One of the biggest pushbacks against AI is best articulated as a single question. So what? The argument goes something like this: Cool. So we can summarize things, write stories, make cool images, and even do some business stuff using agents. That's impressive, but is it really worth all the hype? Like, why do people think this is worth billions or trillions of dollars? It's a fair point, and I would say that—if that's all it were—the hype would be unjustified. But I don't think the list above gets even close to what AI is actually going to do. But rather than just hit you with, "Trust me it ..read more

See full-size Core beliefs The "Ideal World" Heuristic The questions I ask when evaluating someone's politics Looking Left, Right, and Center The importance of mindset The complexity of simultaneous conflicting truths Narrative analysis Far Left Far Right My version of Centrism Deciding when to support or stop supporting people like Musk, Rogan, and Andreessen Constant re-evaluation of peoples' Ideal World model The difference between Centrism and "Both-Sidesing" Summary I want to say a few things about what’s happening right now in politics. I especially want to do so because I’ve ..read more

I wrote recently about the difference between Functional and Technical AGI. I argued that Technical AGI is the real deal (AI that can generalize it's knowledge and learning), and Functional AGI is an emulation that's good enough to replace a human knowledge worker. But there's a follow-on point that I want to make here as well. I don't think we need any additional model advances to get to Functional AGI. I think our best AIs in early 2025 are already smart enough to do the job. They just haven't been properly orchestrated into unified systems that can emulate general intelligence. Yet. AGI—ju ..read more

I think we should make a distinction between Functional AGI and Technical AGI. Functional AGI is what I use in my definition of AGI—basically an AI system that can replace a knowledge worker from 2022. Technical AGI is more academic and pure, and honestly I don’t feel qualified to even nail it down. But it’s essentially an AI system that can generalize its current knowledge and learning to challenges it’s never seen before. I think Functional AGI matters most, and I think it’s likely to come before Technical AGI. And of course, if Technical comes first then it will achieve Functional natura ..read more

It's about to get a lot easier to write a decent novel. I'd guess that within 1-3 years, being an "author" of a novel is going to become AI prompting combined with verbal narration. You'll start with an outline and then have long sessions talking to an AI where you describe the details of what you want. Things like: Historical context Character pasts Character interactions Setting specifics Vibes you want to convey Big ideas you want to explore Etc. A new way to write ​ The bar is lower than you might think. As an author, you'll set up the outline of the story in an AI pr ..read more

Apple's about to go from having the worst AI implementation to having the best. How? By finally turning on the switch they've been building up to for years now. In 18.4 they're going to do a few major things that connect Siri to the overall Apple ecosystem. Siri finally comes online ​ Here's a hint from Macrumors at the new AI features coming in 18.4: From Macrumors Siri will get access to personal context. That means emails, texts, documents, notes, and tons of other stuff in your ecosystem. Siri will get screen access. So now you can have a conversation with Siri about ..read more

The total market size (TAM) for AI is a combination of two (2) primary components: The total cost of human workforces The amount of money that current and future companies will pay to start, 10x, or 1000x their business We're talking hundreds of trillions of dollars. Don't get distracted ..read more

Augmented vs. Natural Having used hundreds (and built dozens) of AI applications since late 2022, I've come to realize something crucial about good and bad use cases. Or, to phrase it as a question: When should we use AI for things vs. doing them manually? My first inclination was full speed ahead. Consume everything. Summarize everything. Blast away, basically. Why? Because I could. Because it wasn't possible before. Our first instinct with AI was to use it for everything, and it's time to start questioning that. But a few months later I realized there was a big problem with this that I hear ..read more

I clearly see the merits of both sides, similar to the end-to-end encryption discussion. The last few years have given me some clarity on where I stand on the topic of internet censorship. I was a bit wishy-washy on it for a while because the downsides of both are so bad, but for tech platforms like X and Facebook, I think I finally have an opinion. The platforms should make all legal speech available to anyone who wants to see it. They should also make it easy for users to shape the experience they want to have. In other words, the platforms shouldn't filter reality in any way other than l ..read more

The ideal number of human employees in any company is zero. This is a flaw of capitalism, not automation, yet in the next couple years there will be a growing tendency to blame AI for the loss of human jobs. The strange truth is that the entire phenomenon of people having jobs that pay them money comes from one simple dynamic: There are some people who want to make things that don’t exist yet, and they are unable to make those things without external help. When either of those two things reduces, or goes to zero, so goes much of our current economy. It’s the drive to make things, and the fact ..read more