies or shows.
Sure, you could start buying DVDs, digitise everything, build a ridiculous amount of storage and spend the rest of my life maintaining it. But at that point, I might as well just pay for the netflix subscription.
Amazon works in a similar way. There is nothing revolutionary about the concept of an online storefront. A developer can build a basic version of an Amazon-like interface relatively quickly (with or without AI).
But Amazon isn’t valuable because it has product cards, a shopping cart and a checkout page. The real value is everything behind them: the sellers, warehouses, logistics, delivery network, payment systems, customer service and, perhaps most importantly, the convenience of having almost anything delivered to your door.
The truth is that AI hasn't made software worthless but rather made a particular category of software easier to reproduce.
The last years, we have accepted subscription software as the default. If we needed a particular functionality, we would search for a SaaS product, create an account and add another recurring payment to a long list of subscriptions we already have. But now we can just consider: "Can I just build and maintain the thing I actually need?"