When Content Creation Goes to Zero

Publisher’s note: This essay is an edited and revised version of my original essay on AI that I published last year. In it, I argue that the primary effect of AI will be that it pushes the cost of digital good creation to zero. The original showcased a variety of demos of new AI tools that I ended up cutting. Now, only six months later, all those demos look passé—we are far past them already. What does the world look like in a year? 10? How does a dramatically reduced COGS for code, text, email, etc., affect our world? 

The most significant consequence of AI is that it will push creation costs to zero. 

The atomic activity of any company can be boiled down to:

1. Create stuff
2. Acquire customer to buy stuff
3. Distribute that stuff

The internet broke the third category of distribution, and AI is going to break the first one. Innovations like GPT-3, DALL-E, and other AI tools will dramatically decrease the cost of producing goods with a digital component.

I don’t want to veer into hyperbole, but I’ve never been simultaneously so excited and scared by a technology category. Theoretically, I knew these changes were coming, but I have been stunned by how quickly they have occurred. In 5–10 years, the power dynamics of knowledge work will look radically different. 

For some categories of companies, AI tooling will be a disruptive innovation—one that renders their entire business obsolete. For other categories, it will be a sustaining innovation that can allow them to serve a similar set of customers at decreased costs. It’s unclear which type of company falls into the latter categories.

The biggest question is this: When acquisition is the only thing left to compete for, what does our economy look like?