Won't AI margins get competed away? There's a window — and it lasts years

A fair concern is that once everyone uses AI, the margins will get competed away. Eventually, probably yes — but there's a window between when your costs drop and when prices in your industry catch up. And in a lot of these industries that window is actually years long, not a month. On top of that, the stuff that keeps clients around — 20 years of relationships and your own proprietary rules for how the work gets done — is actually harder to copy than people think. The moat isn't just the AI tooling; it's the institutional knowledge and trust baked into the firm.