This is why I vehemently disagree with anyone that claims creating a startup is easier today than in the past.

Not only are the low hanging ideas saturated (ie website monitoring, brand monitoring, fitness apps), but the bigger ideas require a lot of data, and the big tech companies have the clear advantage.

I don't think it is any easier or harder. The difficulty remains the same.

Today, the web stack is much more accessible, and accessible to a much larger group of people. Indeed, a non-trivial number of its parts are relatively automated (e.g. Weebly). In 1995, it was only accessible to a much smaller group of people. Mobile app development will soon reach the same point. And yet, there are plenty of new technologies and ecosystems - to learn and creatively generate something from - that are inaccessible to people in the same way the web was in 1995.

Experiment until you find something people want that has a promising business model and tech model design. If you get traction, don't take investment from just anyone (I'm reminded of Amazon's VC arm working with Amazon to copy a portfolio companies' product, which then buried that startup). Etc. Etc. There are plenty of other early-stage strategic heuristics you can utilize to your advantage.

Perceived weaknesses or disadvantages can be the other-side of an actual strength or advantage.

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I want to emphasize this point more: often times, the lack of resources (whether financial, intellectual, etc.) is the setting of a creative breakthrough that generates the successful business model and tech model.

I think creating a small/lifestyle startup is easier than ever since distribution/globalization is much easier but creating the next big thing is much more difficult.

That's the best phrasing I've read that reconciles these two beliefs (easier to build + saturation). Nicely and simply put.

I think this is pretty scary when it comes to growing market concentration and inequality.

Basically, the most successful companies are the ones that can learn the fastest and apply that learning the fastest. Companies that already have lots of customers and data will be able to learn much faster (i.e. "get to statistical significance much faster") than those that don't.

Isn't it pretty uncontroversial that AI and automation will only worse inequality?

We can only hope that the inevitable revolutions to come will not be crushed by the all-seeing AI surveillance and AI-powered robot armies of our wealthy overlords before they even get a chance to become a threat to them.

Supreme Leader Xi of China is certainly hoping that this will be the outcome of the government's aggressive investment in AI technologies.

How could a broad generalization about the future, couched in terms whose definitions are controversial, be uncontroversial?

Agreed. It isn't just the tech industry, but banking, media and all industries. The market leaders in every industry with data, resources and scale stand to benefit the most. Which will incentivize mid or small sized businesses to merge or be bought out by large corporations. So rather than decentralization, AI will add to the momentum for greater centralization.

And looking beyond the private sector, the largest governments and nations with data, people and scale will stand to benefit most as well.