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ARE OUR BASIC ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT AI WRONG? 🤔

Robert Maciejko
2 min readSep 14, 2024

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Silicon Valley is pouring billions into chips from companies like NVIDIA, racing to create AI that’s smarter, faster, and capable of doing almost anything — coding full apps, writing entire books, and even composing complete songs. OpenAI’s recent o1 model proves that we’re already on the verge of this future. But here’s the burning question no one’s asking: Who’s actually going to use all of this?

Take books, for example. There are over 130 MILLION books in existence today, but how many does the average person read each year? Spoiler: just 12. It’s the same story with apps, music, and everything else — we’re drowning in supply.

Now imagine AI unleashing EVEN MORE, at almost zero cost. Basic economics tells us that when supply explodes and production costs fall to zero, prices follow suit. But what happens when prices plummet to nothing — or lower, as creators compete to find users?

Universal Basic Income (UBI) often comes up as a solution, but this opens a whole new set of problems. Nobel Prize-winning economists warn that an economy flooded with AI-generated content risks INEFFICIENCY — producing far more than anyone can consume, wasting resources. In a world of infinite supply, the real scarcity could become ATTENTION, a resource AI cannot create. And the rush to fill the market with cheap content could trigger a BUBBLE that bursts when demand doesn’t materialize.

Is an economy where creation outpaces consumption one that truly works? It’s time to rethink our economic models before they become obsolete.

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Robert Maciejko
Robert Maciejko

Written by Robert Maciejko

Entrepreneurial Leader & International Change Driver who delivers. Co-founder of the 1500+ strong global INSEAD AI community. Opinions are personal.

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