“Assume this is the worst AI you will ever use.” – Ethan Mollick, Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI
As I dive down the rabbit hole of EaaPL, I’ve spent my time thinking about how I would personally like this system to work. I really only have time to focus on this on the weekends, so I sit on my couch listening to audiobooks and dividing my thoughts between doodling in system architecture and weighing the ethics and morality of the Culture versus the new economy of the Star Trek universe (as you can tell, I am fun at parties). This is a pleasant enough way to spend my time, but this sort of ideation comes at a cost: time.
My ideas fall behind at a rate faster than they can be expressed, especially big ideas. This is a natural occurrence; from an objective standpoint, I am a single intelligence operating for 4–6 hours once a week. I am co-intelligent (whatever “intelligence” means), augmented by my own LLM chat system (model of the week), run on my own server. Don’t be impressed; it is really a hobby setup, mostly for messing around with different tech and blowing out the cobwebs of the workweek.
In the meantime, collectives of intelligence collaborate, implementing real-world solutions as a matter of business, pushing through the theoretical and on to the practical. When I read papers like Agent Flow, I must stop and consider the cost of my ideation. Have I wasted my time thinking about this?
I have spent my only real currency on this effort, and as a well-trained capitalist, I begin to think about my ROI here. Luckily, I can maximize my returns by considering what that time has bought. First off, entertainment and self-care have real value, and the exercise of the mind is probably worthwhile, at least poetically.
To realize the value of this kind of falling behind, I must convert my short-term gains into sustainable long-term investments—the kind you can rely on as age makes work less appealing and the mind and body are less able to provide labor. I need to spend time in such a way that I can say with confidence, I am the worst intelligence I will ever be.