Leave the lemmings behind

Have you ever noticed how little imagination there is in tech and how lemming like the entire industry is?

- 5G came along, $650bn was spent, and the use cases were always remote surgery ( often on fruit) , connected self driving cars, smart cities and mobile VR, which wasn't especially life changing and also happened to be the precise same use cases for 4G.

- AR came along and we were promised that workforces around the world with manual jobs would be trained on how to know which knob to turn.

- VR burst onto the scene and we could all now design cars from home (there are literally thousands of photos of this (see below), as every single VR maker promised this unlikely path ahead) 

- We've always been promised the same precise future uses of tech.

+ We can try on sunglasses at home ( we don't want to)

+ We can get ads for Gatorade after our watch records a run ( dumb)

+ We can use SmartMirrors in retailers as we try on clothes

+ We can 3D print vintage car parts

+ We can use spatial computing to shop in a virtual store or bank in a 3D bank.

+ We can use voice to reorder some laundry detergent 

+ A smart fridge that shows us what we can cook.

These cases are undiminished year on year for 15 years. And they are not remotely compelling or commercially interesting 

We keep being dazzled preposterous, technologically sophisticated and entirely unlikely and generally niche use cases every day of the week. Is this because tech is being pulled not pushed?

We see this more than ever before with AI.

Every AI company on earth with the precise same boring approach to AI.

- Use it as a way to enhance chatbots to better server people 

- Add it to search so you can generate and not just find answers 

- Use it to plan a weekend drive in Tuscany

- Use it to make personalized video ads at scale 

- Try it for diagnosing disease or finding you the ideal recipe 

Every search box is becoming a AI entry prompt.

Every website is becoming connected via "agents"

Every product is now enhanced by AI

At some point the world will radically shift because of what better data, improved processing, machine learning & more will mean. I've been studying deep use cases for months and it will transform many jobs, industries, and the economics of what's possible

But until that time we're stuck in the mire of seemingly every company on the planet having no imagination, no ambition, no clue and just reproducing the same tired stuff as each other

I predict a pretty tired and cliched year ahead before 2025 seems some wild ideas brought to life by what tech makes possible.

Before then don't think that any company buying 10,000 NVIDIA H100 GPU's has ANY idea what it's doing. It's just doing what everyone else is doing

In the time being, please don't be afraid to be different

Be open to what's happening but have the confidence to say no

Work around possibilities not efficiencies

Focus on making better things, not cheaper

And focus entirely on people & what they want