In uncertain times, people are easily swayed by external information. To reduce anxiety, they seek only information that reinforces their own beliefs, and social media algorithms amplify this bias. Ultimately, they end up moving according to the flow designed by information providers.
To freely manage the future, you must first manage fear. Fear arises from ignorance. While you cannot predict the future, if you understand the principles of how the market moves and the structure of its changes, you can gauge what to do now.
The greatest fear of our time is that AI will replace everything. It is impossible to predict in detail exactly what will be replaced and what will remain. However, from a macroscopic perspective, we can predict that not everything will disappear as a result of this change.
The most pessimistic scenario is that AI Big Tech dominates the entire software market. This involves AI Big Tech monopolizing core technologies, leading to a situation where individuals either create software themselves or the AI Big Tech develops everything. Given the growth of AI technology itself, this is not an impossible scenario. However, the market is not determined solely by the maturity of the technology.
In a market without competition, the leading company dominates the entire domain. Unless the rules change, large corporations expand by directly operating the entire domain industry, and if a new company emerges, they eliminate it by creating an identical product or acquiring it.
Generally, there are many markets that have become entrenched in this way. However, as time passes, people and cultures change and new technologies emerge, cracks sometimes appear in the existing market.
New opportunities arose from the weakest points of established powerhouses at that time. The moments when individuals and small teams were able to grow were always times when the rules changed.
It is highly likely that AI will follow the same trend. AI Big Tech companies are still competing while incurring astronomical costs. Therefore, they are focusing on markets where they can expect greater profits in the future than they do now.
In the meantime, niche markets that are currently small in scale but have significant future value will emerge. As time passes and the cost of AI technology decreases and performance becomes standardized, the initiative may shift from suppliers to customers. At this point, what individuals and small businesses need to do is move quickly and continuously build small innovations.
Rather than seeking a massive moat to compete with Big Tech from the start, it is more realistic to focus on user experience and solving specific domain problems to create a small but strong difference.
Ultimately, there will be no extinction. As always, we must focus on the market, do our job, and create things for our customers.
