The Odd Things AI Makes Me Think About, Curiosity No. 3

Curiosity No. 3: Sex and War

Every time someone asks, “Where does AI innovation really come from?”, people tend to point at the usual suspects: Silicon Valley, research labs, cloud giants, clever startups. All fair. All true. But also not the whole story.
If you look at the last fifty years of digital evolution, two very unexpected industries keep showing up as unlikely accelerators of technology: the adult entertainment industry and the defense sector.

Yes. Sex and war. Two topics guaranteed to make any business audience suddenly sit up straight. And yet, strange as it sounds, these two worlds have repeatedly pushed digital technology forward in ways the rest of us eventually benefit from – quietly, indirectly, sometimes uncomfortably.

Let’s take a quick, safe, PG‑rated tour.

The adult industry: the fast‑moving early adopter nobody talks about

This sector has a long history of jumping on emerging technologies before the mainstream is ready for them. It helped tip the scales in the VHS vs. Betamax era. It was early to online payments, early to streaming, early to personalisation, early to subscription models. Not because it wanted to “innovate,” but because it had to. Strong incentives, low barriers, fast experimentation. A perfect storm for testing what technology might be capable of before the rest of the world catches on.

Today, it’s playing with AI-augmented humanoids, synthetic media, real‑time content generation, and ultra‑personalised experiences – long before most companies even know these tools exist. Whether we like it or not, it often acts as a preview of the next digital normal.

The defense sector: innovation with existential stakes

On the opposite end of the spectrum lies an industry where experimentation is not a luxury – it’s a necessity. From robotics to satellite imaging, from autonomous systems to early computer networks, defense programs have poured resources into technologies that felt outlandish at the time and essential a decade later. Even the internet started as a defense research project.

Today, the sector is investing heavily in AI for analysis, prediction, logistics, and decision support. With budgets most companies can’t dream of, and planning horizons that stretch far beyond quarterly results, it pushes the frontier outward in ways that eventually drift into civilian life. Where the adult industry provides speed, defense provides scale.

Why does this matter to your AI business strategy?

Together, they illustrate a larger truth about how AI really develops: AI evolves fastest where incentives are strong, constraints are light, and experimentation is encouraged. Innovation doesn’t always start in polite, tidy places. Sometimes it starts in places that move quickly because they must – or because they can. And that matters, because the technologies being tested today on the edges of society often become tomorrow’s mainstream business tools.

If you only watch big tech, you only see half the future. If you broaden your view, you start noticing the weak signals earlier – the ones that quietly shift what becomes possible in the workplace and allow you to shift your strategy ahead of the competition.

So let me ask you this: If some of AI’s most revealing clues come from the places no one likes to discuss, what else are we not looking at?

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About the post Series:

“The Odd Things AI Makes Me Think About” is a collection of short, thoughtprovoking reflections on the stranger, overlooked, and sometimes uncomfortable edges of artificial intelligence. This series steps away from the usual AI “from doom to utopia” narratives, and instead explores the quirky, curious, and occasionally provocative questions that surface when humans and machines collide.

Expect posts that challenge assumptions, spotlight unusual angles, and invite a different kind of attention-because the most interesting ideas usually live just outside the mainstream.