If you've ever navigated traffic in Mumbai, Pune or Bangalore, you know the drill. Lanes are "suggestions." The biggest vehicle has the right of way. And at any moment, a cow might sit down in the middle of the highway.
It looks like total anarchy. But somehow, it moves.
The current state of the AI industry is the exact same vibe.
The parallels are too good to ignore
Lane Discipline (Compliance): Just like on an Indian road, the "lanes" — regulations, ethics frameworks, responsible AI guidelines — are painted there. But everyone is swerving around them to get ahead. Speed is the only metric that matters right now.
The Holy Cow (Hallucinations): You're cruising along confidently, and suddenly — a massive, hallucinating obstacle appears out of nowhere. What do we do? We don't stop. We steer around it and keep going. We've collectively decided this is an acceptable trade-off.
The Vehicle Mix (The Market): You have massive 18-wheelers (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic) barrelling down the centre. Weaving dangerously between them are thousands of zippy auto-rickshaws — AI wrappers and startups trying to find a gap before the trucks notice them. And yes, there are still bullock carts out there: legacy companies trying to retrofit a jet engine onto a wooden wheel.
The Honking (The Hype): The noise level is deafening. Everyone is honking — marketing, thought leadership posts, conference talks — to let you know they exist, regardless of whether they're actually moving.
What this means for you
In both scenarios, if you stop to wait for the chaos to clear, you'll never move.
The only way to survive is to develop peripheral vision: understand what's happening around you without being paralysed by it. Embrace the productive chaos. Trust that the flow will eventually get you somewhere useful.
The question I keep coming back to: are you actually driving toward something specific? Or are you just honking?
Because there's a lot of honking happening right now, and not all of it is moving anywhere.