πŸ€–πŸ’° What is AI arbitrage? ⋆ πŸ”ŒπŸšŒ Electric revolution ⋆ "One day"

"You're not going to be replaced by AI. You're going to be replaced by a person using AI. In my 2023 AI predictions, I mentioned "AI arbitrage opportunities" and here's the explanation... + 2 other things

πŸ€–πŸ’° What is AI arbitrage? ⋆ πŸ”ŒπŸšŒ Electric revolution ⋆ "One day"
Photo by Alexandre Debiève

You're not going to be replaced by AI. You're going to be replaced by a person using AI.

You can be that person too.

Thing 1 - The Rise of AI Arbitrage

In my 2023 AI predictions, I mentioned "AI arbitrage opportunities" and got "Da heck you're talking about?" from some of you.
Which means there are many more who stayed silent.

Let me explain

Arbitrage is buying something in one market for less and selling it in the other for more.

How do you apply that to AI?

Consider this:

  • Large models are large. Doh.
    They need to be large to be smart.
  • They take their sweet time to run on casual hardware.
    Think if ChatGPT took 3 minutes to generate each word.
  • The world isn't producing enough chips for everyone to run their own model.
    Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI

This means a lot of applications will run on top of the same models, running on the same backends.

In a lot of cases, you'll have a generic version of the model available for cheap. And a specific version built on top of generic functionality.

Existing examples

LensaAI uses the Stable Diffusion algorithm to create artsy photos from the photos you upload. Then they charge you to download them.

AnimeAI does the same thing, except they'll make you look like an anime character instead.

Anime AI Arts Gallery screenshot
Anime AI Arts Gallery screenshot

BearlyAI uses GPT-3 (and related?) tools to put AI at your fingertips.

Here's where the arbitrage part comes in - you can use free tools to do this yourself. The same tools they used to build the solution you paid for.

Stable diffusion has an open-source web UI and plenty of tutorials, and you've heard about ChatGPT before.

There are many other examples but it's still a young, untapped market and we'll see a lot more of these. Some will be useful. Some will be copycats. Few will survive.

Thing 2 - Electric revolution

In 2022 half of the world's new buses were electric. Your public transport is becoming electric.

That's great!

Here's a share of global sales that were electric in 2022:

  • 🚌 Buses: 49%
  • 🏍 Motorcycles: 39%
  • πŸš— Cars: 13%
  • 🚚 Trucks: 3.8%
Graphic from Colin Mckerracher, Head of transport and automotive analysis at BloombergNEF

It takes time but it's happening.

(source)

Thing 3 - "One day I'll..."

"One day" is a very rare event.

Sunday Strolls
Photo by Matt Bennett

Here are the 2 quotes from Orange Book I'm pondering about.

There is nothing more common than talented people who don’t achieve much because they thought they had time.

- Orange Book
One day, you are going to wake up, and look at yourself in the mirror.
You will be 60, 70, 80, and you will be wondering how life went by so quickly, and your only regrets will be what you didn’t have the courage to do.

- Orange Book

What if you didn't need a near-death experience to shake you up? What if you dared to go after your dreams while they can still be more than just dreams?

Cheers, Zvonimir