Sangeet Paul Choudary on why AI's real power lies in reimagining systems, not replacing tasks

The blog title, ‘Platforms, AI, and the Economics of BigTech,’ encapsulates the core themes of strategy thinker Sangeet Paul Choudary’s work in recent years. In 2016, he co-authored the bestselling book ‘Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy, and How to Make Them Work for You’ alongside Geoffrey G Parker and Marshall W Van Alstyne. 

The book, described by the authors as their “attempt to provide the first clear, complete, authoritative guide to one of the most important economic and social developments of our time—the rise of the platform as a business and organisational model,” came at a time when platform businesses from Google to Amazon and from Uber to Airbnb were transforming the business landscape, marking a shift away from the traditional linear value chain of ‘pipeline’ companies. 

In his latest book ‘Reshuffle: Who wins when AI restacks the knowledge economy,’ launched recently, Choudary urges us to move our focus away from trying to assess AI capabilities in terms of human intelligence and instead work toward how these technologies can transform our systems today. He reiterates this in this interview with The CapTable’s Sriram Srinivasan and Jarshad NK. 

Choudary, who advises leaders of Fortune 500 companies on platform strategy as well as in the business case of AI, is a Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley and a former co-chair of the MIT Platform Strategy Summit.

‘Reshuffle’ was originally titled ‘The Rebundling Revolution,’ he had posted on LinkedIn. “I prompted ChatGPT a hundred different ways to come up with a better title. Eventually, it was during a game of cards with good friends and some fine Prosecco on a Saturday night that the title hit me. No prompts. No engineering. Not even a 5 am morning-routine cold-plunge brainwave. Just good old-fashioned tomfoolery and some half-drunk friends who nodded indulgently.”