Also, (setting aside Standard Oil’s business practices), this is a common meme in oil exploration historically, and even today. Early prospectors were honestly pretty stupid, and their principal differentiation was risk tolerance.

There a lot of parallels with AI…it doesn’t take a genius to see the long-term potential, but the risk is in implementation, so it’s a mad rush to the finish line by a wide variety of less scrupulous early players. Rockefeller got his big start by sweeping up failing producers who were all capital weak, and I’m sure something similar will happen here during the inevitable bust.

I can do the hard, risky work of drilling wells / deploying AI, or I can sell you a vision of that future, today. The most dangerous technologies in terms of grifting are the ones that everyone can understand.