June 15, 2023

An API for Everything - Part 2

Perhaps having access to an API that allows us to programmatically interact with virtually all of the things we care about will cause us to care about new and different things.

There are loads of human experiences that can’t be communicated adequately with words. Maybe we’ll get used to expressing these things with something besides words that large language models, by definition, wouldn’t be able to comprehend.

Take music, for example. There are words that can be used to describe music, but none of them in any combination would give you the feeling of being in the mosh pit at an Iron Maiden concert with the Marshalls cranked to 11. It’s one of those “you just had to be there” types of things.

In other words...

Maybe the proliferation and cheapness of large language model artificial intelligence will collapse the scarcity of language-based interactions so dramatically that other kinds of non-verbal human interactions will become dramatically more valuable - e.g., musical, emotional, physical, sensual, etc.

It’s going to be a long time before an AI can fix your toilet or give you a back rub or smell like your first crush. But in the meantime, there will be lots of disruption in any area that creates value in the realm of words, thoughts, ideas, recommendations, advice, etc.

If this is the kind of realm you operate in, I hope you’re experimenting with AI.

The genie is out of the bottle.

Yours,

—J

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