sho(r)ts: the extiction of idea & execution
when both ideas and execution are commoditized thanks to advances in technology, how do we adapt our current processes to make sense of our activities?
Quick toughts: if AI can execute, curation of ideas or coming up with mechanisms to filter them as they execute becomes more important. Otherwise this will bring certain humans down to halt because they can't decide which option is better.
No wait! It's actually the opposite: we can just execute as many ideas as we want since the marginal cost of executing them in a digital economy tends to zero, right? Just try and see what happens (maybe the market could be saturated and shut down for all opportunities?)
When the constraints are hard imposed (materials, budget, etc.) you need to choose or the decision is made for you by the circumstances. As AI advances towards an increasingly swifter execution, when everything can be made, what is the point of "everything"?
We saw what happened with digital photography: we now have tons of useless, soulless pictures. Also a handful of better ones that could be made and a handful of great photographers who could try because of near zero marginal costs. But you still need a photographer with criteria (even more so now, curation is highly needed, starting 1st with the photographer). Same will happen with AI: as marginal cost of trying an idea converges to zero, it becomes rather important that the person driving the AI has the tools (inner personal) to sort through all that can be done. To have an idea of what "good" is for them. As the collective that receives the work or uses it grows, the mechanisms to ascertain whether something is good, or a good fit, or whatever criteria, need to improve at the same rate as the execution capabilities grow, otherwise companies will stall.
Currently businesses need to choose well the ideas (a.k.a. strategy) since the execution is costly. Whichever parts of the business that operate increasingly in the digital plane will be soon "free" or as close to free to execute (and operate at least in initial phases) as is practically possible. Companies spend many resources managing ideas & their associated execution because they are expensive (sometimes making even much more expensive the initiatives due to inefficient tracking mechanisms, but that's meat for another commentary). Companies spend many resources coming up with KPIs, OKRs, what have you, to measure progress & make sure the efforts are well oriented. But current KPIs and any other measurement system cannot cope with end-to-end automated value chains, from the idea generation to measuring performance in the market.
Traditional mechanisms to decide what is done and what isn't will progressively make less sense. Large structures around centralized decision making will be quickly out-adapted by smaller ones that now have the capability to execute. Smaller, decentralized, poorly coordinated efforts will still probably win in adapting to a certain scenario by achieving product-market fit faster (although most likely inefficiently and far from an optimal solution/product/service). This model was also true before but smaller efforts had little execution capabilities. Now, with distribution of digital goods being instant at planet-scale and execution capabilities approaching instant delivery times, with automated markets with smart contracts, smaller teams do have a larger chance of winning. Vertical integration can be progressively replaced better by automation & coordination of isolated execution capabilities, owing to technological advances.
"But we thought the internet would disintermediate and all we've seen is larger corporations than before taking over the entire economy" -> Sure, but things move in cycles and with each iteration of the economical model the ability for smaller organisms to thrive grows. And will only do so exponentially. At some point, larger companies will no longer be able to seize the market because of their ability to integrate better vertically. Probably companies will need to create ecosystems of business organisms which can cooperate and generate value in a more distributed way. Inefficiently at first, but adaptive & resilient in the long term.
To me, the key to navigate the whole panorama of possibilities we face is adaptation. What we can learn from the millions of years of life (at least in our planet) is that adaption capabilities trump all other characteristics. Even inefficient solutions but with better adaptation outcomes are preferred over time to any other potential approach.
That's it. No AI could've written such a chaotic collection of half-thoughts, right? Inefficient, probably ineffective writing even. But keeps me going. What keeps your initiatives going? Your life? Your love?