As AI gets cheaper, judgment becomes more valuable
As AI models become cheaper and more interchangeable, competitive advantage shifts toward better decisions, proprietary data, workflows, and customer relationships.
I read an interesting article arguing that Apple, not the frontier model companies, may end up being the biggest winner in AI.
Maybe. But I think the bigger takeaway is: As AI models become cheaper and more interchangeable, competitive advantage shifts somewhere else.
We’ve seen this before.
- Infrastructure becomes less differentiated.
- Implementation gets cheaper.
- Value moves up the stack.
It means the scarce resource changes.
The question is shifting from ‘Can we build it?’ to ‘Where does it actually create leverage?’
- What decisions should remain uniquely human?
- What is our real moat? Proprietary data, workflows, customer relationships?
- How do we get AI into the hands of customers and employees?
I think that’s the shift many companies are still underestimating.
As software becomes cheaper to produce, the quality of decisions becomes more valuable than the quality of implementation.
The article I mentioned: the article about Apple and AI.
Originally posted on LinkedIn.