Suppose a painting you really want. By itself, this painting is financially worthless. Its value comes from how much you, as a person, are willing to pay for it. This is simple economics: supply and demand.
But what if you had the ability to create a replica by yourself, easily and for basically free? You would most likely no longer want to purchase that painting. And if you're no longer willing to buy it, it no longer has financial value. While this sounds hypothetical, that's exactly what happened with NFTs. You may buy and then own that funny monkey image, but I can just copy it. The version you own has no more value than mine, regardless of what you think or want. How much money people wasted buying that garbage is evidence that they don't understand economics. It is not evidence that their images have value.
This is the problem with everything made with AI.
The Moat Undertaker
Your software may be fantastic. But if you made it with AI, anyone can make it with AI. If you start making money, someone else will start making money. Soon enough, your money maker will become no one's money maker. One SaaS becomes a hundred SaaS becomes no SaaS and millions in debt.
But it gets worse as time flies: AI catches up with handcrafted software, too, and soon that'll be worthless as well. It's only a matter of time before the value of everything digital drops to zero.
AI software, art, and content do not create value. They destroy it. It turns human labor into something that can be done almost for free, making your work something no one will be willing to pay for. Making it financially worthless. The $$ is running away from your pa$$ion.
The Exceptions
A well-known artist will still be fine because they are the product and AI can't become them. Picasso will not starve to death. A nurse will probably be fine because humans want a human touch. Politicians will be fine because human corruption is hard to replicate.
Anything where humans matter more than the products or services will be fine. At least for some time. For the rest of the population? Good luck. The digital goes first. The robots will take care of the rest. A factory in Guangdong, China, claims to be spitting out 10 000 humanoid robots a year. Both the hardware and the software are still primitive. But both are progressing at an insane speed, and field deployment means data collection means better AIs means better robots. In the US, Boston Dynamics has started producing its own Atlas workers and plans to deploy them in 2028. Yes, robots will automate most physical jobs. Yes, your job too. It's only a matter of time.
Dark Times Ahead
Many people get scared when they hear "AI will take your job." They get angry. Mad. But, really, they're not mad at AI, or even automation. They're mad because they know that the same system that will make them jobless will not rescue them. The system will automate your job and blame you for being jobless. You will be poor and homeless and it will be your fault. So says the great meritocracy circus we call "society."
Here's the thing: automation is great. No longer needing to work is great. But the world as it exists cannot handle that. We are forcefully inserting engines inside horses and refusing to invent cars, and we're hoping it'll go well. It's not going to go well.
After Dark
I don't know the future. As much as I love waffling about what's ahead, I can only read the room. What comes after Dark is unknown. It may be great, terrible, or nothing at all. But there is one thing I know. When I look at my country, France, and when I look at the rest of the world, I don't see a single country that's on the right track. I see technological illiteracy, I see fear, I see so-called democracies drooling at the thought of creating an authoritarian AI dystopia because oh boy, nothing screams "democracy" and "human rights" like "we're going to use AI to spy all your private chats 24/7 and force you to show ID every time you want to go take a piss somewhere on the internet." I see a lot of copium from the anti-AI bros, who don't seem to understand that open models are never going away, even after the great collapse of AI companies. I see a lot of ignorance among the general public, who think AI still means 4o and AI agents mean Matrix. Decades of progress unfolded in barely a few years, and the gap between those who know and those who don't is wider than ever. Which is why the Powers that Boom aren't catching up. And they're never going to catch up. Big Tech has been running circles around them for decades, they're not stopping now.
I used to approach AI with hope. Now, I'm just waiting to see what kind of hell awaits us.
What AI creates has no value. It does not bring wealth. It destroys it. Without a fundamental change in the way we approach human societies, things won't end well. Until then, here's the deal: companies are spending trillions to kill your moat. They won't profit from doing that, because all the moats they get their hands on become de facto worthless. By any definition, this is an attack on humanity. It already has devastating consequences, and it's going to keep getting worse.
You can do nothing about it. Neither can I. Enjoy your time, while you still can. The grass is still green. For now.