The biggest threat to AI isn't humans. It is next quarter's AI.
Midjourney didn't take photographers' jobs—it took Stable Diffusion's. GPT-4 didn't replace writers—it replaced GPT-3. Claude didn't eliminate analysts—it eliminated ChatGPT Plus subscriptions.
The Replacement Cycle
When a company allocates budget to "AI tools," that line item is permanent. The vendor occupying it isn't. That $10K/month isn't growing—it's just changing hands every product cycle.
This creates a challenge for AI companies. You're not expanding the market. You're fighting for the same dollars every other model wants. Your revolutionary upgrade? Table stakes for keeping existing customers.
OpenAI watches Anthropic. Anthropic watches Google. Everyone watches their retention crater the moment someone ships a marginally better model. Switching costs: zero. Loyalty: zero. Moat: whatever you shipped last week.
Traditional software had lock-in—data formats, integrations, training costs. AI has performance arbitrage. Every customer is one API key away from your competitor.
The replacement cycle is accelerating. GPT-3 had a good run. GPT-4 had months. The next breakthrough gets weeks. AI companies are building sandcastles in a rising tide of their own making.
VCs funded twenty AI startups thinking they'd find different niches. They're learning: there's one slot labeled "AI" in every company's budget, and twenty vendors fighting for it.
Every AI company is building its own replacement, hoping to ship it before someone else does. The graveyard isn't full of human jobs. It is full of last quarter's state-of-the-art.