team human

The machines are getting better at sounding smart.Which means we need to get better at actually becoming smart.We need the judgment to separate signal from noise.We need the discernment to know something seems a little off.We need the curiosity to not be satisfied with first answers.We need patience and discipline.We need wisdom.Now more than ever.

So the essential skill of our time isn’t prompt engineering or coding—it’s having a finely tuned bullshit detector. It’s knowing enough about how humans actually think and write to spot bullshit. It’s having read widely enough to recognize when an answer is hollow, even when it’s dressed up in confident prose. It’s understanding your domain well... See more

But the opposite is true! To use these tools well—to not be used by them—you need exactly the things we’re told are becoming obsolete. A broad liberal arts education. Domain expertise. Critical thinking. A feel for what humans actually sound like. The ability to spot when something seems off.

The point is: If I hadn’t already read deeply in these areas—had I not known roughly what I was looking for—I would have been fooled. I might have written that Tolstoy called Dickens the only real giant of history. If I didn’t have my own brain, I might have been persuaded by what seemed like a math equation but was in fact, nonsense.

To try to find some efficiency, I next started up a new pattern: block out the last 30 minutes of every day to kick off one or more agents. My hypothesis was that perhaps I could gain some efficiency if the agent can make some positive progress in the times I can't work anyways. Basically: instead of trying to do more in the time I have, try to do... See more

For now, I’m taking small comfort in the fact that while AI might replace many jobs, it can’t replace the entrepreneurial spirit. At least not until it develops an ego and a penchant for risky financial decisions, anyway.