Hello, Brave New World
AI will transform the world profoundly—at least as much as did industrialization in the 19th century. But this time the change will happen much more quickly. It’s already happening, and it’s accelerating. Buckle up, buttercup.
I’m Charlie Wood, a retired startup founder and CEO with degrees in computer science and economics. I care deeply about how AI will shape the world we live in, and the one we leave to our kids. I’m fond of saying, “Anything that can be done using a computer will soon be done by a computer,” and it’s no overstatement. But the changes will go beyond that. Virtually every aspect of our lives will be affected by AI if they haven’t been already.
In my own life I use AI (mainly ChatGPT and Claude) in a wide variety of ways. I ask it passing questions, like where did La Jolla, California get its name? Or, how much should I tip a wine tasting host at a winery? Or, why do so many military pilots have mustaches? (Yes, I recently visited San Diego.)
I’ve found AI useful for interpreting test results from my doctor, for advice on diagnosing and fixing automotive, electrical, plumbing, and appliance issues, for product recommendations, for household budgeting, for identifying animal tracks, for learning new card games, for language translation and travel planning, for … well, for just about everything.
And that’s just my personal life. Professionally, if you’re not using AI to help you with your job, you’re almost certainly putting yourself at a severe disadvantage.
So AI is a big deal. So what? Why am I writing about it and why should you care? Because the ground is going to shift below our feet and we all need to be prepared.
AI is set to massively disrupt the labor economy. It won’t replace every job, not even every white collar job, at least not yet. But it will make some people so much more productive at their jobs that businesses will require dramatically fewer people—and that means widespread unemployment.
In the short term, the competition isn’t between people and AI, it’s between people using AI and people who aren’t. And the latter are hosed. In the long term, the battle is between capital and labor—or more specifically between people who make money from their capital and those who make money from their labor. And again, the latter will be hosed.
I’ll be writing much more about all of this on my new blog. A play on the (probably apocryphal) Chinese curse and a classic newspaper name, The Interesting Times is about navigating a world in flux. You can find it at interestingtimes.blog.
I hope you’ll join the conversation.