Is AI genuinely the next industrial revolution, or are we watching another dot-com-style J curve flatten in real time?

From NVIDIA’s outsized role in the market to why most companies still can’t point to productivity gains, Jaime Peters and Cindy Goodwin-Sak dig into the numbers, the psychology, and the leadership practices that actually move AI from pilot to payoff.

We compare today’s AI moment to two past bubbles, the dot-com era’s “Napster moment” and the 2008 housing slowdown, to explain why flattening, not falling, often breaks a boom. And we ask the tough question every CFO is already thinking: who’s going to foot the $5 trillion AI infrastructure bill if enterprise adoption plateaus?

What you’ll hear:

* The market vs. the office: Why consumer enthusiasm (hello, ChatGPT) isn’t the same as enterprise deployment

* The data reality check: Adoption stats from recent surveys and why the curve may be stalling

* The money math: $5T in expected AI spend and the annual revenue required to make it pencil out

* Productivity or pipe dream: What it would actually take for AI to deliver broad 5–10% productivity gains

* Lessons from past bubbles: How “flattening” broke the dot-com and housing booms, and what that signals for AI

* Leadership playbook: Practical steps to turn AI from novelty to value (create time to experiment, share use cases, lead by example, reward progress)

* Strategy for incumbents: Why most companies should expect evolution, not revolution, while still carving out a focused lane for real product/service disruption

Who should listen:

* Executives and investors trying to read the AI tea leaves

* Operators and team leads under pressure to “do AI” and show results

* Anyone curious about what’s signal vs. noise in the AI economy

Hot Take:

Is AI a bubble or a revolution?

Yes. It can be both, and your results will depend less on GPUs and more on leaders who know how to turn experimentation into measurable outcomes.

Listen now: Seriously, What Could They Be Thinking?, hosted by Jaime Peters and Cindy Goodwin-Sak. Keep your spreadsheets handy and your coffee strong.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whatcouldtheybethinking.substack.com