Existing Stakeholders Have a Say in the Future

A follow-up point on my “AI Is Technology, Not a Product” column over the weekend. Here’s a repeat of Steven Levy’s argument that John Ternus must direct Apple towards building “a killer AI product”:

By the end of this decade, it’s unlikely that people will swipe on their phones to tap on Uber or Lyft. They will just tell their always-on AI agent to get them home. Or that agent will have already figured out where they need to go, and the car will be waiting without the friction of a request. “There’s an app for that,” may be replaced by “Let the agent do that.”

Putting aside whether this is technically feasible or psychologically comfortable, what Levy is arguing here is yadda-yadda-yadda-ing over Uber and Lyft’s say in the matter. Those two companies are now deeply entrenched. They might get disrupted. (Google’s Waymo isn’t operating here in Philly yet, but I see their vehicles around the city all the time now. You can’t miss them.) But I think it’s a good bet that most ride shares at the end of this decade (which is Levy’s own timeline) will largely be Ubers and Lyfts.

Uber and Lyft get to decide the terms of which platforms they’re hail-able from. Here’s a note a friend sent me that prompted this follow-up:

It’s a newbie take to think all deeds will soon be on the blockchain, all newspapers will migrate to RSS, all broadcast companies will put shows out on one service.

Some companies will forge a path into the next medium, some will be replaced, and others will succeed at slowing its adoption.

When people get taken by a wave of technology hype, there’s a strong tendency to assume that not only will other people get taken by the same hype wave, but that entrenched stakeholders will too. That often doesn’t happen. Walmart still doesn’t take Apple Pay, for chrissakes. The idea that Uber and Lyft are going to put their own futures in the hands of OpenAI and Anthropic (or Google, who, through Waymo, is already their direct competitor) seems like folly.

★ Monday, 18 May 2026