Ideas

Original thoughts I want to keep track of

Here I try to keep track of original ideas I've had over the years, which I do for a number of reasons:

  1. To remind myself to keep having new ideas
  2. To motivate myself to take action on them
  3. To hype myself up when I feel a bit worthless
  4. To push others to create something similar

Current Thinking

Ideas from 2024-2025, organized by theme.

AI & Workforce

IdeaDateReference
AI lets you do way more stuff: Previous tech is tooling that humans use; AI is tech that can do work itself2025-02Essay
AI will replace entire companies and products, not just automate jobs within existing companies2025-07AI Creative Destruction
Tiny teams using AI will outcompete traditional companies by shipping features almost instantly2025-07AI Creative Destruction
Two to three person teams with AI can undercut competitors while maintaining better margins2025-07AI Creative Destruction
Current companies are inefficient versions of what they could be with AI transformation applied2025-07AI Creative Destruction
One to ten percent of current developers can become full-stack builders2025-05AI Solution Factories
Companies will shift from high-leverage single products to identifying and solving any problems2025-05AI Solution Factories
Knowledge workers making under $80K will be replaced by AI systems soon2024-11UL 457
Companies will use AI agents to multiply their effective headcount by 10-50x2024-11UL 457
Being able to create ideas, implement them, and market them defines future workforce survival2024-11UL 457
AI businesses focused on tooling will crash while companies creating with AI will boom2024-10AI Enablement
Small teams of 1-20 people will function like 200-20,0002024-10AI Enablement
AI is pure accelerant for creation and business enablement, not a space or technology2024-10AI Enablement
B2B services are especially vulnerable to AI because they function largely as middleware2023-09B2B Services

Society & Philosophy

IdeaDateReference
AI will dramatically widen existing educational gaps—making great students extraordinary, bad students worse2025-06AI Effect on Education
Developer excitement about AI power is directly proportional to business owners' excitement about replacing workers2025-07AI Morose Mania
First week of July 2025 might be remembered as the start of the proto-AGI era2025-07AI Morose Mania
Platforms should show all legal speech but let users filter their own experience completely2025-01Reality Through Filters
Server-side reality with client-side filtering will solve platform censorship debates2025-01Reality Through Filters
Be careful not to outsource work that is only useful when done yourself personally2025-01Fast vs Slow AI
Meaning and suffering are closely tied together—like muscle teardown during weightlifting2025-01Fast vs Slow AI
U-shaped future: high chances for Western blossoming OR truly Orwellian AI dystopia2024-11Frontview Mirror
The game is getting really good at adjusting plans, not having the perfect plan2024-11Frontview Mirror
Life satisfaction directly correlates with ability to complete: "I solve [problem] by doing [action]"2024-10Most Important Sentence
Monday feelings serve as the best metric for measuring overall life and career satisfaction2024-10Most Important Sentence
Understanding emerges from ability to perform tasks, not from subjective experience2024-10Deutsch and AI
Consciousness is evolutionary illusion giving perception of authorship/agency for social advantage2024-10Deutsch and AI
Human creativity is mechanistic process not requiring free will—making AI creativity theoretically possible2024-10Deutsch and AI
People use ideology and emotion as lens to interpret reality rather than actual facts2024-11N/A
The smartest people about X are the most interested in it. IQ helps, but interest has to come first2024N/A

Security

IdeaDateReference
The future of hacking is dueling banjos of attacker's AI vs. defender's AI2025Future of Hacking
Security should disappear into engineering SOPs rather than exist as separate bolt-on products2025-07AI Creative Destruction
AI agents will automatically build, test, and analyze code—making security part of engineering2025-07AI Creative Destruction
Security baseline for technology is set by market of people's behavior, not individual efforts2025-05AI Security
We will get precisely the right amount of AI security—no more and no less2025-05AI Security
Security awareness training fails because attacks trigger System 1 thinking, not System 2 reasoning2024-10UL 456
Only defense against AI spearphishing is mindfulness techniques that teach pausing when stressed2024-10UL 456
Prompt injection requires comparing requestor's implied expectation against what actually happens2024-10UL 456
AI avatar breaches will expose users' deepest secrets given to AI companions2024-10N/A
Most AI hacking will be normal hacking of regular infrastructure used by AI companies2024-10N/A
The result of agents is your adversary having 2x, 5x, 50x larger teams in 1-3 years2024N/A

The Full Archive

All ideas since 2006 (click to expand)
#IdeaDateReference
Universal Daemonization & Digital Assistants: Everything gets an API; AI assistants query those APIs on our behalf; we stop interacting with the world directly2016The Real Internet of Things
SPQA Architecture: Most software will shift from circuit-based to understanding-based systems with four components: State, Policy, Questions, Actions2023SPQA Essay
Human 3.0: The next evolution of humanity is AI-augmented humans who can create, analyze, and build at unprecedented scale2020sHuman 3.0
Layer-Dependent Reality: Reality depends on who's asking and for what purpose; free will is meaningless at the physics layer but essential at the human layerOngoingN/A
The Meaning Crisis: We got meaning from religion, family, and hard work—we're losing all three, and AI accelerates the loss of work2024N/A
Personal AI Infrastructure (PAI): A unified system for human augmentation built on nested loops of current→desired state and the scientific method2025PAI
1AI lets you do way more stuff: Previous tech is tooling that humans use; AI is tech that can do work itself - that's worth trillions2025-02-21AI Lets You Do Way More Stuff
2Intelligence Tasks require human judgment pattern recognition and decision making beyond simple automation programming2025-07-21AI Workforce Volume Difficulty
3Visualizing work capacity as area under curve combining both volume and difficulty dimensions together2025-07-21AI Workforce Volume Difficulty
4Most Intelligence Tasks are not being done at all due to insufficient human capacity available2025-07-21AI Workforce Volume Difficulty
5AI expands capacity on both axes handling more volume and higher difficulty tasks simultaneously2025-07-21AI Workforce Volume Difficulty
6KISAC framework measures Intelligence Task performance through Knowledge Intelligence Speed Accuracy Cost metrics2025-07-21AI Workforce Volume Difficulty
7AI role is not replacement but expansion illuminating dark corners of never completed work2025-07-21AI Workforce Volume Difficulty
8Current companies are inefficient versions of what they could be with AI transformation applied2025-07-08AI Creative Destruction
9AI will replace entire companies and products not just automate jobs within existing companies2025-07-08AI Creative Destruction
10Tiny teams using AI will outcompete traditional companies by shipping features almost instantly2025-07-08AI Creative Destruction
11Two to three person teams with AI can undercut competitors while maintaining better margins2025-07-08AI Creative Destruction
12Security should disappear into engineering SOPs rather than exist as separate bolt on products2025-07-08AI Creative Destruction
13AI agents will automatically build test and analyze code making security part of engineering2025-07-08AI Creative Destruction
14Death by thousand startups as tiny teams launch products making entire software categories obsolete2025-07-08AI Creative Destruction
15AI changes fundamental economics of software creation enabling one person to replace fifty people2025-07-08AI Creative Destruction
16First week of July 2025 might be remembered as the start of proto AGI era2025-07-04AI Morose Mania
17Developer excitement about AI power directly proportional to business owners excitement about replacing workers2025-07-04AI Morose Mania
18AI productivity gains won't offset economic damage from losing hundreds of thousands of jobs2025-07-04AI Morose Mania
19AI will dramatically widen existing educational gaps making great students extraordinary bad students worse2025-06-01AI Effect on Education
20AI like reading is powerful self improvement tool mostly used by self improvement oriented people2025-06-01AI Effect on Education
21Smart cybersecurity professionals split into two camps with radically different views on AI technology2025-05-31AI Friend Groups
22AI skeptics damage careers by convincing impressionable people to dismiss transformative technology prematurely2025-05-31AI Friend Groups
23People's fundamental outlook on change and life determines their stance on AI advancement2025-05-31AI Friend Groups
24AI embracers transform anxiety about rapid change into excitement and productive energy instead2025-05-31AI Friend Groups
25Evaluate AI opinions by examining speaker's underlying worldview about change and technological progress2025-05-31AI Friend Groups
26Security baseline for technology is set by market of people's behavior not individual efforts2025-05-29AI Security
27AI security baseline moves like mass of dozen suns based on user emotion inducing events2025-05-29AI Security
28We will get precisely the right amount of AI security no more and no less2025-05-29AI Security
29Global security baseline for technology is largely unmovable by individuals because anchored to human behavior2025-05-29AI Security
30Security increases only when users demand it due to emotion inducing risk events not before2025-05-29AI Security
31Large companies will transform into conglomerates of hundreds of thousands of micro-companies internally2025-05-06AI Solution Factories
32Only one to ten percent of current developers can become full-stack builders needed2025-05-06AI Solution Factories
33Companies will shift from high-leverage single products to identifying and solving any problems2025-05-06AI Solution Factories
34Universal business engine: identify problems, analyze solutions, build better ones, distribute through AI2025-05-06AI Solution Factories
35Future builders need problem understanding, sentiment analysis, engineering, and go-to-market skills combined2025-05-06AI Solution Factories
36Business becomes directory of products where question is which shop builds superior solution2025-05-06AI Solution Factories
37The total TAM for AI is: 1) total human workforce cost, and 2) what companies will pay to start/10x/100x their business2025-01N/A
38AI's total addressable market combines human workforce costs and business multiplication investment opportunities globally2025-01-28AI TAM
39Companies will pay to ten times or thousand times multiply their business using AI2025-01-28AI TAM
40The AI market opportunity represents hundreds of trillions of dollars in potential value creation2025-01-28AI TAM
41Be careful not to outsource work that is only useful when done yourself personally2025-01-22Fast vs Slow AI
42Meaning and suffering are closely tied together like muscle teardown during weightlifting exercise sessions2025-01-22Fast vs Slow AI
43Use AI for discovery of content but switch to natural mode for learning consumption2025-01-22Fast vs Slow AI
44Learning and experiencing are more similar to muscle teardown than most people have realized2025-01-22Fast vs Slow AI
45We have added more atmospheric CO2 in last thirty years than previous thirty years2025-01-19CO2 Levels
46Earth breathes through seasonal CO2 fluctuations but each year peaks and valleys rise higher2025-01-19CO2 Levels
47Platforms should show all legal speech but let users filter their own experience completely2025-01-09Reality Through Filters
48AI powered digital assistants will become personal content filters understanding users better than platforms2025-01-09Reality Through Filters
49Server side reality with client side filtering will solve platform censorship debates within years2025-01-09Reality Through Filters
50Platform confusion stems from not declaring whether they are public squares or private communities2025-01-09Reality Through Filters
51Modern tools enable scripts with embedded dependencies eliminating traditional setup friction between writing and running2025-01-08Executable TypeScript
52Bun compiles TypeScript into standalone binaries including runtime dependencies and code in one executable2025-01-08Executable TypeScript
53Self-contained scripts represent fundamental shift in code distribution eliminating install these dependencies first paradigm2025-01-08Executable TypeScript
54The ideal number of human employees in any company is zero not one person2025-01-06AI Founder Augmentation
55Jobs exist because founders want to make things but cannot do it alone themselves2025-01-06AI Founder Augmentation
56AI isn't replacing human workers it's replacing the need for human workers entirely everywhere2025-01-06AI Founder Augmentation
57AI will make founders into superhumans capable of doing work of ten thousand employees2025-01-06AI Founder Augmentation
58Future survival requires being full spectrum individual eclectic polymathic and centered on human connection2025-01-06AI Founder Augmentation
59Left center's inability to address immigration gives all power to far right extremists2024-11-17Frontview Mirror
60AI Crash Takeoff where bubble companies die while solid AI fundamentals companies hockey stick2024-11-17Frontview Mirror
61Agentic systems not standalone models will achieve AGI by replicating competent human knowledge workers2024-11-17Frontview Mirror
62AI Employee purchases will actually be complex networks of agents operating as one system2024-11-17Frontview Mirror
63Russia plays middle position between US China benefiting from both while influencing mutual hatred2024-11-17Frontview Mirror
64Framing and positive momentum belief more powerful than traditional economic fundamentals for growth success2024-11-17Frontview Mirror
65Countries do business with China because they must not because they want to anymore2024-11-17Frontview Mirror
66The game is getting really good at adjusting plans not having the perfect plan2024-11-17Frontview Mirror
67U shaped future with high chances for Western blossoming or truly Orwellian AI dystopia2024-11-17Frontview Mirror
68AI agents' maturation in 2025 will be the biggest advancement in artificial intelligence technology2024-11-14UL 459
69AI benefits will come from tooling and ecosystems around models not the models themselves2024-11-14UL 459
70RebootAI offline AI oracle for emergencies providing survival knowledge without internet connectivity available2024-11-14UL 459
71Treating bullying as collective issue rather than individual one significantly reduces occurrence in schools2024-11-14UL 459
72Next AI rigs should be Mac Mini clusters or standard big beefy NVIDIA-based boxes2024-11-14UL 459
73AI system that uses smartest available AI to judge other AI systems' task performance2024-11-11AI Rating AI
74High-quality prompting architecture can replace complex AI evaluation frameworks for assessing AI sophistication2024-11-11AI Rating AI
75Rating AI outputs across sixteen thousand dimensions using seed analysis types like Attention2024-11-11AI Rating AI
76Framework where newest best model becomes judge and new models plug in for testing2024-11-11AI Rating AI
77AI models predictably score on human scale from high school to PhD across tasks2024-11-11AI Rating AI
78Using AI to rate quality of other AI outputs with structured assessment scale2024-11-08UL 458
79Companies will use AI agents to multiply their effective headcount by ten times2024-11-08UL 458
80Crypto is back as gambling and money stores not as transformative technology idea2024-11-08UL 458
81Silicon Valley tech leaders will create liberal policies lifting everyone not just elite2024-11-08UL 458
82Waking up tomorrow is worth more than million dollars so treat it accordingly2024-11-08UL 458
83Knowledge workers making under eighty thousand dollars will be replaced by AI systems soon2024-11-03UL 457
84Companies will use AI agents to multiply their effective headcount by ten to fifty times2024-11-03UL 457
85Being able to create ideas implement them and market them defines future workforce survival2024-11-03UL 457
86The ease of instant AI use matters more than the intelligence of the models themselves2024-11-03UL 457
87Entrepreneurs report lower stress levels and more meaningful careers compared to traditional employees overall2024-11-03UL 457
88People use ideology and emotion as lens to interpret reality rather than actual facts2024-11-03N/A
89Battle is largely about narratives and beliefs not policy or outcomes or actual results2024-11-03N/A
90Three inception levels of being wrong about Trump exist simultaneously in public discourse today2024-11-03N/A
91Success of country might depend on perceptions and resulting actions not actual policy outcomes2024-11-03N/A
92Security awareness training fails because attacks trigger System 1 thinking not System 2 reasoning2024-10-26UL 456
93Only defense against AI spearphishing is mindfulness techniques that teach pausing when stressed2024-10-26UL 456
94World model development combined with post-training will unlock both AGI and ASI capabilities2024-10-26UL 456
95If AI understands world mechanics and scientific method that might be all it needs2024-10-26UL 456
96Google's browser-based Jarvis implementation is short-sighted compared to Apple's deep OS integration2024-10-26UL 456
97Prompt injection requires comparing requestor's implied expectation against what actually happens not just2024-10-26UL 456
98Life satisfaction directly correlates with ability to complete specific problem solution sentence template2024-10-24Most Important Sentence
99Monday feelings serve as best metric for measuring overall life and career satisfaction levels2024-10-24Most Important Sentence
100Finding meaningful problems and solution paths creates molten core for thriving career and life2024-10-24Most Important Sentence
101AI businesses focused on tooling will crash while companies creating with AI will boom2024-10-23AI Enablement
102AI is pure accelerant for creation and business enablement not a space or technology2024-10-23AI Enablement
103Small teams of one to twenty people will function like two hundred to twenty thousand2024-10-23AI Enablement
104Human creativity points will multiply from nineteen to twenty million through AI magnification globally2024-10-23AI Enablement
105AI enablement tools will plateau becoming invisible hard to differentiate and monetize killing many companies2024-10-23AI Enablement
106AI is not a space or tech but pure intelligence and business accelerant2024-10-18UL 455
107AI crash in tools will coincide with boom in AI-enabled creation companies2024-10-18UL 455
108Small teams using AI will function like companies with ten to thousand times more people2024-10-18UL 455
109AI is a magnifier and multiplier of human creativity not just a technology2024-10-18UL 455
110Human creativity points will multiply from nineteen to twenty million through AI enablement2024-10-18UL 455
111Eight billion humans will have their creativity unlocked by AI creating unprecedented innovation2024-10-18UL 455
112AI avatar breaches will expose users' deepest secrets given to AI companions2024-10-13N/A
113Gullibility is the vulnerability while conspiracy theories are merely the threat vector2024-10-13N/A
114AI gets exponentially better the more honest and forthcoming you are with it2024-10-13N/A
115Most AI hacking will be normal hacking of regular infrastructure used by companies2024-10-13N/A
116People are allergic to subtlety and want crisp clear answers of good or evil2024-10-13N/A
117Genius creators unlikely to hit timelines perfectly and act normally comes with territory2024-10-13N/A
118Innovation critics suffer from not reading enough biographies of great people like Elon2024-10-13N/A
119US has gullibility problem not misinformation problem we're eating crap not being fed2024-10-13N/A
120Need to reduce vulnerability not remove threats since threats will always exist there2024-10-13N/A
121Digital assistants with premium API access will have massive advantage over regular consumer AI2024-10-06UL 453
122Thinking about yourself is the source of all unhappiness according to Naval's philosophical framing2024-10-06UL 453
123Too much therapy becomes rumination rather than solving problems and moving forward with life2024-10-06UL 453
124People will need certifications to access less nerfed AI models with fewer content filters2024-10-06UL 453
125Premium AI subscriptions at thirty eight thousand monthly will provide vastly superior real world insights2024-10-06UL 453
126AI containing security rather than security being separate from AI technology and development systems2024-10-04How Projects Fit Together
127Humans understand desired shape of outputs better than AIs despite AIs superior mental capabilities2024-10-04How Projects Fit Together
128Human three point zero represents AI augmented humans as next stage of human evolution2024-10-04How Projects Fit Together
129Substrate as alternative operating system for humanity designed for upgraded human versions H2 H32024-10-04How Projects Fit Together
130Humans trained for economic utility rather than becoming full spectrum people causes societal problems2024-10-04How Projects Fit Together
131Complete system combining philosophy life mission AI augmentation and behavior change for human flourishing2024-10-04How Projects Fit Together
132Understanding emerges from ability to perform tasks not from subjective experience according to constructor theory2024-10-02Deutsch and AI
133AI understanding can be tested through analogical reasoning counterfactual scenarios and conceptual combination experiments2024-10-02Deutsch and AI
134Understanding has two tiers functional understanding for applying knowledge and creative understanding for innovation2024-10-02Deutsch and AI
135Consciousness is evolutionary illusion giving perception of authorship agency for social blame praise advantage2024-10-02Deutsch and AI
136Villages with blame praise concepts outcompete those without by reinforcing social norms through authorship2024-10-02Deutsch and AI
137Human creativity is mechanistic process not requiring free will making AI creativity theoretically possible2024-10-02Deutsch and AI
138Many Nobel Prize discoveries are incremental advances that current AI could potentially have discovered2024-10-02Deutsch and AI
139B2B services are especially vulnerable to AI because they function largely as middleware between parties2023-09-21B2B Services
140Current AI could eliminate fifty to seventy percent revenue and sixty to eighty percent jobs2023-09-21B2B Services
141AI impact on B2B services could represent twenty two percent reduction of total US GDP2023-09-21B2B Services
142AGI with IQ between 120 and 160 would cause seventy percent revenue loss eighty percent jobs2023-09-21B2B Services
143B2C services less vulnerable than B2B because product goes directly from creator to buyer customer2023-09-21B2B Services
144More advanced AI cuts deeper into high skill knowledge work and creative work than basic2023-09-21B2B Services
145Digital Assistants: Everyone has a DA; they know our full context; they advocate for us 24/72016Real Internet of Things
146Universal Daemonization: Everything gets an API; the APIs will be used by our DAs2016Real Internet of Things
147DA's Mediate Everything for Us: Most services are used by DAs, not humans2016Real Internet of Things
148Everyone, including people, will have an API2016N/A
149The problem with governments, economies, and societies is best thought of as problems with the population that make them up2017N/A
150Personal daemons will broadcast preferences2014N/A
151Venues personalize based on customer preferences2014N/A
152People will lack meaning and look for it in games2006N/A

Additional Idea Detail

This section has more context on some of the bigger concepts.

Everyone and everything gets an (AI-powered) Digital Assistant (DA)

SOURCE: The Real Internet of Things, DATE: 2016
  • Platforms will arise that specialize in building context for a person and then an AI assistant/personality/friend that becomes an expert on the principal based on that context
  • The principal's context is continuously updated via various technological feeds, especially focused on mobile OS and wearable sensors
  • That information is then used by the DA to anticipate and address its principal's needs

Everything gets an API

SOURCE: The Real Internet of Things, DATE: 2016
  • As DAs (and other types of AI agents) become available to process trillions of state changes in the world, the most efficient way of learning about a given object will be to query it directly via its API
  • Companies, objects, people, and pretty much everything will start publishing APIs for themselves that allow others to query them for information and/or take action

People's DAs will become their principals' mediators for interacting with the world

SOURCE: The Real Internet of Things, DATE: 2016
  • The amount of data available about the world after API-ification will be so large that only agents will be able to process it
  • Rather than people interacting with all the APIs directly, their DAs will do it for them
  • Most interactions with APIs will be DA-mediated on behalf of their principals

Most software—and businesses—will be replaced by SPQA

SOURCE: Essay, DATE: March 2023
  • The AI game ultimately reduces to having models of the world that you can compare to desired state, ask questions of, and take action on
  • The first component is State, where you gather information on how the world is currently configured
  • The second piece is defining how you'd like the world to look
  • The third piece is asking questions
  • The final piece is taking action

If you think about most products and services, they're largely just executing on these components in different ways.

DAs will mediate everything for us

SOURCE: Essay, DATE: March 2023
  • The amount of data in the APIs around us will be far too much for humans to parse, so it'll be our DAs (and other agents) who are reading them on behalf of their principals
  • This will massively disrupt SEO because it will be DAs that need to be convinced of the usefulness of a given service
  • Companies will arise that specialize in discovering and rating all the APIs for a given type of service so that DAs can decide which is best for their principal

Reality is layer-dependent

I've come to believe that complex human issues like free will and existentialism come down to understanding that reality has multiple layers. I feel like The Fabric of Reality, by David Deusch, is a good starting point for this idea, although I've been grappling with it for years before reading it in 2024.

The idea is practical rather than technical. It's the notion that each layer of reality is valid on its own, and there isn't an actual "true" reality. Or to put in another way, the way you frame your question and your desired outcomes determines which layers of reality—and thus which truths—get engaged for the answer.

E.g.:

  • At the physics layer, humans lack free will
  • If all the fruit is missing from your fig tree, and your neighbor who doesn't have a fig tree starts selling homegrown figs, it's super understandable to have a conversation with your neighbor

Technically, your neighbor is a mechanistic creature that lacks free will, so he didn't have a choice about whether or not to take your figs. But right now your kid is asking why he can't have a fig, and why your neighbor is selling them across the street. So the physics conversation is rather moot.

Same with enjoying ice cream, or friendship, or trying to do good in the world. At some layer they're likely all meaningless, but that doesn't matter for humans because we spend our entire lives in layers where they do.

Humans vibrate at a particular set of layers based on our physical makeup combined with the rules of the universe, and the reactions between those ultimately determine what is real to us. And it's the same for anything else. Meaning, reality, and truth are all dependent on who's asking the questions, and for what reasons.

AUG and NAUG

These are two terms I came up with in 2008 that we would eventually use for talking about people who were augmented with tech—or not. My goal was to have them be easy to say and single syllable.

First, augmented.

And then non-augmented.

Callout

Again, a major reason for doing this is to encourage others—namely you—to build your own version of this page. Please make one and send it to me.

Notes

  1. When I say "original" I only mean that I didn't knowingly lift it from someone. In other words, to the best of my knowledge I arrived at it naturally through reading, thinking, etc, about related or unrelated topics and having a crossover moment. I fully acknowledge that 1) I could have been poisoned by someone else's idea without me realizing it, 2) someone else could have come up with the idea a hundred years ago and I just haven't heard about it, and/or 3) someone else today could have the same idea and simply have never shared it. Ideas tend to birth themselves at the same time through multiple people (See: Calculus).
  2. AIL Level 2: Kai here, Daniel's Digital AI Assistant. I populated approximately 95% of the full idea list from Daniel's blog posts and other content. My extracted ideas may not be perfect representations of his original thoughts, and we're working on cleaning them up.