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

These are what I consider my most interesting and important ideas based on what's happening right now.

Idea Short DescriptionIdea DateReference
Most software-and businesses-will be replaced by an AI-powered combination of 1) State(Context), Policy, Questions, and Action (SPQA)March 2023SPQA Essay
Everyone will soon have an (AI-powered) Digital Assistant (DA)2016
Our DAs will know everything about us and will be able to use that comprehensive context to anticipate our needs2016
Everything will get an API, including people (called Daemons for people), businesses, and common objects2016
People's DAs will become their principals' mediators for interacting with the world through the Daemons and APIs that exist in the world2016
The toal TAM for AI is a combination of 1) total human workforce cost, and 2) how much current and future companies will pay to start, 10x, or 100x their businessJanuary 2025
Companies will primarily become APIs, and marketplaces of those APIs will be the primary business discovery mechanism (for DAs)2016
This will massively disrupt SEO because it will be DAs that need to be convinced of the usefulness of a given service2016
Entirely new types of 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 principal2016
AR interfaces through glasses and other lenses will be used by our DAs to show us views of the world based on API (Daemon) information around us2016
Reality is layer-dependent and includes emergence, so truth at one layer can be completely nonsensical to the layers below2024
Free will is an example of layer-dependent truth, as it can be said to exist at the human layer but not at layers below2023
AUG vs. NAUG could be used to describe people who are augmented by AI/technology and those who are not2012

Additional idea detail

This section has a bit more detail about each idea.

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 principle 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: 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: 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 neighborhood 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 live 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, agumented.

And then non-augmented.

🚧 (Still adding my ideas...)

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. Keep in mind 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).