You can’t optimize your way to being a good person

The first step is to understand the fundamental difference between humans and AIs. We are analog, chemical beings, with emotions and feelings. Compared with machines, we think slowly—and we act too fast, failing to consider the long-term consequences of our behavior (which AI can help predict). So we should not compete with AI; we should use it. At... See more

Integrating AI into our workflows has created a "meta-optimization problem." When everyone suddenly gets 10x more powerful, the hard part isn't doing things—deciding what's worth doing in the first place. My friend at a high-profile AI startup told me recently that their biggest challenge isn't training better models, but figuring out which problem... See more

Generally speaking, quantification and the logic of optimization which it encourages tend to transform our field of experience into points of aggression, as the sociologist Hartmut Rosa has aptly put it. Data-driven optimization is, in this sense, a way of perceiving the world. And what may matter most about this is not necessarily what it allows u... See more

But you can’t optimize systems in a context that’s changing, especially if it’s changing in unpredictable ways. Removing inefficiencies when circumstances are as anticipated means that there isn’t much slack in the system to respond when the unanticipated happens. Optimization is intrinsically brittle , because it’s about closely matching the outpu

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I’m thinking about conviction, because it is so rare.

A lot of people start off with conviction, but life, hardships, and other people’s opinions get in the way, and they stop believing in the greatness of their own ideas.

I’ve met intelligent types with lots of skills and advantages at their disposal. But they usually don’t know where to go with the... See more