this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
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I think there's a reasonable, rational position somewhere between the ai hype cringelords on the one hand, and the egotistical humanists on the other who refuse to believe that ai could ever match human output. I think it's hard to look at what has happened over the past 5 years and have any confidence that ai will be constrained to some trivial, manageable ceiling.
I understand the skepticism people have around claims of the transformative power of ai. Some of those claims are just companies trumpeting their own products, and these breathless tech articles about how this or that tool is going to change everything, it's tiring. But I think that can numb us to the signs that something transformative and irrevocable is actually happening.
Even if we assume that current ai is at its limit of progress (it isn't), if an agent costs $10k/year and works 24 hours per day, there is a far greater tolerance for mistakes than a worker who costs $50k and wants vacations and benefits, and sleep. Gates makes this point, and I think it's strong.
Layoffs due to ai replacing human work are happening in the tech sector already, which I think is arguably a canary in the coal mine situation.