The Jevons paradox: why AI creates more demand - Martin Eriksson at ProductTank SF
Martin Eriksson founded ProductTank 16 years ago in the back room of a London pub with 20 people and has watched it grow into a community active in over 200 cities worldwide. He co-authored Product Leadership, has advised nearly 150 companies on product strategy and organisation, and now works as a solo consultant and coach. His talk draws on that experience to make a counterintuitive argument: in an era defined by AI-driven speed, the ability to build is no longer what separates winning product organisations from losing ones.Key takeaways
— The Jevons paradox applies directly to AI: when something becomes cheaper and faster, demand doesn't stay flat, it explodes — AI imaging didn't shrink radiology, it created 16% more radiologists and pushed salaries up 44%.
— Amara's Law is playing out in real time: organisations are simultaneously overestimating what AI does in the short term and underestimating the structural shift it will force over the long term.
— AI has effectively solved the feasibility dimension of product work, but value, usability, and viability are as hard as they have ever been — which means building is not the job.
— Most companies are applying AI at the opportunities layer, bolting features and integrations onto an unchanged strategy; the companies winning are the ones rethinking strategy from the top of the decision stack down.
— Intercom's move from per-seat to outcome-based pricing — 99 cents per customer resolution, with a million-dollar performance guarantee — is the model for how AI should change business models, not just products.
— Speed without direction is just burning fuel on a runway; AI gives you speed, strategy gives you direction, and alignment across the organisation gives you momentum.
— Green-field builds with AI are seeing roughly 10x productivity gains; brown-field work on legacy codebases is closer to 20% — a difference large enough to change the build-versus-refactor calculus for many teams.
Chapters
(00:00) ProductTank origin story
(01:33) Why speed is not enough
(02:09) The hype and the panic
(03:20) The radiologist prediction
(04:35) What actually happened to radiologists
(05:34) The Jevons paradox
(06:08) Amara's Law
(06:27) AI is only getting started
(07:53) The DOS era of AI
(08:19) Follow the cost curve
(09:03) What if the cost of software goes to zero?
(09:57) The SaaS-is-dead myth
(10:44) Most of the world doesn't want to build software
(12:20) Probabilistic versus deterministic software
(12:43) An explosion of SaaS is coming
(13:06) What this means for product
(14:47) Building is not the job
(15:37) Treat AI as a multiplier
(16:38) The decision stack
(18:50) Companies applying AI at the wrong layer
(19:48) The Intercom case study
(21:38) The Kive case study
(23:14) The questions worth asking
(24:43) Speed, velocity, and momentum
(25:43) Alignment versus autonomy
(27:06) Discovery at the heart of it all
(27:26) Wrap-up Receive SMS online on sms24.me
TubeReader video aggregator is a website that collects and organizes online videos from the YouTube source. Video aggregation is done for different purposes, and TubeReader take different approaches to achieve their purpose.
Our try to collect videos of high quality or interest for visitors to view; the collection may be made by editors or may be based on community votes.
Another method is to base the collection on those videos most viewed, either at the aggregator site or at various popular video hosting sites.
TubeReader site exists to allow users to collect their own sets of videos, for personal use as well as for browsing and viewing by others; TubeReader can develop online communities around video sharing.
Our site allow users to create a personalized video playlist, for personal use as well as for browsing and viewing by others.
@YouTubeReaderBot allows you to subscribe to Youtube channels.
By using @YouTubeReaderBot Bot you agree with YouTube Terms of Service.
Use the @YouTubeReaderBot telegram bot to be the first to be notified when new videos are released on your favorite channels.
Look for new videos or channels and share them with your friends.
You can start using our bot from this video, subscribe now to The Jevons paradox: why AI creates more demand - Martin Eriksson at ProductTank SF
What is YouTube?
YouTube is a free video sharing website that makes it easy to watch online videos. You can even create and upload your own videos to share with others. Originally created in 2005, YouTube is now one of the most popular sites on the Web, with visitors watching around 6 billion hours of video every month.
