Is AI genuinely the next industrial revolution, or are we watching another dot-com-style J curve flatten in real time?
From NVIDIA’s outsized role in the market to why most companies still can’t point to productivity gains, Jaime Peters and Cindy Goodwin-Sak dig into the numbers, the psychology, and the leadership practices that actually move AI from pilot to payoff.
We compare today’s AI moment to two past bubbles, the dot-com era’s “Napster moment” and the 2008 housing slowdown, to explain why flattening, not falling, often breaks a boom. And we ask the tough question every CFO is already thinking: who’s going to foot the $5 trillion AI infrastructure bill if enterprise adoption plateaus?
What you’ll hear:
* The market vs. the office: Why consumer enthusiasm (hello, ChatGPT) isn’t the same as enterprise deployment
* The data reality check: Adoption stats from recent surveys and why the curve may be stalling
* The money math: $5T in expected AI spend and the annual revenue required to make it pencil out
* Productivity or pipe dream: What it would actually take for AI to deliver broad 5–10% productivity gains
* Lessons from past bubbles: How “flattening” broke the dot-com and housing booms, and what that signals for AI
* Leadership playbook: Practical steps to turn AI from novelty to value (create time to experiment, share use cases, lead by example, reward progress)
* Strategy for incumbents: Why most companies should expect evolution, not revolution, while still carving out a focused lane for real product/service disruption
Who should listen:
* Executives and investors trying to read the AI tea leaves
* Operators and team leads under pressure to “do AI” and show results
* Anyone curious about what’s signal vs. noise in the AI economy
Hot Take:
Is AI a bubble or a revolution?
Yes. It can be both, and your results will depend less on GPUs and more on leaders who know how to turn experimentation into measurable outcomes.
Listen now: Seriously, What Could They Be Thinking?, hosted by Jaime Peters and Cindy Goodwin-Sak. Keep your spreadsheets handy and your coffee strong.
