Quotesby GlyphBenedict Evans quote, Sep 3, 2026
Independent analyst · Sep 3, 2026 2 months ago · Essay, AI, tools and transformation
AI doesn’t change the question: it creates new choices and moves the thresholds.
Words found on the source page on Nov 6, 2026.
More from Benedict Evans
- But with every previous platform shift, the stuff that actually mattered was the stuff that wasn't even possible before and that no-one even imagined.
- Instead of having to create those tools one at a time, software might be dynamic, generative, free-form, and spontaneous. Massively more tasks can be automated, with massively less software.
- None of this is solved by making easier to write code - by making it easier to make tools. The hard part is knowing that you need a tool for this in the first place, and then knowing what the tool should do.
- With every new technology, we start by using it for the work we already have, and we just do that more and faster.
- But at one extreme, there are two or three giant minds that run half of everything and have massive pricing power, and at the other extreme LLMs look like databases - there’ll be millions of them, some very big and some very small, and the value is in what you build on top - after all, every SaaS company is a ’database wrapper’.
- Even so, that brings me back to the same point: the current market dynamics point to a future in which, as today’s supply crunch eases, frontier models move towards becoming commodity infrastructure, with all of the value built on top, and for a different outcome, something needs to happen that we don’t see yet.
- Meanwhile, there is structural uncertainty at the early stages of every big new technology, but the uncertainty now is different, because we don’t have a good theoretical understanding of why these models work so well and so we don’t know how much better they can get.
- The narrow problem with that is that fiber construction was far ahead of demand, where AI compute construction is far behind demand, though, as above, we don’t know what that supply/demand balance will look like in the future.
- We knew the physical limits in ways we don’t really know with LLMs. Next month a new approach could cut inference compute needs by 90%, or double demand, or both.
- We know, in principle, that like every other big wave of technology, AI is bound to destroy some jobs and create others.
On the same topics
- Most business AI use is the messy middle: multi-step workflows that need a smart enough model at a price a company can afford. It is the most important part of the market today, & it is where the competition is fiercest.
- Every company, every enterprise, every country would become an AI company...
- It’s rare to work with an unlimited token budget, but at OpenAI, that’s what all engineers, researchers, finance colleagues, and marketing folks do.
- Even in a world that is speeding up, it takes time to make changes inside a firm, let alone across an economy.
- AI continues to compound our advantages, creating a flywheel effect across the business.
- No government or enterprise should have to choose between capable AI and control over their technology...
About this quote
- Said by
- Benedict Evans, Independent analyst
- Where
- AI, tools and transformation
- Topics
- Enterprise AI
- Source
- ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2026/9/3/ai-tools-and-transformation
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