The Opportunity
Creating things is at the heart of the human experience. It's never been a better time to create things.
Artificial intelligence is noisy and polarizing, but it has drastically reduced the cost of creating. One of the many outputs of AI, but perhaps the most remarkable, is software. The frontier models are currently the worst they will ever be. They are also substantially better at programming than most programmers. Of course there are still some limitations, but they continue to improve.
The cost to produce software has gone down dramatically by two or three orders of magnitude. The cost to produce software used to require a team of talented engineers, each requiring a few hundred thousand dollar salary. The cost to produce software now is less than minimum wage.
This also means that anyone can build software. The barrier to entry, the learning curve, they've all gotten flatter. Just last week Linus Torvalds was found to be using AI for one of his projects, admitting it did a better job than he did. That same week an OpenAI model solved an Erdős problem.
Agency
Agency is the only thing between you and the opportunity. Agency is the most economically valuable trait in the world. It is the ability to turn ideas into substance, to execute, to stop thinking and planning and do. It is the ability to turn thoughts into words, a proverbial incantation. Now those words are all you need. Agency is what empowers you to just do things.
What Works Against Agency
Human beings tend to overestimate unknown unknowns. When we were hunter gatherers this would greatly contribute to our chance of survival. Trying a new type of food or traveling to a new area could mean death. But in the context of the modern world and for us to create, it works against us.
At a personal level it feeds our insecurities as we compare ourselves to others and wonder about them. But also very much so at business and organization levels. I cannot overstate how common it is for startups to spend so much time worrying about their competition instead of just building things. The funny thing is that the competition is often doing the same thing about you.
Choosing Optimism
Now all of this can be really scary to hear about, but there are good reasons to be optimistic. Being optimistic and excited will improve your life and empower you to have more agency and create more things.
Right now things are changing and there is a lot of uncertainty. Change creates fear. This can be hard; humans struggle immensely with the unknown. The way our media has been designed will reward fear and doom greatly.
Actively choosing to be optimistic when there is a lot of change is challenging and requires a lot of bravery. You can't plan your way to the best outcomes. They come from showing up in places you didn't know existed. Every time you act, you're buying a lottery ticket you didn't know was for sale.
You have no idea how good it can get. The way you win is by acting.