Big AI labs resemble 70s mainframe firms—remember the PC killed that model
sebpaquet · x · 2026-08-28
A widely shared take argues today's big AI labs mirror late-70s/early-80s mainframe companies like IBM or Sun: their vision is large corporate-run central processing nodes accessed by remote terminals, with users submitting batched instructions on a timeshare schedule. The instructive part: the thing that killed that model was the PC.
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