Nathaniel Whittemore

Skills that took years to develop can now be augmented or replicated in hours.

Now, this sort of commoditization of knowledge work creates displacement risk, of course, but it also creates incredible opportunity in terms of the massive leverage that it can give people.

One of the implications of the capabilities overhang, however, when it comes to that individual focus, is that personal economic moats are eroding faster than people realize.

In other words, the gap between I should learn this AI stuff and I needed it yesterday is closing.

So what are some of the challenges?

Information is one.

And by that, I don't just mean information about what's possible with AI, although that's part of it.

But also, I think we have a real issue in the way that we discuss AI.

Every survey that comes out shows that to be a little bit reductionist, but honestly, not all that much.

Eastern and lower income countries are extremely enthusiastic about AI, while people in Western and higher income countries are less so.

There are all sorts of reasons for this, but what it means is that in addition to just a general information gap, you also have a massive enthusiasm gap, which means that people who don't like AI or wish it didn't exist are getting farther and farther behind, kind of hoping that it just goes away.

Go on any social media platform and you will be able to find myriad posts about people enthusiastically quote unquote waiting for the end of the bubble so things can go back to normal.

despite the incontrovertible fact, known by everyone who is listening to this particular show, that there is no such thing as going back.

So improving information availability about what you can do with AI, but also about, to some extent, the inescapability of some changes because of it, is a key part of overcoming this overhang.

Another part is, of course, access.

People who can pay more right now have better access to AI.

However, the gap isn't necessarily as big as it seems.

Although ChatGPT data shows that the typical power user of their system uses seven times more compute than a typical user, there's still incredible capacity available to anyone, even in the free versions of these tools.

One of the things that's been super interesting to me watching people interact with the New Year's AI Resolution, which is the 10-week self-education program that came out of my New Year's episode, is that a lot of folks, despite being on the very high end of enfranchised users, are seeing how much they can get out of the free versions of these tools.

I actually think that that's incredibly valuable and more instructive in many ways to the average user than some insane person like me who's going to pay for the Ultra or Max subscription to every single tool that comes along.