I've been trying to write a post for several days on tokenomics and it's annoying me beyond belief because I just can't get to the 'so what?'.
It's not often I have to abandon a piece or completely overhaul, but when it happens, it's usually because I am bored (and you will be too) and that's not good enough.
As a rookie, it used to happen on FT features sometimes. You would get a brief for a piece, run your interviews and then write it according to the brief.
But you'd realise there was a substory that was more interesting - or someone said something that flipped the brief's assumptions on its head.
Plans are the same. For those people organised enough to make one plan and stick to it - it often becomes clear the plan isn't fit for purpose.
At these moments, it's so important to step back, make a cup of tea and think. Reorder your thoughts and go through cycles of 'so whats' or 'whys?'.
Your answers come by not treading the same path again and again - but looking at the path from all angles - and then walking away for a bit.
So the point I was trying to make about AI tokens is very simple:
Visible cost is not the same as real value. The moment work becomes measurable, the market starts pricing the measurable part and stops paying for the rest - until the rest turns out to be the thing that mattered.
Invisible value or waste is about to become more visible.
Speculators suggest AI token prices will then rise significantly.
People are measured on cost vs outcome rate - but more and more people will be asked to commit to outcome-based delivery at a fixed price.
AI won't be judged this way until all of its tasks can be lined up in a supermarket and seen clearly with a label.
Until then, you - the buyer - will take the risk as to whether it will deliver the outcome this turn or next turn.
A bit like the one-armed bandit.
That is what I was trying to say. Sorry it took about three years to get there.
Have a great weekend.
Dan
