Carter, we agree. Billions of people, each with their own AI, will beat any central planner. But that only works if each of those people knows what they want and most don't.
Your post on Brown is a good example. Students used AI to ace a take-home midterm, 40 perfect scores. When the professor moved the final in person, the average fell from 96 to 48, and some students turned in blank exams with their names signed at the top. They had the most powerful tool ever built and no idea what they wanted from it beyond a grade. And the institution broke right alongside them. The professor turned in his evidence, and the administration went silent until he took the story public. The old way of testing died, the school declined to defend its own standards, and nothing better replaced either one. That is destruction with no creation.
Now multiply those students by every person who was never taught how to ask for what they want. That is most of the world. So the edge never reaches 8.5 billion people. It stops with the small group who already know what they want, and they capture the gains. Everyone else falls further behind, and the anger that builds from that will be destructive without being creative. Creative destruction needs both halves. AI has automated the destruction. The creation still needs a person who can say what they want, and the evidence is clear that the institutions designed to get the rest of the world there are failing.
And here's the part I find remarkable. The market itself spent 78 years, from Shannon's paper to today, building the machine Hayek said could never exist. Billions of small decisions built it, no committee. So I'd push your closing question one step further. The question isn't whose machine. It's who will build the machine that gives agency to everyone and keeps the edge permanently in control, because that is what ensures creative destruction keeps moving humanity forward.
That's the trap in the curve. The 100 million users in two months is a market signal, and a strong one: the pull was so real that nobody needed advertising. But look at what's actually inside that number. A big share of the growth is enterprise FOMO, companies throwing budget at AI so they don't look left behind, and that money is now getting close scrutiny. The consumer side is bigger still, and Brown shows exactly what those consumers bought: a $20 a month answer machine. The small number of people who know how to use these tools get real leverage. Everyone else defaults to asking for answers, because that's all the tool invites them to do.
So the curve doesn't tell us the rest of the market gets absorbed, because adoption stalls all the time. It doesn't tell us the machine holds up when people use it as intended. And it doesn't tell us users are getting what they came for. The Brown students were inside that adoption number, and look what they got. A diffusion curve measures who has the tool. It says nothing about who gets creation out of it. Even a billion users is one eighth of the world, and if most of them use it the way those students did, the curve is measuring the spread of a counterfeit, not the spread of a capability. Creativity and innovation don't ride the adoption curve. They ride the capability curve, and that one stays flat until someone builds the machine that moves it.
Carter, we agree. Billions of people, each with their own AI, will beat any central planner. But that only works if each of those people knows what they want and most don't.
Your post on Brown is a good example. Students used AI to ace a take-home midterm, 40 perfect scores. When the professor moved the final in person, the average fell from 96 to 48, and some students turned in blank exams with their names signed at the top. They had the most powerful tool ever built and no idea what they wanted from it beyond a grade. And the institution broke right alongside them. The professor turned in his evidence, and the administration went silent until he took the story public. The old way of testing died, the school declined to defend its own standards, and nothing better replaced either one. That is destruction with no creation.
Now multiply those students by every person who was never taught how to ask for what they want. That is most of the world. So the edge never reaches 8.5 billion people. It stops with the small group who already know what they want, and they capture the gains. Everyone else falls further behind, and the anger that builds from that will be destructive without being creative. Creative destruction needs both halves. AI has automated the destruction. The creation still needs a person who can say what they want, and the evidence is clear that the institutions designed to get the rest of the world there are failing.
And here's the part I find remarkable. The market itself spent 78 years, from Shannon's paper to today, building the machine Hayek said could never exist. Billions of small decisions built it, no committee. So I'd push your closing question one step further. The question isn't whose machine. It's who will build the machine that gives agency to everyone and keeps the edge permanently in control, because that is what ensures creative destruction keeps moving humanity forward.
Isn't that the diffusion rate.
That's the trap in the curve. The 100 million users in two months is a market signal, and a strong one: the pull was so real that nobody needed advertising. But look at what's actually inside that number. A big share of the growth is enterprise FOMO, companies throwing budget at AI so they don't look left behind, and that money is now getting close scrutiny. The consumer side is bigger still, and Brown shows exactly what those consumers bought: a $20 a month answer machine. The small number of people who know how to use these tools get real leverage. Everyone else defaults to asking for answers, because that's all the tool invites them to do.
So the curve doesn't tell us the rest of the market gets absorbed, because adoption stalls all the time. It doesn't tell us the machine holds up when people use it as intended. And it doesn't tell us users are getting what they came for. The Brown students were inside that adoption number, and look what they got. A diffusion curve measures who has the tool. It says nothing about who gets creation out of it. Even a billion users is one eighth of the world, and if most of them use it the way those students did, the curve is measuring the spread of a counterfeit, not the spread of a capability. Creativity and innovation don't ride the adoption curve. They ride the capability curve, and that one stays flat until someone builds the machine that moves it.
I just published the full argument, and it opens with the Brown story: davidalpert770129.substack.com/p/the-blank-page-and-the-blank-box
Or AI does both, enabling the edges in open societies and autocracy in closed ones. Also, nitpick on the DJI lists … Texaco is now part of Chevron.
I think you are probably right