Your bridge to wealth is being pulled up

For two centuries, the credential system gave intelligence a route to heritable capital. Artificial intelligence is closing that route. This essay builds the argument from first principles - with probability theory, interactive simulations, and a prediction specific enough to be falsifiable - and puts a number on the window that remains.

Daniel Homola

This is when I ask sincerely: how does AI truly benefit the average Joe?

Sure it can help you do things “faster” and it can give you “private/cheaper” advice.

But, AI feels increasingly like a thing that will make the powerful a lot more powerful with their data centres and automation shenanigans.

All the hype feels like it’s being injected into everyone’s brain like a virus. Oh look at this shiny new tool! But, how does it actually improve everyone’s life? We’ve gone from AGI to tokens as a service.

Sure, it might cure cancer, but… that’s just uncertain. Sure, we’ll go to space, but… we sure have many problems at home.

I’m completely divided here. I love using these tools, and it makes work enjoyable. But, like we read recently “you’re not your work”.

I'm building an addition to my house and I use AI to visualize parts of it, which helps me plan efficiently, and I use it to answer questions about skills that I only have a little bit of experience in. I'm saving a ton of money and developing skills, so I count that as benefiting "the average Joe." I admit that I'm a programmer, but I'm using this as an example because it's helping me in an area in which I have little expertise, which applies to everyone.