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Up the Stack: How AI’s Escape From the Commodity Trap Risks Enterprise Lock-in

normaltech.ai · 5,605 words · saved by 1 readers

Critics and boosters are both looking in the wrong place

By Arvind Narayanan and Akash Kapur Our goal in this essay is to move beyond the debate over whether AI is a bubble. We do so in two ways: clearly separating current financials from the question of who captures value in the long run, and recognizing that the labs are not confined to be model providers. They can migrate up the stack and are already aggressively doing so. This will likely allow them to escape the commodity trap but raises new concerns — customer lock-in and reduced competition. Akash Kapur is a visiting fellow at Princeton and a senior fellow at New America. He is no…

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