It's not how big it is

It’s an age-old saying that triggers everyone.

Men’s egos are made and destroyed by the saying.

Women giggle but also wince depending on the situation.

But let’s put the first thing that comes to mind aside and apply this to something that levels the playing field for both…

Technology…specifically AI.

The current “it” word

Yes, I know, I’m probably a teeny bit behind in this aspect.

Every era of human advancement has had its tizzy over a piece of tech that flattened the power structure across civilizations.

• stone, copper, and iron in the prehistoric ages

• the printing press, the cotton gin, and loom in the industrial ages

• calculators, computers, and the internet in the information age

Now, AI is the latest in this march towards…the singularity?

At least that’s what Ray Kurzweil refers to this great apex of humanity as where man and machine merge.

Essentially, every time another piece of technology affects an individual’s productivity, the power structure of the world shifts in favor of those who are willing to adopt it and apply it effectively. High-agency individuals and low-agency individuals use it for different purposes.

The potential for the chasm in means is much more terrifying now than ever before in human history, though.

This is the what I want to mentally munch on today.

How you sling it

So let’s apply that saying to AI.

It’s still very much in its infancy. Even now in its third year of public visibility and rabid frenzy to incorporate it into every aspect of our lives, it’s more of a ham-fisted approach in the race for relevancy for businesses.

It’s great if you have a big one, but it’s annoying and offensive if you stick it in everyone’s faces.

You’d be surprised at how few people have really leveraged it yet. Just because everyone has a phone, doesn’t mean that it’s the top app they’re using at the moment. AI has been around for a while now, but never as accessible as it has been recently.

The reason that AI isn’t as readily useful to most is because of their agency…this is changing rapidly as well.

When I say agency, I mean the motivation and level of understanding required to forcefully and methodically adopt something. It doesn’t have any thing to do with intelligence and everything to do with self-awareness, discipline, and curiosity.

High-agency individuals

In the hands of a high-agency individual, AI becomes an assistant, a guide, a mentor.

Take a look on social media platforms. People are using AI to help them gain virality, visibility, and volume. I’m not talking about the ones who are pumping out hundreds of posts and articles and flooding the feed with slop. I’m talking about those who provide AI with context, depth, and reams of their own and other’s content for feedback and nuances.

The people who have the foresight to learn to use AI in this capacity aren’t using it as a crutch. They’re using it as a springboard.

These people are asking it questions, sharing their thoughts and opinions, and asking for references and distillations of everything that is available on the internet. For all its might and power, AI is still just an oracular responder with its tendrils snaked throughout the internet.

It only does exactly what you ask it to do. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Programmers were some of the most powerful individuals of the first quarter of this century because they were the high-agency individuals of the information age. These people used their expertise to directly communicate and control computers; to ask them to do things at a scale that was impossible before. Their leverage was in their skill at constructing complexity with simple commands, building line-by-line, function-by-function, file-by-file to automate at a ridiculous scale.

They’re not the only ones who can do this anymore.

It all boils down to communication skill and a priori knowledge. High-agency individuals of AI have these two skills in spades. They know how to ask the right questions to seek the right answers and verify the accuracy and truthfulness of a response to some extent. The cool thing about that is that there is a large measure of uncertainty that lack of information that these individuals can tolerate for the sack of learning.

AI helps them to become better at producing more.

Low-agency individuals

These people use AI to cheat, extort, and entertain themselves.

Again, take a look at social media platforms. You can tell who these people are from the weird-sounding slop they post both on writing platforms like Medium and X and video platforms like YouTube and Tik Tok. It’s compelling stuff, don’t get me wrong. Who doesn’t want to see what Disney characters look like as [insert anything meme-worthy here]?

The latest in a long line of upstarts is Roy Lee, a 21-year-old Columbia dropout who is now building the “cheat on everything” AI app.

He’s a high-agency person that is enabling low-agency individuals for profit. It’s Ashley Madison for every aspect of life.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

When speed and efficiency meet enabling behaviors, it’s easy for low-agency individuals to indulge themselves in everything. They use AI as a crutch like they did with calculators, computers, and the internet. The same types of people who can’t count change or add a tip at the restaurant are going to be the ones who will use AI to do their homework, write their essays, and catfish dates on Tinder.

Low-agency individuals are basically interfaces for reality and the digital world.

These people don’t grow in any meaningful way.

Altman be praised…

If you get that reference and the humor behind it, let me know in the comments.

It’s meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek. Sam is the public figurehead that brought AI to the forefront of society (whether he likes it or not). I suppose I can grudgingly give Elon a bit of credit for the almost-Streisand effect way he pushed it further.

I will also say that there’s nothing wrong with using AI for a bit of entertainment. I enjoy watching some of that stuff every now and then. The “nations as [insert anything meme-worthy]” shorts are pretty neat to watch. We all have our high and low-agency aspects of our lives. It’s not black and white, cut and dry, good and evil.

It’s all in the choices you make about how you’re going to approach adopting it.

Being a Luddite about this isn’t going to be possible. Those who master working with AI are already seeing the benefits of it.

There’s a dark side to this that I’ll share tomorrow.

P. S.

What’s the big buzzword after this trend?

I’m guessing it’ll be quantum computing, cold fusion, and 6G as those innovations are already gaining traction. Also, AI is a huge energy sink both in mental processing and physical energy needs so these components are essential for AGI to become possibly a la Skynet or AM or Hal…pick your favorite fictional poison (omnipotence and omniscience and omnipresence).

I, for one, welcome our future machine overlords.

Maybe they’re already here and we really are in The Matrix…