AI
I’d be surprised if, in a decade, “designer” and “engineer” roles are as common as they are today
With widespread AI use, it’s more likely the relevant specializations would re-organize around business concerns (like sales/marketing vs R&D vs operations), rather than around tooling differences (like Figma vs IDE vs cloud console)
I expect many ol... See more
When the first steam engines were introduced, the owners had a really hard time finding people to operate them who wouldn't get drunk in the middle of the day, fuck up, and wreck the machine.
Technological change is only possible with societal (behavioral) change
To use databases, you need to be able to think about your data in a structured way. The people who could do that gained most of the leverage from using databases. The folks who made it easy for people to transition to databases (ERPs and Co) captured the rest.
AI systems are fundamentally scalable decision making engines. And data is the oil required to power it. If you want to properly leverage AI, you need to make sure you're fueling it with the best refined data.
Otherwise, you're no different than the drunk trying to reliably operate complex machinery. The only repeatable part of that is injury.
AI is the new plastic
notion.so
There is beauty to naturally occurring material… and thought
It's becoming increasingly evident that in many circles, AI is not perceived as merely a technology, but as "something else" entirely. This misconception is exemplified by the recurring debate: "Humans vs AI." To illustrate the absurdity of this framing, let's replace "AI" with "technology":
"Humans vs Technology"
This reframing immediately highl... See more
When is AI useful in the real world?
milan.cvitkovic.net
“AI is useful for a real-world task only if the cost for the AI to do the thing and for you to check its work is less than the existing solution.”
AI follows auditability
grantslatton.com
Excerpt: “Over the last 15 years, Excel has been unbundled into a host of other apps, such as Asana, Looker, and QuickBooks. But this unbundling was only possible once Excel became ubiquitous enough for users to know they wanted a purpose-made alternative. In order for that to happen, Excel needed widespread adoption with power users who began using it for niche workflows that it wasn’t originally designed to support.
…
Once those workflows were created, the power users realized that parts of their workflow were inefficient, or that features were missing for their use cases. They felt a need for purpose-built tools—and that became the opportunity for B2B SaaS to develop into a $327 billion market.”
I screenshotted this because it will seem so funny a couple years from now. Though to be fair it seems pretty funny already. https://t.co/qMwifbOLuz