Ben Sasse

Why would we compel people to do anything?

it better dang well benefit them and benefit the broader society in terms of the economic output they're going to produce, but more importantly, the civic engagement that they're going to be able to have and the love of neighbor and the engagement with people

you know, a republic, a small R, republic of pluralists who say, we don't want a polity that's based on power.

We want a whole bunch of people who want to flourish and thrive and build great things in their community.

And that requires you to be acquainted with some of the wonderful ideas and with beauty in the past.

And most of that is way more interesting than anything that is political.

Well said.

In my pre-cancer life where you sometimes dance for your dinner or raise money for a university and you're asked to give general speeches on a lot of topics, it's 90% of the time somebody will ask you some version of the question.

do you think AI is going to bring heaven or AI is going to bring hell?

And the right answer is yes.

AI is going to be human activity and behavior at warp speed for good and for ill.

And a lot of the stuff that we've been good at, we're going to get more of it faster, cheaper, and more broadly distributed.

But a lot of what's horrible about human activity

addictions and distractions, we're also going to get a lot more of it faster, cheaper, more ubiquitous.

And I think the grand divide that is coming sociologically or demographically is not, um,

chiefly a class divide.

I think the grand divide that's coming is about intentionality and what you do with your affections and these super tools.

The people who use the tools and get to capture the ability to drive

marginal computing costs towards zero, right?

We're either gonna make the quantification of routinizable tasks either actually free or so close to free that we won't bother to meter it anymore.