Tradeoffs

Innovation. I hate this word.

It used to be a word that danced with eureka. It was the word that described breakthroughs. The work done at places like SRI and Bell Labs. Work that impacted the world in demonstrable ways.

Of course, you would never know it by searching the internet. A sea of hustle culture bullshit. Endless articles laundering apps as innovation. Prosperity gospel blessed by HBR, INC, and the consulting class.

Content. LinkedIn detritus. The mating call of grifters. A garbage sea.

The co-option of the word can’t diminish a particular truth. A truth about people. About how ideas evolve. How we gain insights. How we transform them actual innovation.

Labor. In the doing is where we find our answers.

Labor isn’t simply performing a mechanized task. It's the small victories and failures brought together. It's infinite number of moments of learning. It's the subtle adjustments we make along the way. It’s the walls we hit. It’s the elation of discovery.

In that space is where innovation surfaces. That is where our wonderful, complex brains make intuitive leaps. It’s how the impossible becomes possible. It’s how we sent three men to the moon using a computer with only 72kb of ROM and 4kb of RAM.

But what happens when we trade that labor away?

That is the moment we are in right now. That is what is being asked of every man, woman, and god help us, child. Let the machine do the labor. Let the machine do the work of thinking.

On the surface, the tradeoff being asked seems obvious and easy. Let AI write your emails for you! I mean, who wants to write emails, right? Why not let the computer tell Janet and John once again where on the intranet they can find the form they are looking for? Who wants to do that tedious aspect of work?

It’s insidious as hell.

Yes, responding to emails can be a drag. But, what you are really giving away is thinking. Crafting an email requires mental labor. To take a moment to consider. To frame. To assemble context. To find understanding. To communicate. To do the most human of activities...

To think. Why would you want to give that away?

Every selling point of this technology is centered on trading the labor of thinking for compute. The theory is that you are gaining productivity in exchange. On its surface, that seems like a good deal for a Fortune 500. After all, they have bought into the idea that speed equals profits.

And you know what, this might be true. I haven’t seen a lick of data that proves it, but hey, it might be out there. Trading labor for compute might actually lead to greater productivity. It might get you more productive quickly.

The perfect American grift. Move fast and break things.

Just like the supplements industry.

Ever notice how the AI CEOs and venture capitalists who are backing them all sound like infomercial spokesmen pitching PEDs? This isn’t a coincidence. They are simply tapping into our core value...

Get whatever you can as fast as you can.

Fit, rich, big, small, sexy, whatever. We all want it fast and easy. A pill. A program. An app. As long as there is no work, we want it. Now.

AI has become the latest PED for business. Trading labor for compute gets code flying out the door. Agents take over running core operations, shrinking the workforce. In theory, companies get fit. Fast.

In practice, we have a long history of knowing how this ends. Walk into any second hand store and you will find a mountain of self-help books claiming. Each one claims to hold the secret to quickly turn your life around.

Lose weight fast and keep it off! Get Wolverine’s body in 90 days! Turn a thousand dollars into a million dollars in a year with this secret stock trading methods! Use the secrets of a famous tech CEO to change how your company finds success...

At this point, the business world might be the most susceptible to the get fit fast scams. Leaders are under endless pressure to move faster. To get results sooner. To ensure shareholders, not customers are happy.

CEOs are very ready to trade their cows for magic beans. They think they are trading labor for speed. They think they are buying intelligence. Buying innovation.

In reality, they are trading away their innovation for speed. Giving away competence, intelligence, and innovation in one package in exchange for undirected speed. Nothing more.

Not speed to market. Not speed to value. Simply speed to done.

The result of this might be the most costly waste of capital in human history. All because of the American obsession with speed over everything else. All because none of us are willing to risk missing the chance to be the one that might win big.