Platforms, AI, and the Economics of BigTech

Beyond AI hype and fearmongering
The AI debate is polarized today. Technologists with Altman-esque delusions hype new tools and the impending arrival of AGI. Policymakers disconnected from ‘why this time is really different’ cling on to outdated frameworks to debate job losses. Businesses, caught in between, are confused as they struggle to distinguish AI snake-oil from the real deal.

Taking these opposing views makes no sense. And yet, it gets the memetic spread that any polarising debate will.

Reshuffle grounds these discussions on some core principles and cuts through the noise. It provides a framework to understand the fundamental nature of AI systems – and their impact on economic interactions.

Reshuffle grounds itself in a few core issues, including:

• the tension that workers have always had with tools,
• the tug-of-war that tool providers have with their customers,
• the nature of workflows and their impact on organization design, and eventually, the division of work, value, and power across an ecosystem,
• the importance of knowledge management in making organizations – and more importantly – ecosystems function,
• fundamentally new ways to build companies in an economy that is revisiting basic assumptions on knowledge work.