No, AI Isn't In A Bubble: Why the AI Revolution Is Just Getting Started

Hi everyone

This is Lore, the techno-optimist newsletter. 

Every week, I share five exciting things to help you thrive in the age of AI.

Next week, I’ll be taking my first vacation since I started this newsletter over a year ago. Don’t worry, I’ll be back the week after better than ever before. 🙂 

P.S. Watch episode #18 of The Next Wave with Vijoy Pandey from Cisco here!

1) Things Are Getting Better: Robots Are Coming

Figure 02, the new robot from Figure, has been revealed, and it's pretty awesome. This, along with Optimus from Tesla on the way, means robots in our daily lives are coming soon. We’re heading into weird times. Get ready.

2) No, AI Isn't In A Bubble: Why the AI Revolution Is Just Getting Started

I’ve been hearing more and more talk about AI being in a bubble and that we’re about to enter AI winter. I first heard it on The All-In Podcast from Chamath. And then I’ve had several other people talk to me about it, asking what I think.

This tweet from Paul Graham, the creator of Y Combinator, the leading startup incubator, captures my feelings about it.

Bubbles come and go, and who knows what will happen with AI startup valuations. But AI as a technology wave is just beginning. And the folks saying AI is overhyped will look like people who said the internet was a fad.

I haven’t seen any real data that suggests AI is about to slow down. Everything I’ve seen shows it’s speeding up.

Look at this tweet from Wharton professor Ethan Mollick. AI adoption is happening at an accelerating pace.

In the last month, several LLMs, from Claude to Google to open-source Llama 3, have broken the benchmarks to become #1.

Not to mention, AI video is starting to become incredible and valuable. In fact, I am planning to do something in that space(more on that soon).

People are finally getting their hands on GPT-4o with voice, and it’s amazing. Watch this video with Dan Shipper using it. I feel the same way he does about it. Something unique is happening here. It’s a transformational moment.

I believe it will change how humans interact with computers, as previously discussed in The Next Wave.

Not to mention, the general sentiment in Silicon Valley from people in the know is still that GPT-5 is coming and will be an order of magnitude better than existing models.

There was much talk yesterday about Greg Brockman taking a sabbatical from OpenAI for the rest of the year. My take on it is that GPT-5 is done training, and most of the remaining work is on UX and testing. He needs to refresh for the next big push.

I am optimistic about where AI is heading and suggest we keep accelerating forward, ignoring the haters.

AI isn’t a bubble about to pop. It’s a society-changing technology just being born.

3) 4-Step Blueprint to Building a Successful AI Startup

In this week’s episode of The Next Wave, Matt Wolfe and I spoke with Vijoy Pandey from Cisco. He gave us an AI startup masterclass and explained how Cisco is trying to innovate in the age of AI by internally incubating projects. Check it out!

It would also help if you subscribe to The Next Wave on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. That’d make HubSpot and me very happy.

4) Things I’m Thinking About

• PAPER: The Impact of Unconditional Cash Transfers on Consumption and Household Balance Sheets: Experimental Evidence from Two US States—This is another paper about UBI. This one seems pretty negative. Recipients went more into debt while receiving free money. I believe a rethinking of capitalism will be needed at some point due to AGI/ASI because money will start to lose meaning with mass abundance. However, the data is starting to point towards UBI not being the answer.

• VIDEO: The Free & Uncensored Version of MidJourney! (FLUX.1) - Video from my friend Matt Wolfe showing the most impressive new AI art model in a while. Flux is a new open-source model that appears to be nearing Midjourney quality. It is probably what Stable Diffusion 3 should have been before the company imploded.

• BLOG POST: Our Next Phase of Growth from Character.ai—This week, Google acquired Character.ai’s team and licensed its technology for $2.5 billion, a huge increase from their last $1 billion acquisition. Character.ai is one of the most popular AI apps that most business people have never heard of. This is Google doubling down on AI and going all out to try to become #1. As I’ve said in the past, we’re likely going to see some of the largest acquisitions in history due to how important AI will become to the future of business.

• VIDEO: Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast - Fascinating, insanely long podcast(over 8 hours). I didn’t listen to the entire thing, but the interview with Elon was great.

5) Question To Make You Think

That’s all for today. Please consider sharing the newsletter with your friends if you think they’d enjoy it. 🙏

Please give me feedback on Twitter. I am still figuring out the best format for this newsletter. Which part did you like? Dislike? Do you have other suggestions? Please let me know—just tweet @NathanLands.

-Nathan