is it cool AI lets you build completely bespoke tools quickly? YES! did the majority of the population ever want that? Eh, not really.

Regular people aren’t tinkerers, they don’t want to build their own personal apps. They already had the ability to do some form of this, if they wanted to, with Google Sheets, No Code apps, etc. For the same reason, self-hosters stay a tiny minority. Users will put up with a lot of friction & bullshit as long as they don’t have to tinker. All you need to see is the scary stats around how many people never change the default settings.

What’s my takeaway? The people that are suddenly using AI to build their first iPhone app or startup without knowing how to code are not a sign that AI will give everyone personalized software. I think it’s just people who were already tinkerers in their own domain graduating into a new space to tinker, but not a new swathe of the population getting onboard.