History Doesn’t Repeat, It Rhymes.

I saw an interesting post the other day. The person was talking about a dozen or so different AI services they were using. I didn’t think much of it.

Then last night, my wife and I were trying to watch the next episode of the show we’ve been watching, somewhat on and off. After clicking into Netflix, then HBO, then accidentally on Peacock (turns our we’re subscribed to that one too – who knew), we found it on Apple+.

For whatever reason, it reminded me of the post I had read a few days before and my own experience with the flood of AI agents/services/solutions that are hitting the market. As the saying goes, history doesn’t repeat; it rhymes.

Well, it’s certainly starting to rhyme for me. And the déjà vu is getting real.

Back in the day, cable was easy. I knew ESPN was on channel 49. I knew exactly where to flip for Patriots games on Sundays. Everything was in one place, simple and predictable.

Then streaming came along. Which is awesome, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a lot less awesome to me than it used to be.

Before I knew it, I was juggling 12+ subscriptions across platforms because it was easier to just give in and pay than mooch off friends/family for each one. Each has its own app, login, password, interface, and login quirks. Literally every time I want to watch sports, I have to do the whole QR code scan to login thing, which doesn’t work half the time. I have to Google (starting to ChatGPT this more and more) where I can watch whatever show or sporting event I’m trying to watch, only to be geo-blocked if I’m out of town.

This feels eerily similar to what’s beginning to happen in the AI space.

There are amazing tools emerging – AI writing assistants, AI design tools, AI coding helpers, AI research copilots, AI productivity bots. But none of them talk to each other. Each has its own login, its own interface, and its own way of doing things. And just like signing up to binge one season of a show only to forget to cancel, I’m already starting to lose track of the ones I wanted to test out for a particular purpose (i.e., revamp this Google Sheet presentation), and then, yet again, forget to cancel.

And just like streaming, we are left to cobble together our own patchwork stack of solutions and complex automation, figuring out what to use, when to use it, and how to make it all work together. The user experience is starting to suffer under the weight of too much choice and not enough cohesion.

It’s a familiar pattern: We start with simplicity, move toward personalization and choice, and end up drowning in complexity.

Unlike the streaming mess, AI still has a chance to course-correct.

There’s a huge opportunity for someone to rebundle AI into coherent, vertically integrated experiences – a kind of AI “cable box” that makes sense of it all. A platform that gives you flexibility and cohesion. A way to manage everything from one place, with one login, one billing system, one UX.

The winners in this next phase will be those who stop building one-off tools and start building ecosystems.

I know I’m oversimplifying the solution, but it sure would be nice, wouldn’t it?