Rambling Thoughts: When ever a new technology comes along, there are people, adopters, who have an interest. Cutting edge interest. They are enthusiasts who wish to own one of the 'things', Engineers who want to understand how the new thing works, and if they're both, maybe want to make a better version. And then there is a 3rd group, who can be broken down into Entrepreneurs and Vultures.
How we need to be aware of AI, because of the Vultures
When the car came along in the 1800s, it was a great idea, to move people from location A to location B on any fairly flat surface, back then the uses may or may not have been thought of, from motorbikes, trucks, planes, pumps, submarines, the concept had so many uses. Each allowed a second, third, forth entrepreneur the ability to asses, create, test it, go to market with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and become profitable.
We had time to identify the market niches, varieties and discover if was a good thing or not to develop a company to supply a product, some stayed, some left, but over all we had a good range of products. It wasn't viable to cannabalise other companies. Some smaller manufacturers created cheap ripoffs of the market, but the cost to produce a car plant was very high, it took dedication and often govt inclusion to invent a local car to resist the imports.
When the mobile came along, We saw a range of phone being developed by companies in multiple countries, and because of the ubiquitous nature of the mobile, many could create knock offs and replicas and cheap versions, Yet it eventually boiled down to two to three main rivals, and everyone else couldn't cope with the cost involved to stay relevant. Developing a major phone, and marketing it was expensive, if you were not in, in the early days, you would struggle to bring a product to market, and gain enough share to be relevant.
Today, AI stores are live. You can create a 'store' of a concept for an AI, and go to market, and because its new its still a good time to jump in. Yet, be aware that because its so easy to create a store, many people are going to create one. the barrier of entry is low, the flow of information how to create your own is high. The best will rise to the top, and if they price themselves right, will be the be all and end all of that niche.
What do I mean by this.
If you create a Baseball AI right now, you might be lucky to create the right kind, the right style, maybe no-one else has thought to do a baseball AI, so you'll have enough lead time on the competition, to get your product working well. Price it within the market average, say $20 a month for now, and rake in a few hundred grand, to figure out how to do it better, price it a bit lower to maintain the edge on your potential competitors, and stay relevant, as it'll come.. The vultures will begin to swirl.
The cost to enter this market is low, extremely low, I doubt any $20 a month product will stay relevant beyond a year. The race to the price floor will be swift, maybe swift enough to kill off the whole idea, but you can be sure that the companies that stay afloat will have done one of two things. Sold out [data], or Consumed the competition.
Probably Both.
Hold up.. Are you even aware?
Incase you've been living under a rock, the generic AI that was GPT 4, is so overwhelmed with data, its slowing down, so they decided to split it into sub sets of itself, based on specific topics, and instead of doing all the effort themselves, they're 'leasing' the whole thing to us consumers, to create our own niche AIs.
You can upload all you know about baseball to your baseball AI and have it feed back specific information about existing games, or maybe predict future games, or maybe tell stories based on game stats, what ever you decide your app will do, and then you'll promote it to consumers, to use, and pay you for the advanced versions. They'll use it to make their lives easier, and you'll be providing data to GPT to they can train their AGI better. win-win, right?
But, this will only work for the 1st Baseball AI. and maybe the 2nd. just like Android and iPhone. There will be 2 camps in the end, BaseBall-AI and AI-Baseball. Each doing the same thing, with a slightly different feel. And all the rest of the world, won't have a chance to create a baseball AI because you've already done it. The barrier of entry will not be price, not be skill, or ability, it'll be recognition of who was 'first'. The cool kids will use the main one, and that'll be it.
Are you going to be first?
