AI: Apocalypse or abundance? Yes.
Your BitBakery update for August 2026
When it comes to AI, the people I speak with seem to fall into one of two camps.
The first camp believes AI is leading us towards an apocalypse. There’s a fear of massive job displacement, economic disruption, political instability, and entire careers being reinvented or worse, becoming as obsolete as chimney sweeps and knocker-uppers. That last one was a real job, believe it or not.
The second camp sees something completely different. They see AI as opening society up to an age of abundance where AI removes routine, boring work and unlocks creativity giving everyone the ability to accomplish tasks that used to require an entire team.
So which is it? Apocalypse or abundance?
The answer is “yes.”
There’s an old idea from economics that explains why. You’ve probably never heard of Jevons’ Paradox, but it simply states that when technology makes something dramatically more efficient, we don’t use less of it — we use more.
Cheaper coal didn’t reduce coal consumption in the 1860s. Lower prices led to higher usage. Cheaper computing didn’t mean fewer computers on desks. And cheaper software development won’t mean less software. It means entirely new industries, jobs, and opportunities we can’t even imagine today — alongside real, painful disruption for the work that gets automated away.
Both camps are right. The disruption is real, and so is the opportunity. The dividing line won’t be between industries that use AI and those that don’t — it’ll be between the people who learn to work with AI and the people who work against it.
I saw this firsthand at Startupfest in Montreal last month. Alistair Croll framed the evolution neatly: 2024 was the year of prompting, 2025 was the year of agents, and 2026 is the year of loops — systems that run, evaluate their own output, and improve, with humans setting direction rather than driving every step. The teams thriving right now aren’t the ones with the fanciest model. They’re the ones who redesigned how they work.
So where do you stand? AI-driven disruption or AI-powered abundance? Hit reply and tell me. And if you’re trying to figure out what “working with AI” looks like for your business, that’s a conversation we’re having with clients every week. Happy to have it with you too.
— Wes
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