Many equate AI to a "gold rush".
But I think this framing is fundamentally flawed. It misunderstands how transformative technologies develop and scale.
AI is not gold
In a literal gold rush, the value is in the gold itself. It's a finite resource, and the rush is to extract as much of it as quickly as possible before it runs out.
But AI isn't a finite resource. It's a technology. And technologies scale in ways that finite resources do not.
The real value of AI will come not from hoarding some finite pool of "AI gold", but from developing and scaling the technology itself.
Why People Think AI is a Gold Rush
(cynical take incoming...)
When people call AI a "gold rush", they're not really talking about the technology itself.
They're talking about two related but distinct phenomena that are finite and depletable:
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The flood of "easy money" from venture capital chasing the AI hype cycle
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The surge of attention that AI is occupying in the technology discourse
Easy money will eventually dry up and public attention will inevitably shift as the next shiny object catches the zeitgeist.
We've seen this one before
History offers better frames than the gold rush. The development of AI is more akin to the advent of electricity or the rise of the internet.
Chartiably 9/10 dot-com era compaines didn't make it past the crash. But they sure did raise a lot of money from people thought they were digging for gold.
We've seen this one before I think.