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Comment by jwsteigerwalt | Hacker News Reader

The reality is that it was always unlikely that Microsoft (or Meta, or Google, or Apple…) would be able to create disruption in AR, VR, etc. on the magnitude of the initial iPhone release. Better to keep their powder dry to acquire the startups that potentially can.

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I wouldn’t count Apple out. They’re never first, but they tend to solve a lot of UX issues for entire product segments

It seems obvious to me AI will be the next major disruption. Radically decreasing the need for human labor has an obvious productive advantage while there is no evidence people would prefer to leave reality.

> Radically decreasing the need for human labor has an obvious productive advantage while there is no evidence people would prefer to leave reality.

When people have nothing to do they might prefer to leave reality....

Tell someone in the 18th century that 200 years later 2 percent of the labor force will work in agriculture, and they would swear that we must have nothing to do.

Headsets might be a niche market, but "leaving reality" is a huge market if you count video games, movies, TV, novels, short stories, plays, musicals, ...

There's a story I love to recount on this topic. A dad asked his kid why they preferred reading books to watching movies. The kid said, "because they have better pictures."

(And yes, AI can write stories, so the markets aren't orthogonal.)

Yeah fair enough, but I still think "wearing something on your face will be one of the main modes of media consumption" is far from a safe bet.

Except AI plays to the strengths of Big Companies rather than small ones. So MAGA will be the first to capture the winds of AI. They don’t have to worry about an unknown AI company suddenly toppling them upside down.

I agree - I think the existing big tech firms will "own the means of production" with AI, which currently depend on expensive hardware infrastructure.

What remains to be seen is which disruption happens through the use of AI, which seems much more up for grabs.

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