Andrew Sage

So basically...

We have more people doing research and we're spending more money on research, but that research is translating into economic gains at a lower level than ever before, right?

To the point where we're not going to be able to continue to make economic gains like we used to be unless something changes.

And if you're kind of paying attention to this, you might notice that that study, which is the underpinning of that Vox article and all of these claims that we need AI for ideas, really is not actually making an argument that people aren't having more ideas.

It's making an argument that it is harder to profit from ideas than it used to be, right?

Now, that is fundamentally different from people not having ideas.

For one thing, it's reducing an idea to something that delivers a return for venture capitalists.

right?

That's all an idea is in this, is something that makes money.

And a lot of great ideas, like the post office, don't generate a direct profit.

Now, obviously, it's a net benefit to the economy that we have a post office, but the post office runs at a loss, right?

Which is why you have state funding for certain things, because they're just not going to be the kind of ideas that like a bunch of Silicon Valley investors want to throw money into, right?

Now, the other part of the issue here is just a very practical one, which is that a lot of the ideas, the great ideas last century that were like most correlated with massive gains in productivity, stuff like the introduction of vaccines on a wide scale, indoor plumbing and electricity on a wide scale, phones.

There's not ideas like that that are like that big and that much of a game changer in

Right.

The low-hanging fruit has been picked.

The low-hanging fruit has been picked.

There's not another the telephone waiting out there.

We already did that.

It was the smartphone.