My friend Khe has been working with hedge funds and Wall Street firms to help their teams get more out of LLMs (his weekly letter How To Future-Proof Your Career with AI is consistently practical. On a personal note I feel like Khe’s cadence is about 1-month ahead of my own LLM-discovery arc. I’m just getting started with Claude Code this week).
Khe’s is running an AI Accelerator program in October.
I feel compelled to volunteer that while I will host ads in Moontower this is not an ad. I asked Khe if I could tell my readers about this because I hear the same thing he hears from many people in finance and heck, even in my extended family: “Everyone talks about AI, but I still don’t know how to use it effectively in my day-to-day work. I feel like I’m missing out on something that could make me 10x more productive.”
Let’s talk about this a bit broadly.
I don’t consider myself a power user of LLMs compared to say devs or Khe who are building agents over their entire file systems (I’m not there YET, but Emi is giving me a tutorial soon!) but you can probably notice how much use I’m getting out of them in the work I have been sharing here.
I’m not comfortable saying it because it sounds like bragging, but I’ve had more people ask me how I’m able to produce “so much” especially this year and part of it is just the natural leverage embedded in these tools. I’m using them as tutors, research aids, sparring partners, summarizers, and the “connective tissue” of writing ideas not too mention all the vibe-code projects.
A few other examples:
- My 12-year-old and I are collaborating with Claude to prototype a physical game I want to publish.
- This week my 9-year-old is using ChatGPT in a loop to give it pictures that he draws, asks for feedback on how to improve the shading and lighting by words and example and then he goes back and tries to mimic it.
- I have a Claude project where the LLM knows all my guitar gear and I can ask it how I can replicate the sound of particular songs. It provides the signal chain and suggestions for what effects I should get to make my set-up more versatile.
- ChatGPT is helping not just with decorating but home maintenance crap. Well, while it did help me change the cartridge that blends the hot/cold in my sink faucet, it wasn’t until a simple Google search revealed that my problem was that my Delta 20 faucet batteries were dead. New house, new times. I never considered that a faucet takes AA batteries. I figured the LED & touch functions were powered by a plug.
While on the topic of AI, I’ll eagerly admit that it feels like every time I use it I’m training my replacement. I’m also rewarding companies that are so flush with funding that they can brazenly play the “ask for forgiveness, not for permission” game and account for IP lawsuits as COGS.
But I’m what Huxley warned of. The citizen who invites his colonization by embracing the products. I want certain things to exist. These tools lower the cost of making them. I suppose my revealed discount factor to the specter of being replaced is extremely high.
Something that might sound a bit weirder, which I’ve admit in a few private convos: I look forward to “replacing myself”. I make the stuff I do because I want it to exist but doesn’t to my satisfaction. If it did, I’d do something else.
I was just talking to a friend who has no background in robotics but is working with an engineering team at the intersection of AI + robotics on the business side. I felt kinda jealous. I probably get that feeling a few times a month. There is so much work that sounds fun that if I weren’t doing the things I prioritize now, it wouldn’t be hard to find something else to do. I wish I could copy myself. If everything on my current strand of thought were created, I could feel liberated to move on to something else. Be a beginner elsewhere.
Like if you’re a radiologist and you saw a path where technology could make radiologists unnecessary, would you root for it or would you protect your job? Of course, the necessity of making a living compels you to protect. I’m not judging that. The priority for anyone is survival. But if you removed the constraint, you’d likely conclude that there are many ways to use your humanity; why be attached to one that overlaps with a machine? The radiologists who “defect” and go train the machines are like the market-makers who tightened the spreads (the game theory bit towards the end of the art of paranoia applies far beyond trading).
Your own value will be maximized where the machine can’t compete yet. Protection is ultimately delaying your own growth unless you plan to have your career outrun adoption. That’s probably fine if you’re 55, but if you’re 40, it’s a tougher question. It’s impossible to hand-wave the constraint of making a living. But here’s food for thought (food that is probably not going to nourish anyone whose already mid-career or older but might timely for college-aged or 20-somethings):
Living below your means, or having cheap tastes (which is easier to do before lifestyle-creep moves in) is a valuable option. And what maximizes the value of an option?
Variance.
Look at the world. The internet is a volatility pump. Connectedness, the reduction of communication/info friction led to acceleration. Having a buffer makes you less fragile. More mobile. Closer to just-in-time adaptability to where opportunity is. Less protectionist. Less defensive. Less calcified.
As we learned from Wednesday’s making the most of your time on earth, everyone has different values. You may not value any of the things I’m referring to above*. Totally fine. One of the things I got from a Straussian reading of the Welch stuff is how so much of our disagreements come from different starting values. Given that the source of values is probably more random than anyone wants to acknowledge (birth lottery and who you happen to hang out with in formative years), we are really left with different guidebooks for everyone. The best I can hope for is my perspectives landed for some of you.
*I didn’t share it in that post but my top 4 values on the values bridge assessment are below. Belovedness is about the primacy of your partner relationship and family-centrism were high — it feels horoscopic, I personally think the exercise of doing the questions is better than the output. The “voice” and “non-sibi” explain the newsletter, I guess.
