There was a great piece a couple days ago where Sam Altman was going through the way that different generations are using AI. Some as a search engine, some as a curiousity, some as a partner or a therapist, but Gen Alpha is using it as an operating system. So what does this mean?
Every thing comes back to the question of why news matters. What is it about the information we consume that justifies using our time or our resources to consume it? Every piece of news we consume, every piece of content that we find online is a trade. It is trading invaluable moments of time for a piece of free information that someone has chosen to share, or in the case of paid content, we’re trading resources (traded for time) for some value. Information has value and that value is in some way a product of time.
So if information has intrinsic value, what are the price signals that exist in the context of this information that justify the transaction that underpins the purchase decision? And that purchase decision can exist in many contexts. So how do we understand that decision and how do we create the value (and sell that value) in a hyper competitive information ecosystem?
Who is our audience and what is the value that we can provide to them?
The reason that question about the usage of AI by generation struck me is that the pace of adoption by generation is going to matter. And the information habits of these generations will vary significantly. So what is a path that allows us to understand the informational topography that defines our current moment and actually allow us to make a mark on the market?
A VC commented on Altman’s speech that perhaps those that had never been in an executive role where tasks were assigned and broader plans created wouldn’t necessarily understand the use cases and value that AI could create in the broader scale. If AI is a trusted sage, it is a very different use case than as a partner in creation, or a recipient of orders in someone else’s vision. How we understand information is going to matter. How we act on that information matters more. It isn’t the inherent value of the information itself, its how we use that information to enable other action that reduces friction in some other part of the system.