The Internet is a Platform-Platform. AI is not.

AI is not like the internet or computer operating system software in terms of its economic impact.

The latter two are platform-platforms while AI is not.

A platform is a kind of medium.  e.g. YouTube is a platform for videos.

Some platforms are special in that they are recursively platforms for platforms.

Computer hardware are platform-platforms.  They're a medium for various single purpose built software, of course, but more importantly they are also a medium for different operating systems (OSs).

OSs like macOS or Windows are platform-platforms.  The most easiest and reductive way to see this is that you can virtualize and run macOS on Windows, and vice versa.  More substantively, these OSs can run internet or web browsers.

Internet and web browsers and the physical internetwork they connect to form platform-platforms.  Different businesses run on the web, but more importantly, the web or internet are a medium for running app stores on desktop and mobile devices.

Is AI a platform-platform?  What is it a medium for?  Does this medium support a platform recursively?

Or is AI more like a sufficiently smart general compiler?  AI can automate existing products and workflows, but it isn't a medium that will enable more products exponentially by carrying platforms on platforms … on platforms.

Others have noted similar ideas.  e.g. AI is a feature, not a product.  Actually, it's worse: "AI is a tech to enable a feature, not a feature in itself" [1].

Or that current AI are automated "infinite interns that can write anything for you" [2].  But follow that train of thought to the conclusion that a human-level current-generation AI would be an actually-human intern and now wonder: since when do human interns (even an infinity of them) form a medium that can be a platform for platforms?  (… unless you use them like transistors, to do computation as a human powered Turing machine, just to argue they can do what actual computers can already do.)

This distinction between products and platforms vs platform-platforms can inform us on the economic impact of AI on society.

 

 [1]: ( https://www.threads.net/@benedictevans/post/C8C00e5OZBT )

 [2]: ( https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2023/7/2/working-with-ai )