Starving Genies

Kent Beck applies his 3X (Explore/Expand/Extract) framework to explain why major AI model providers are simultaneously throttling usage limits. He argues the bottleneck isn't chips, compute, or money — it's the investor narrative: the moment when 'trust us, it'll work out' stops being sufficient and companies must signal a path to profitability. The synchronized throttling is a coordinated signal to the same investor class at the same stage. For developers, usage caps push them toward the API tier, splitting users into casual (free/capped), developer (metered/uncapped), and squeezed power users. Beck closes with an open question: are limits a temporary bridge while supply catches up, or the start of an Extract phase where heavy AI usage becomes a premium product?