mapping the crazy AI world

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.

One very real future being pursued right now looks to turn LLMs into a universal operating system, and thus the friendly assistant — the weaver, the chatbot — would be the universal interface for all “smart” infrastructure, utilities, appliances, tools, household objects, automated machines, etc. Accordingly, one can easily imagine a version of the... See more

Archers didn’t lose to other archers using the latest technology; they lost to an entirely different model of warfare.

Understanding the constraint that makes you valuable is key. In the case of typists, it was the high cost of document editing. When that constraint is removed, so is your value.

Henrich argues that humans have evolved “brains to allow us to most effectively learn the ideas, beliefs, values, motivations, and practices we’ll need to survive and thrive in whatever ecological or social environments we end up in.” The way this happens is through culture, which is a dramatic accelerant on our ability to solve problems and... See more

Expectation:

AI will reduce our workload, giving us more leisure time.

Reality:

AI expands what's possible —raising expectations, and creating more work

While AI is most effective at automating narrow, repetitive tasks, it’s less capable of stitching those tasks together into a coherent whole. A full-stack professional knows how to orchestrate —they use AI to handle discrete components, while maintaining oversight and strategic control across the entire workflow.

What if the questions were instead: What kinds of labor markets are being designed around AI? What is shaping the choices about adoption? Who has bargaining power in those decisions? How will the value created by as yet unfounded promises of productivity growth be distributed? Who has power and how is it wielded to promote certain interests and... See more

Will large models lead to greater cultural homogeneity or greater fragmentation? Will they reinforce or undermine the social institutions of human discovery? As they reshape the political economy, who will win and lose? These and other urgent questions do not come into focus in debates that treat large models as analogs for human agents.