AI

Here, the lesson I believe is not that we should resist AI, as Tyler rightly says, but that we should anchor its use in the irreducible tacit knowledge of human practitioners. The craftsman with decades of attention behind their choices, the nurse whose diagnostic hunch has been tempered by thousands of bodies and hours, these are not forms of know... See more

The human role is not to dominate but to guide, to shape through repetition, observation, and subtle correction. This, Cowen implies, is the new form of expertise, not the stockpiling of knowledge, but the choreography of feedback.

This metaphor contains an under appreciated dignity. It suggests that working with AI is not clerical, but relational (... See more

Even companies that are actually profitable (in the sense of bringing in more revenue than it costs to keep the business's lights on) love to juice their stats, and the worst offenders are the Big Tech companies, who reap a vast commercial reward from creating the illusion that they are continuing to grow, even after they've dominated their sector.

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How bad could it be? If you ask the researchers at Anthropic, even if progress stalls out here, current algorithms will automate all white collar work within the next five years: it’s just a matter of collecting the relevant data and spoonfeeding it to the models. In the worst-case scenario, highly repetitive manual labour becomes the last frontier... See more

A 12-Step Guide to Bullshit Work in the Age of AI

Step 1: Schedule a Meeting to Align on Priorities

Launch with a sync to "get everyone on the same page"—a page nobody reads. Auto-invite 12 people who won't attend. Record everything for "transparency," guaranteeing zero future views.

Step 2: Auto-Transcribe the Meeting

Deploy AI to transform manager... See more

This is where Cowen’s self-identification as an “idiot” acquires weight. He does not mean to glorify ignorance. He means to valorize receptivity. To be the idiot in the age of AI is to stand at the edge of one’s own knowledge and resist the impulse to retreat. It is not a capitulation; it is a discipline.

We're all navigating unprecedented uncertainty right now. AI isn't just changing technology—it's reshaping every industry, every role, every assumption about how work gets done.

The leaders and organizations that thrive won't be the ones that double down on yesterday's playbook with today's intensity. They'll be the ones brave enough to look like be... See more

These moments, he suggests, are not novelties but signals. They mark a transformation in how authority is experienced, not as embodied knowledge but as frictionless access. Expertise has not disappeared altogether but he fears it will soon.

The length of tasks (measured by how long they take human professionals) that generalist autonomous frontier model agents can complete with 50% reliability has been doubling approximately every 7 months for the last 6 years. The trend predicts that in under a decade we will see AI agents that can independently complete a large fraction of tasks in ... See more