The difference between it’ll happen and we must plan it to happen

We have a lot of sympathy with two parts of the argument here:

Tech investors were riding high, convinced that a website and a Super Bowl ad were all it took to get rich quick. Spending was mistaken for growth; marketing was mistaken for a business model. In just a few months, the dot-com boom would go bust: $1.7tn in market value vanished, and the broader economy took a $5tn hit.

….

The AI boom looks eerily familiar.

We’re fine with that. A new technology arrives, people get very excited, some get too excited. It’s happened with dotcom stocks, cars, trains, canals and tulips. About that last we always do like reminding that Europe’s cut flower market still operates from a couple of sheds by Schipol Airport. Booms do leave echoes, path dependency matters and all that.

Yet something remarkable emerged from the wreckage. The post-crash internet wasn’t defined by speculation, but by creation: the rise of web 2.0 and open-source software – and the birth of platforms like Firefox and Wikipedia. The lesson is simple: when bubbles burst, what comes next can be better, if we build it differently.

We’re also fine with that. We all tried out something, that didn’t quite work, we all do it differently in the follow through. Sure, all part of that market experimentation, try everything, do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

This is the bit that doesn’t work for us:

When the AI bubble pops, we’ll face a choice. We can rebuild the same monopolistic model, or we can use the moment to design an economy that’s pro-human and values-driven.

It’s that “design” part. We refuse to believe that it’s possible to design an economy. Refuse to believe that it has been designed, is designed or can be - by whatever metric it might be that anyone wants to try. Whether that is to “design” a monopolistic and extractive economy, or here that more kumbaya of pro-human and values-driven*. It’s the intellectual effrontery of believing that the interactions of 8 billion people can be designed that offends us.

Sure, we’re definitely in an AI boom and it could certainly be an investment frenzy, a bubble. But it’s still not going to be possible to design what comes after. We’re stuck with the only method we’ve got that has ever worked on anything, market experimentation. Do everything, do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. And the very Best of British to all who sail in that enterprise.

Tim Worstall

*That one always worries us - whose damn values and why?