Bill McCollum
By Bill McCollum
“Bill, I don’t understand it; I just know it keeps going up.” A family member said that to me during the late ‘90s, Tech Bubble years about a trendy “dot.com” stock. We know what happened next.
The lesson in the story is certainly applicable today. We may well be in the early innings of a new industrial revolution led by Artificial Intelligence. Or not. We may be embarking on the “tokenization” of the global financial system. Or not.
Today, the pace of innovation is unlike anything ever experienced. Product life cycles are shortening; technology obsolescence is a question of when, not if. If you feel left in the dark, it is because you are.
This is the Wild West! Anyone with an AI idea – the more sizzle, the better – and capital to back it – preferably others’ money – is trying to stake a claim while the getting’s good.
Know this: innovation cycles are littered with failures. Remember Betamax? Netscape? PalmPilot? Over time, the weak players shake out, and a handful of winners arise. Eventually, the new technology is supplanted by something else. E-mail has replaced fax machines; streaming is overtaking cable and satellite TV.
AI is different from past technological innovations. Once AI is firmly established and widely-adopted, what could possibly replace it? How about humans?!
I wonder if we are reaching a point of technological overload. How efficient and productive do we need to be in our daily lives, anyway? And who does that ultimately benefit? It seems as if we are increasingly serving the technology, and not the other way around.
The ultimate shake-out this time around would be if we, as a society, disconnect from cyber-everything and reconnect with reality and one another. Might that be the ultimate re-innovation!
Bill McCollum is an investment advisor representative of Wingo Asset Management, LLC, a Registered Investment Advisor.