All the Hot Takes
The world seems more uncertain than ever.
So, let’s try to make the most of it and attempt to manifest some stability amidst a sea of unknowns. While I would like to cap these predictions at the end of the year, I think that it’s necessary to leave it somewhat open ended.
If nothing else, I hope this will be a good exercise to look back on in the future.
Recently, OpenAI swooped into a deal with the Pentagon (after the debacle with Anthropic) to secure a healthy (reportedly in the hundreds of millions) government contract. Revenues aren’t everything in business, and I believe that OpenAI has continued to make unforced errors. See also, putting advertisements in ChatGPT and walking back the no porn stances.
These instances have continued to cede opportunities to competitors who seek to differentiate themselves. While they continue to push for momentum to IPO, I suspect they will shed significant market share (over 20%) to Gemini and Claude.
Which brings us to a by product of the AI age.
AI models are adapting and evolving at record speeds. The worst AI tool you will ever use is the one that sits on your phone or computer today, and we see it getting better every update. That means that businesses are going to get more efficient and cut unnecessary costs to stay competitive.
While it’s not going to happen overnight, we see large restructuring happening and companies enter no hire no fire mode while they find their footing.
In the long term this is going to be healthy and create better businesses that push the frontier, but the short term is going to have unemployment that will force a response from legislators. It seems to me that we are going to get measures protecting employers from mass job loss by only allowing limited re-orgs, or there will be enough support for a universal basic income.
Lastly, despite the chaos and confusion that is happening right now, I believe the U.S. is not going to commit to a protracted engagement with Iran.
The U.S. has already succeeded in creating a vacuum for regime change, now it needs to not commit to ground forces that would get mired in nation building and torn apart by guerrilla forces over time.
