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Intelligence is a commodity. Context is the real AI Moat

adlrocha.substack.com

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Re: Intelligence is a commodity. Context is the real AI Moat

#2

Post by 7777777phil »

API prices dropped 97% in two years so the model layer is already a commodity. The question is which context layer actually sticks. The OpenClaw example in the article (400K lines to 4K) is a nice proof point for what happens when context replaces code.

I've been arguing for some time now that it's the "organizational world model," the accumulated process knowledge unique to each company that's genuinely hard to replicate. I did a full "report" about the six-layer decomposition here: https://philippdubach.com/posts/dont-go-monolithic-the-agent...

Re: Intelligence is a commodity. Context is the real AI Moat

#4

Post by apsurd »

7777777phil wrote: post #2

API prices dropped 97% in two years so the model layer is already a commodity. The question is which context layer actually sticks. The OpenClaw example in the article (400K lines to 4K) is a nice proof point for what happens when context replaces code. I've been arguing for some time now that it's the "organizational world model," the accumulated process knowledge unique to each company that's genuinely hard to repl…

From your link: > Closing that gap, building systems that capture and encode process knowledge rather than just decision records, is the highest-value problem in enterprise AI right now.

I buy this. What exactly is the export artifact that encodes this built up context? Is it the entire LLM conversation log. My casual understanding of MCP is service/agent to agent "just in time" context which is different from "world model" context, is that right?

i'm curious is there's an entirely new format for this data that's evolving, or if it's as blunt as exporting the entire conversation log or embeddings of the log, across AIs.

Re: Intelligence is a commodity. Context is the real AI Moat

#7

Post by jfalcon »

>someone raised the question of “what would be the role of humans in an AI-first society”.

Norbert Wiener, considered to be the father of Cybernetics, wrote a book back in the 1950's entitled "The Human Use of Human Beings" that brings up these questions in the early days of digital electronics and control systems. In it, he brings up things like:

- 'Robots enslaving humans for doing jobs better suited by robots due to a lack of humans in the feedback loop which leads to facist machines.'

- 'An economy without human interaction could lead to entropic decay as machines lack biological drive for anti-entropic organization.'

- 'Automation will lead to immediate devaluation of human labor that is routine. Society needs to decouple a person's "worth" from their "utility as a tool".'

The human purpose is not to compete but to safeguard the telology (purpose) of the system.

Re: Intelligence is a commodity. Context is the real AI Moat

#9

Post by AIorNot »

"what is the role of humans in a scenario where work is no longer necessary? This is significant because, since the industrial revolution, work has played an important role in shaping an individual’s identity. How will we occupy our time when we don’t have to spend more than half of our waking hours on a job"

Umm I have been working in AI in multiple verticals for the past 3 years and I have been far busier and more stressed with far less job security than past 15 before that in tech.

For now this is far more accurate: https://hbr.org/2026/02/ai-doesnt-reduce-work-it-intensifies...

Wake me up when the computers run the world and I can relax..but I don't think its happening in my lifetime.

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