When a worker gains a tool that lets him produce more per hour, his labor becomes more valuable, not less. And growing firms hire. The latest jobs numbers show the theory is a fact.
1. That Little Silicon Chip is changing EVERYTHING!
2. AI is here, its not going away.
3 Adapting It's What Humans Do.
______________________________________________
"Yet the frontier labs continue to benefit from fear, because fear creates demand for regulation, and regulation is a moat."
Something I read years ago. We are hardwired for Bad News always looking for the worst. Our ancestors needed to know 2 things. 1. Where the berry's that are good to eat are, 2. Where the Lions are? If you didn't know whee the berry's wee you don't eat today, but you might eat tomorrow, BUT If you didn't know where the Lions were, you were dead,
This is an encouraging essay. I think the crux of the matter is this quote: "When a worker gains a tool that lets him produce more per hour, his labor becomes more valuable, not less."
We're told here that AI is just a tool for the worker. This puts it in the same category as what a hammer is to the carpenter. The hammer will never replace the carpenter. But a machine hammer allows the carpenter to work faster and better.
The problem is we've been told repeatedly that AI is so good that it will replace the worker, not just make the worker more efficient. It will no longer be just a tool. The "hammer" will in fact replace the "carpenter," in other words. This essay suggests otherwise.
I use AI in just about every work flow, and if I have learned anything whatsoever, it's that for the most important tasks, it cannot possibly replace me.
That means it gets the grunt work and I get to do the high-value-add stuff, and that makes me a lot more valuable.
Let's put it another way. If you don't have anybody to mow your lawn, make your coffee, do your laundry, go to the store, etc., you waste a lot of time that could be producing revenue (or at least leisure). Now if you have a wife who likes doing those things, great. If you have a butler, or a groundskeeper, or an army of Elon's new robots, so much the better.
But your lawn-mowing robot can't do the stuff you're best at, and neither can your yard guy. You have gifts. You want to use them maximally.
If you're running around doing things that are off-task, you're not ON-task, which means you're less valuable and more replaceable.
But if you are knocking it out of the park at what you're truly good at, without all the distractions, now you're hypervaluable, and an employer will pay more for you. Moreover, if you've got some hustle, you'll figure out how to not need an employer at all. That may or may not be for you, but you'll have the option.
This is how every prior tool has worked. AI is no different. It mechanizes grunt work so you can focus on what makes you uniquely valuable.
The socialists may believe we're all just replaceable cogs in a machine that must be managed by the state. They're wrong, and the whole history of mankind proves it.
We need to stop treating "AI kills jobs" like it's a bad thing. Of course it kills jobs. All new technology kills jobs. That frees up the people who were wasting their energy doing jobs so menial that it turns out a machine can do them, and lets them do things that are more fit for humans. Your story about getting customer-service folks up to speed in two months instead of six is really striking -- those people on whom management could therefore take a chance would otherwise have been forced into more back-breaking or mind-numbing jobs.
And it will continue. Large parts of jobs we used to respect will be hollowed out when AI can do them better, and that's a *good* thing. What's left is much more fitting work for humans.
I have this vision, probably not in my lifetime, when every person on the planet is effectively the CEO of an Apple-scale corporation, staffed entirely by robots that can do everything except decide what the big picture should be.
Another terrific piece on AI by Alexander Muse! Thank you, Dr. Martin for republishing it! Every generation always thinks technology will take away jobs but instead it creates more of them! AI is no different!
It is not the jobs for me. It is the digital overlord system that worries me. The 24/7 surveillance. The digital money control. The you may not be interested in them but they will be interested in you paradigm.
You have that without AI. But if you're concerned about privacy, download any of several local models (I prefer Gemma because it's American, but several Chinese models are a bit more advanced) and run them on your own equipment. None of your data has to be shared with anyone. That's a choice.
The frontier models are meaningfully better. All the hype you've heard about Fable and Mythos is true, but ChatGPT-5.6 Sol Ultra beats them both and runs cheaper. Nevertheless, local is as good as frontier models were six or nine months ago, so if you don't mind being a little behind, your issue is solved.
This is a constitutional issue, not a technology one. The Supreme Court just extended 4th Amendment protections significantly in Chatrie v. United States, specifically holding that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your geolocation data, requiring a warrant to access it. This had previously been treated as falling under Third Party Doctrine, which in the internet age has become an abomination.
So the Court is doing its part. Congress needs to step up and dramatically tighten Third Party Doctrine, but just to be clear, it badly needed to do that long before AI. Chatrie may give impetus to movement on that, if not in Congress then at the Court itself.
I have been talking about this for a very long time. You can't stop the march of technology, and people will use any technology for good and for ill. The solution is in our system, not our tech. We actually have very robust constitutional protections. We do use them, but not as much as I would like. Nevertheless, there's meaningful movement in the right direction.
The jury is still out on the overall true net productivity payoff of AI, particularly given only recently are the true costs starting to be passed along to users. There is still a supervisory or coordination cost and cognitive overhead to wrangling the damned thing.
As always there is the question is to what extent the gains for presumed increased productivity will be split with the workers. The threat of being replaced may give employers leverage to keep most of the gains.
The fact is many, many firms dont have a good idea of they would put the increased net productivity to actual productive revenue enhancing (or cost reducing) use. IOW if they effectively get 25% more virtual "workers" put of AI (for presumed less cost than meat ones). So perhaps they cut after all. Think about all the corps piling up cash because they can't think up great ideas worth investing it in.
Of course the waters are muddled in the meantime between CEOs using AI as a positive sounding excuse to clean up their messes, or foolishly buying the replacemen hype.
However muddy the waters may be, I've at least 5X'd my own productivity and done consequential things I simply could never have done previously. And my response to that has been to add new personnel, not to cut. We are able to do vastly more, and so we are.
1. The productivity gains are very unevenly distributed even w the same firm, depending on task type. The trick is determining the net impact given some uses are very effective, others more trouble than they are worth given oversight and corrections required.
2. The job threat is very real fir a while longer... all that requires is that stupid CEOs buy the hype and let go people prematurely in that basis.
Dear Doom & Gloomers
1. That Little Silicon Chip is changing EVERYTHING!
2. AI is here, its not going away.
3 Adapting It's What Humans Do.
______________________________________________
"Yet the frontier labs continue to benefit from fear, because fear creates demand for regulation, and regulation is a moat."
Something I read years ago. We are hardwired for Bad News always looking for the worst. Our ancestors needed to know 2 things. 1. Where the berry's that are good to eat are, 2. Where the Lions are? If you didn't know whee the berry's wee you don't eat today, but you might eat tomorrow, BUT If you didn't know where the Lions were, you were dead,
This is an encouraging essay. I think the crux of the matter is this quote: "When a worker gains a tool that lets him produce more per hour, his labor becomes more valuable, not less."
We're told here that AI is just a tool for the worker. This puts it in the same category as what a hammer is to the carpenter. The hammer will never replace the carpenter. But a machine hammer allows the carpenter to work faster and better.
The problem is we've been told repeatedly that AI is so good that it will replace the worker, not just make the worker more efficient. It will no longer be just a tool. The "hammer" will in fact replace the "carpenter," in other words. This essay suggests otherwise.
I use AI in just about every work flow, and if I have learned anything whatsoever, it's that for the most important tasks, it cannot possibly replace me.
That means it gets the grunt work and I get to do the high-value-add stuff, and that makes me a lot more valuable.
Let's put it another way. If you don't have anybody to mow your lawn, make your coffee, do your laundry, go to the store, etc., you waste a lot of time that could be producing revenue (or at least leisure). Now if you have a wife who likes doing those things, great. If you have a butler, or a groundskeeper, or an army of Elon's new robots, so much the better.
But your lawn-mowing robot can't do the stuff you're best at, and neither can your yard guy. You have gifts. You want to use them maximally.
If you're running around doing things that are off-task, you're not ON-task, which means you're less valuable and more replaceable.
But if you are knocking it out of the park at what you're truly good at, without all the distractions, now you're hypervaluable, and an employer will pay more for you. Moreover, if you've got some hustle, you'll figure out how to not need an employer at all. That may or may not be for you, but you'll have the option.
This is how every prior tool has worked. AI is no different. It mechanizes grunt work so you can focus on what makes you uniquely valuable.
The socialists may believe we're all just replaceable cogs in a machine that must be managed by the state. They're wrong, and the whole history of mankind proves it.
We need to stop treating "AI kills jobs" like it's a bad thing. Of course it kills jobs. All new technology kills jobs. That frees up the people who were wasting their energy doing jobs so menial that it turns out a machine can do them, and lets them do things that are more fit for humans. Your story about getting customer-service folks up to speed in two months instead of six is really striking -- those people on whom management could therefore take a chance would otherwise have been forced into more back-breaking or mind-numbing jobs.
And it will continue. Large parts of jobs we used to respect will be hollowed out when AI can do them better, and that's a *good* thing. What's left is much more fitting work for humans.
I have this vision, probably not in my lifetime, when every person on the planet is effectively the CEO of an Apple-scale corporation, staffed entirely by robots that can do everything except decide what the big picture should be.
And selling to people who are so productive that they can afford a vastly better lifestyle.
Precisely.
Another terrific piece on AI by Alexander Muse! Thank you, Dr. Martin for republishing it! Every generation always thinks technology will take away jobs but instead it creates more of them! AI is no different!
There aren't that many people writing well about this, especially people who actually understand the technology. So I try to feature them.
I’d also like to leave a little book list for America’s 250th Anniversary on America in the Antebellum Era:
• What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe
• The Age of Jackson by Arthur M. Schlesinger
• Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson by David S. Reynolds
• A Nation Wholly Free: The Elimination of the National Debt in the Age of Jackson by Earl Lane
• The Whigs' America: Middle-Class Political Thought in the Age of Jackson and Clay by Joseph W. Pearson
• 1831: Year of Eclipse by Louis P. Masur
• Henry Clay: The Essential American by David S. Heidler & Jeanne T. Heidler
• American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham
• Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time by Robert V. Remini
• John C. Calhoun: A Biography by Irving H. Bartlett
• America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union by Fergus M. Bordewich
• Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850's by Don E. Fehrenbacher
• Lincoln in New Orleans: The 1828-1831 Flatboat Voyages and Their Place in History by Richard Campanella
• A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent by Robert W. Merry
• John Tyler: Champion of the Old South by Oliver P. Chitwood
• Zachary Taylor: The American Presidents Series: The 12th President, 1849-1850 by John S.D. Eisenhower
• Millard Fillmore by Robert J. Scarry
• Franklin Pierce: New Hampshire's Favorite Son by Peter Wallner
• Franklin Pierce: Martyr for the Union by Peter Wallner
• James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War by John Quist
• Old Tippecanoe: William Henry Harrison and His Time by Freeman Cleaves
• The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America by Robert Pierce Forbes
• Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement by Fergus M. Bordewich
• Fugitive Slave on Trial: The Anthony Burns Case and Abolitionist Outrage by Earl M. Maltz
• The Captive's Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery by R.J.M. Blackett
• The Free and the Dead: The Untold Story of the Black Seminole Chief, the Indigenous Rebel, and America's Forgotten War by Jamie Holmes
• The Seminole Struggle: A History of America's Longest Indian War by John Missall
It is not the jobs for me. It is the digital overlord system that worries me. The 24/7 surveillance. The digital money control. The you may not be interested in them but they will be interested in you paradigm.
You have that without AI. But if you're concerned about privacy, download any of several local models (I prefer Gemma because it's American, but several Chinese models are a bit more advanced) and run them on your own equipment. None of your data has to be shared with anyone. That's a choice.
The frontier models are meaningfully better. All the hype you've heard about Fable and Mythos is true, but ChatGPT-5.6 Sol Ultra beats them both and runs cheaper. Nevertheless, local is as good as frontier models were six or nine months ago, so if you don't mind being a little behind, your issue is solved.
And FLOCK?
This is a constitutional issue, not a technology one. The Supreme Court just extended 4th Amendment protections significantly in Chatrie v. United States, specifically holding that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your geolocation data, requiring a warrant to access it. This had previously been treated as falling under Third Party Doctrine, which in the internet age has become an abomination.
So the Court is doing its part. Congress needs to step up and dramatically tighten Third Party Doctrine, but just to be clear, it badly needed to do that long before AI. Chatrie may give impetus to movement on that, if not in Congress then at the Court itself.
I have been talking about this for a very long time. You can't stop the march of technology, and people will use any technology for good and for ill. The solution is in our system, not our tech. We actually have very robust constitutional protections. We do use them, but not as much as I would like. Nevertheless, there's meaningful movement in the right direction.
A few points:
The jury is still out on the overall true net productivity payoff of AI, particularly given only recently are the true costs starting to be passed along to users. There is still a supervisory or coordination cost and cognitive overhead to wrangling the damned thing.
As always there is the question is to what extent the gains for presumed increased productivity will be split with the workers. The threat of being replaced may give employers leverage to keep most of the gains.
The fact is many, many firms dont have a good idea of they would put the increased net productivity to actual productive revenue enhancing (or cost reducing) use. IOW if they effectively get 25% more virtual "workers" put of AI (for presumed less cost than meat ones). So perhaps they cut after all. Think about all the corps piling up cash because they can't think up great ideas worth investing it in.
Of course the waters are muddled in the meantime between CEOs using AI as a positive sounding excuse to clean up their messes, or foolishly buying the replacemen hype.
However muddy the waters may be, I've at least 5X'd my own productivity and done consequential things I simply could never have done previously. And my response to that has been to add new personnel, not to cut. We are able to do vastly more, and so we are.
1. The productivity gains are very unevenly distributed even w the same firm, depending on task type. The trick is determining the net impact given some uses are very effective, others more trouble than they are worth given oversight and corrections required.
2. The job threat is very real fir a while longer... all that requires is that stupid CEOs buy the hype and let go people prematurely in that basis.