Have been enjoying the sandwich economics narrative and the corresponding videos.
This post is very insightful as well and strongly resonates. A day before, I penned down a comparison of the current AI/Agentifcation wave to that of the Interntifcation of the world over the last 20 years and great to see many overlaps - https://ankurashokg.substack.com/p/from-internet-rails-to-ai-agents-471
Certainly mine is not as technical or researched as yours, but in case you have a chance to take a look and throw in your PoV or feedback on that similarities and differences on the outcomes we may see over the next 5 years or so, could be wonderful.
Thanks Ankur. The comparison with the rise of the internet is well put. I also think we're still in the Friendster-Myspace phase. We can see what's possible but we can't yet see what Facebook will look like. Or in the Ask Jeeves - Altavista phase.
That era was different compared to Saas coming on top of cloud infrastructure, which, in my mind, wasn't about figuring out an entirely new business model.
How do you reconcile much of foundational technical infrastructure being open source (or potentially being open source) with the implicit view that institutions such as corporations or governments “control” and leverage that infrastructure?
Wouldn’t a counter to a sandwich framework be to promote openness wherever possible?
The infrastructure is open source much like Android is open. But Google exerts control by owning maps as a complementary performance component. That's the role AI plays alongside open infrastructure.
Open source has no meaning when you move beyond software to a larger ecosystem of complements.
I think models were always meant to be commoditized if the space is to move forward.
One way: Foundational models are open-sourced but specific-purpose models around it are not. Meaning you provide foundational models to a country but keep 'supply chain brain' and 'smart city brain' and other specific models closed so that whoever uses foundational models and also uses say supply chain and smart city infrastructure now has motivation to take those specialist 'brains' from you as they've got the rest of the system already.
Another would be to set up control points in the workflow.
We, the people, will make the standards. Kwaai.ai
Really enjoying this series. Its been super useful to start to give terminology to the shifts we can see around us.
Have been enjoying the sandwich economics narrative and the corresponding videos.
This post is very insightful as well and strongly resonates. A day before, I penned down a comparison of the current AI/Agentifcation wave to that of the Interntifcation of the world over the last 20 years and great to see many overlaps - https://ankurashokg.substack.com/p/from-internet-rails-to-ai-agents-471
Certainly mine is not as technical or researched as yours, but in case you have a chance to take a look and throw in your PoV or feedback on that similarities and differences on the outcomes we may see over the next 5 years or so, could be wonderful.
Thanks and keep posting.
Thanks Ankur. The comparison with the rise of the internet is well put. I also think we're still in the Friendster-Myspace phase. We can see what's possible but we can't yet see what Facebook will look like. Or in the Ask Jeeves - Altavista phase.
That era was different compared to Saas coming on top of cloud infrastructure, which, in my mind, wasn't about figuring out an entirely new business model.
We are still in the friendster Myspace era. Totally with you on that. We are still very early..
How would you see the TikTok saga in this context :-)?
A push to capture the last remaining aggregator. Eventually, aggregators are the layer at which social and economic activity is conducted.
How do you reconcile much of foundational technical infrastructure being open source (or potentially being open source) with the implicit view that institutions such as corporations or governments “control” and leverage that infrastructure?
Wouldn’t a counter to a sandwich framework be to promote openness wherever possible?
The infrastructure is open source much like Android is open. But Google exerts control by owning maps as a complementary performance component. That's the role AI plays alongside open infrastructure.
Open source has no meaning when you move beyond software to a larger ecosystem of complements.
Makes sense. In this case, if AI - models and weights - was also open source what would be the complements that are used as competitive levers?
I think models were always meant to be commoditized if the space is to move forward.
One way: Foundational models are open-sourced but specific-purpose models around it are not. Meaning you provide foundational models to a country but keep 'supply chain brain' and 'smart city brain' and other specific models closed so that whoever uses foundational models and also uses say supply chain and smart city infrastructure now has motivation to take those specialist 'brains' from you as they've got the rest of the system already.
Another would be to set up control points in the workflow.