Navigating the crazy AI world

Our humanity has intrinsic value, yes.

But only when it’s scarce and relevant does it have economic value.

Yes, all your other ‘human’ skills will continue to matter. But they will command economic value only when tightly bundled with curiosity, curation, and judgment

In an attention-scarce and knowledge-abundant economy, we’re increasingly buying signals, not inherent expertise.

When AI can generate infinite outputs, the scarce advantage shifts to whoever can pose the constraint that focuses efforts towards generating the right outputs.

A well-framed inquiry concentrates resources and points effort toward high-leverage targets

When knowledge becomes abundant, value migrates to the functions that exist upstream and downstream from it: framing the inquiry and acting on the output.

The critical dividing line in our economy is no longer simply education or specialization, but rather agency itself: the raw determination to make things happen without waiting for permission.

And look AI is useful. There are 1 billion essays approx about how useful it is (including mine). But my biggest gripe with relying on AI to do something creative—and here I mean, like, literally writing an essay for you, or doing your homework for you, or drawing something for you—is that you’re accepting the map as the territory. You are no longe... See more