SurgicalCaps.com retweeted
Legendary story.
The crazy part is in the power point era the value add was similar
I met someone this week who shared that in the 90s Bain paid employees to make slides for customer presentations. This was pre-PowerPoint so the job was literally using an exacto knife and ruler to cut and splice together materials for overhead transparencies. As soon as laptops, PowerPoint and digital projectors became widespread this job went away. Somehow the consulting industry is 10x the # of employees that it was then 🤣
What Aaron is describing is how almost every technology adoption cycle has played out. No evidence to suggest AI will happen differently
i believe this and it also drives me crazy that i can't predict exactly what it will look like. it's part of what makes working in AI so exciting. for the first time in my career, I have no idea what the use cases will be for what i'm working on beyond like a 3 year time horizon 😯
I met someone this week who shared that in the 90s Bain paid employees to make slides for customer presentations. This was pre-PowerPoint so the job was literally using an exacto knife and ruler to cut and splice together materials for overhead transparencies. As soon as laptops, PowerPoint and digital projectors became widespread this job went away. Somehow the consulting industry is 10x the # of employees that it was then 🤣
What Aaron is describing is how almost every technology adoption cycle has played out. No evidence to suggest AI will happen differently
Orion Night retweeted
This is why I am bullish consulting companies. If AI is going to be implemented in large enterprises, consultants will be the one to do so - Executives need someone to blame.
If not, it’s the same competitive playing field, but valuation has already collapsed and companies are buying back shares.
I met someone this week who shared that in the 90s Bain paid employees to make slides for customer presentations. This was pre-PowerPoint so the job was literally using an exacto knife and ruler to cut and splice together materials for overhead transparencies. As soon as laptops, PowerPoint and digital projectors became widespread this job went away. Somehow the consulting industry is 10x the # of employees that it was then 🤣
What Aaron is describing is how almost every technology adoption cycle has played out. No evidence to suggest AI will happen differently
This was my Powerpoint in the 90s. If you know, you know. @scottmcnealy was the master and I was merely a student. Note: Our advancement was color printing slides on the sheets.
I met someone this week who shared that in the 90s Bain paid employees to make slides for customer presentations. This was pre-PowerPoint so the job was literally using an exacto knife and ruler to cut and splice together materials for overhead transparencies. As soon as laptops, PowerPoint and digital projectors became widespread this job went away. Somehow the consulting industry is 10x the # of employees that it was then 🤣
What Aaron is describing is how almost every technology adoption cycle has played out. No evidence to suggest AI will happen differently
Homayoun.ton retweeted
Every single prediction about automation reducing jobs has been wrong. Every. Single. Prediction.
Automation has consistently created more jobs than it has eliminated. Better jobs, actually. The proof is in the fact that we have the lowest unemployment rate in human history, despite all prior innovation cycles.
The next innovation will do the same.
I met someone this week who shared that in the 90s Bain paid employees to make slides for customer presentations. This was pre-PowerPoint so the job was literally using an exacto knife and ruler to cut and splice together materials for overhead transparencies. As soon as laptops, PowerPoint and digital projectors became widespread this job went away. Somehow the consulting industry is 10x the # of employees that it was then 🤣
What Aaron is describing is how almost every technology adoption cycle has played out. No evidence to suggest AI will happen differently
Pre-power point slides looked like this though
I met someone this week who shared that in the 90s Bain paid employees to make slides for customer presentations. This was pre-PowerPoint so the job was literally using an exacto knife and ruler to cut and splice together materials for overhead transparencies. As soon as laptops, PowerPoint and digital projectors became widespread this job went away. Somehow the consulting industry is 10x the # of employees that it was then 🤣
What Aaron is describing is how almost every technology adoption cycle has played out. No evidence to suggest AI will happen differently
people who think AI will take away jobs suffer from a lack of imagination
I met someone this week who shared that in the 90s Bain paid employees to make slides for customer presentations. This was pre-PowerPoint so the job was literally using an exacto knife and ruler to cut and splice together materials for overhead transparencies. As soon as laptops, PowerPoint and digital projectors became widespread this job went away. Somehow the consulting industry is 10x the # of employees that it was then 🤣
What Aaron is describing is how almost every technology adoption cycle has played out. No evidence to suggest AI will happen differently
Roughly agree.
Yet I pause on the growing range of tasks/surprises these systems can handle over ever greater time.
Vibe-extrapolated the @METR_Evals curve for prospective students today. ~4h if they graduate in 2027, ~1d if 2029.
Even if it's just SWE-adjacent...
I met someone this week who shared that in the 90s Bain paid employees to make slides for customer presentations. This was pre-PowerPoint so the job was literally using an exacto knife and ruler to cut and splice together materials for overhead transparencies. As soon as laptops, PowerPoint and digital projectors became widespread this job went away. Somehow the consulting industry is 10x the # of employees that it was then 🤣
What Aaron is describing is how almost every technology adoption cycle has played out. No evidence to suggest AI will happen differently
“Agatha Christie once wrote that she never thought she’d be wealthy enough to own a car, or poor enough to not have servants.” A worthwhile read on a related topic to my silly tweet below: a16z.substack.com/p/why-ac-i…
I met someone this week who shared that in the 90s Bain paid employees to make slides for customer presentations. This was pre-PowerPoint so the job was literally using an exacto knife and ruler to cut and splice together materials for overhead transparencies. As soon as laptops, PowerPoint and digital projectors became widespread this job went away. Somehow the consulting industry is 10x the # of employees that it was then 🤣
What Aaron is describing is how almost every technology adoption cycle has played out. No evidence to suggest AI will happen differently
Ian Andrews retweeted
There’s a twist that explains why job creation grew with innovation:
While each company leans on fewer professionals to operate, the total number of jobs skyrockets.
Why? Because new technologies spark a surge in company creation.
Look at what happened when the Internet got created, we got many Internet companies and tech hardware companies that formed.
Then once the smartphone got invented, we have many businesses created from simply being an app (ex. Uber, Supercell, DoorDash, Reddit).
The global consulting boom (from $20B in 1990 to $900B by 2023) proves it: tools don’t kill jobs; they enable more players.
Take auditors, fewer hours per audit thanks to automation, yet demand for audits explodes as more companies need compliance.
The rise of ESG reporting and new regulations means even small firms now require audits, ballooning the profession.
Lawyers face the same: AI drafts docs, but more ventures need legal setup.
This pattern where efficiency per firm explodes drives a net job increase across these roles.
At this rate, we can say it’s expansion into uncharted territory.
Thoughts?
I met someone this week who shared that in the 90s Bain paid employees to make slides for customer presentations. This was pre-PowerPoint so the job was literally using an exacto knife and ruler to cut and splice together materials for overhead transparencies. As soon as laptops, PowerPoint and digital projectors became widespread this job went away. Somehow the consulting industry is 10x the # of employees that it was then 🤣
What Aaron is describing is how almost every technology adoption cycle has played out. No evidence to suggest AI will happen differently
We got Lotus 1-2-3, Excel, and QuickBooks, and somehow, there are still more accountants in the US right now than there were 40 years ago.
AI might replace some jobs with others, but there will always be jobs.
I met someone this week who shared that in the 90s Bain paid employees to make slides for customer presentations. This was pre-PowerPoint so the job was literally using an exacto knife and ruler to cut and splice together materials for overhead transparencies. As soon as laptops, PowerPoint and digital projectors became widespread this job went away. Somehow the consulting industry is 10x the # of employees that it was then 🤣
What Aaron is describing is how almost every technology adoption cycle has played out. No evidence to suggest AI will happen differently
What the intelligent machine transition does is that it exposes bullshit jobs then grinds them into absolute stardust, and yet even more importantly, it not only exposes the thoroughly determinedly mediocre and imbecilic, but also makes it so that the physically impossible and impractical are doable and scalable
The people who tend to rage like frothing demons at this transition are generally upset about 'losing income' or 'losing connection', and despite all that the key question remains, were those people even actually worth it to begin with? Were they even worth anything at all? That part is the hardest to deal with, y'know, 'being exposed'
I met someone this week who shared that in the 90s Bain paid employees to make slides for customer presentations. This was pre-PowerPoint so the job was literally using an exacto knife and ruler to cut and splice together materials for overhead transparencies. As soon as laptops, PowerPoint and digital projectors became widespread this job went away. Somehow the consulting industry is 10x the # of employees that it was then 🤣
What Aaron is describing is how almost every technology adoption cycle has played out. No evidence to suggest AI will happen differently
I firmly subscribe to this view of the future.
However, the initial conditions matter a lot to how effectively an enterprise can deploy agents.
If your company's attention is dispersed, and your operating model is sub-par, deploying a million agents will create exponential entropy.
Companies first need to clean up their acts and get a very good understanding of their operations. Only THEN should they deploy agents.
That’s btw why we’re building Parable.
I met someone this week who shared that in the 90s Bain paid employees to make slides for customer presentations. This was pre-PowerPoint so the job was literally using an exacto knife and ruler to cut and splice together materials for overhead transparencies. As soon as laptops, PowerPoint and digital projectors became widespread this job went away. Somehow the consulting industry is 10x the # of employees that it was then 🤣
What Aaron is describing is how almost every technology adoption cycle has played out. No evidence to suggest AI will happen differently