Daniel Miessler's Blog, page 7

The Art Quality Tier List (AQTL)

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I think I finally figured out what art is. Took me decades.

Here’s my definition, which has two primary components:

Indirect expression of something that matters to humans.

So that’s two pieces:

Indirect expression

Of something that matters.

The indirect part is key. You can’t just clinically describe the scene of an accident like a forensic pathologist 1 . With art, you’re showing rather than telling. You’re presenting one thing, and what comes through is something else.

And the second piece is that whatever you’re trying to convey has to matter. To humans. To us. It needs to have valence. And the more it matters—and the deeper we feel it as the consumer of the art—the better.

So that’s the definition. As for the execution, I think three components cause us to move up in the tier list we see above.

The quality of the message

The quality of the expression

The authenticity of the exercise

The message is the thing being conveyed. Pain, happiness, existential dread, etc. And the more powerful, complex, or nuanced, that is—the better the art. Then there’s the execution of the transfer mechanism—so like the quality of the song, or painting, or whatever. Those are the two big ones.

And then there’s the authenticity. We humans often care about the story behind a piece of art because it adds (or detracts) from the meaning. For example, if you love a piece but find out it was made on a dare in 30 minutes to prove that one can create a painting without feeling anything, the emotional value of the piece goes to zero.

A quick note on AI art

This is instructive for looking at the pushback against AI art.

There’s a hidden assumption in art that the thing being communicated was actually being felt by the artist.

I think this explains why many are angry about AI art. As good as AI is right now, nobody's arguing that AI creating an image or video is feeling anything.2

So that's a fair point against AI art: It can’t be conveying emotion because no emotion is being experienced by the artist.

But I think there's another looser way to define art that’s also captured in the Tier list, which is on the receiving end. In other words, if the viewer of the art feels a thing, and that thing matters to them as a human, then I think we can still argue it's art.

It’s still indirect communication, and it still conveyed something that matters—it’s just not authentic. And that’s how we end up with the tier list.

An art enjoyment methodology

I love turning knowledge into methodology, so here’s my recommended approach for beginners looking to enjoy art.

Start by feeling the piece. No thinking. No analyzing. Just take it in and experience how it makes you feel. Let that go on for a while, preferably in silence.

Now that you have a sense of how it affected you, analyze the message you believe it’s trying to convey. Imagine what this person might have been feeling that drove them to create this.

Now that you have the message—or a possible message—analyze how it was transmitted to you. Think about the techniques used, and how they might have contributed to the impact.

If you’re with a friend, do this in silence for however long that takes to do 1-3, and then discuss their results of doing the same methodology.

As mentioned, I’m very much an art amateur, so I look forward to feedback from people who’ve thought about this for a long time. 3

1  It’s quite possible, obviously, to describe something artistically—which is why I used the word “clinically” here.

2  I suppose it’s possible for someone to feel something and then use AI to try to convey it, but the disconnect between the artist and the expression arguably detracts from the authenticity. I think this could change depending on implementation and over time as well.

3  Thanks to Kelly Small and Saša Zdjelar for their wisdom and contributions on this. Saša because he’s the first person I did this enjoyment methodology with, and Kelly because she’s my sister and an artist herself.

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UL NO. 449: China Hits US ISPs, NIST CSF 2.0, Russian Intel Attacks, Stagnant Companies...

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SECURITY | AI | MEANING :: Unsupervised Learning is a stream of original ideas, story analysis, tooling, and mental models designed to help humans lead successful and meaningful lives in a world full of AI .

Continue reading online to avoid the email cutoff… TOC

NOTES

SECURITY

AI / TECH

HUMANS

DISCOVERY

IDEAS

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

APHORISM OF THE WEEK

NOTES

Hey there!

Super happy that we’ve been adding way more content to the podcast—including shorter clips that cover one particular idea. Here’s a good example of a clip about hiring the best talent. LISTEN TO THE CLIP | SUBSCRIBE ON APPLE | SUBSCRIBE ON SPOTIFY | SUBSCRIBE WITH YOUR CLIENT

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This new keyboard I am using has the sexiest keypress sound and feel I’ve ever experienced. It’s called the Aula F75. I’ve had way more expensive keyboards (this one’s only like $70), but none have sounded and felt this good. Looked better? Maybe. But not felt better. MORE | TYPING SOUND

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I continue to be blown away by the idea of encapsulating what people think the biggest problem in the world is, using extract_primary_problem. It’s a really powerful way to see what people prioritize—or perhaps should prioritize? That’s the point; it’s just very illuminating. USE THE PATTERN

echo “victor frankl’s work” | fabric -sp extract_primary_problem

“The lack of meaning in life leads to suffering and existential despair.”

🤯

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My keynote at SANS went really well! Almost 30 minutes of questions afterwards! Was really fun seeing and talking to everyone. 🙏

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I’m experimenting with some micro art/fiction on X. EXAMPLE

—

Working on a ton of Flagship content right now.

Defining Human 3.0

A piece on Security / Asset Management / AI

How to Write Fiction Using AI

A number of others

Can’t wait to get these out!

(NOTE TO SELF: This is NOT a substitute for doing the work!)

—

The End of Work

My big, depressing, and optimistic theory for why it's so hard to find and keep a job that makes you happy

danielmiessler.com/p/real-problem-job-market

SECURITY

Chinese government-backed hackers have been infiltrating U.S. internet service providers to spy on users, according to private security researchers. The attacks are described as unusually aggressive and sophisticated, targeting at least two major providers with millions of customers, along with several smaller ones. MORE

Halliburton confirmed a cyberattack where intruders accessed and exfiltrated data, with the ransomware group RansomHub claiming responsibility. I really hope it’s financial vs. espionage-related. MORE

Predator spyware is back with new features that make it even harder to track. Its infrastructure has re-emerged in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola, and the latest updates further anonymize its operations. MORE

The latest version of the NIST CSF, CSF 2.0, introduces "Govern" as a new step and focuses on continuous improvement to adapt to emerging threats. Complementing CSF is the Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) framework, which enhances threat detection and mitigation by continuously monitoring and assessing threats. MORE

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Read Now

Maltese security researchers have been charged after discovering a flaw in the FreeHour app and reporting it for a bounty. Unlike many countries that protect good-faith researchers from prosecution, Malta lacks such laws, leading to their arrest and upcoming trial next year. MORE

The U.S. Space Force is gearing up for potential conflicts in space with countries like China and Russia. They’re focusing on developing capabilities to protect American satellites and other space assets. MORE

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Watch It Work

The U.S. is offering a $10 million reward for information on the Russian hacking group Cadet Blizzard, linked to the GRU's Unit 29155, which has been particularly focused on disrupting aid to Ukraine. They’ve been using tactics like deploying WhisperGate malware and exploiting vulnerabilities in Atlassian Confluence, Dahua Security, and Sophos' firewall. MORE

The NSA is launching a new podcast called "No Such Podcast," where they'll share stories about past missions, starting with their role in the takedown of Osama bin Laden. Love this. MORE

Evidently, a lot of people use the "I forgot my password" feature as a de facto login method. This is why it’s so important to think about system design and incentives when building UIs. MORE

A Starlink satellite dish was used on a US Navy ship for an illicit Wi-Fi network named "Stinky," which was used for streaming and civilian communication. The Navy demoted the senior enlisted leader responsible for being awesome. MORE

Continue reading online to avoid the email cutoff… AI / TECH

Apple released their September updates yesterday and they were decent. I am definitely getting a new watch, but I’m not sure if it’ll be a Black Ultra 2 or a new Series 10. I’ll decide when I see them on the morning of the 20th after camping. : ) I’m also getting the new Airpods 4 just because mine are glitching right now and there’s a chance that the version of the Airpods 2 Pro features I currently have have been updated in the Airpods 4. And if not, I’ll just return them and get a new pair of Pro 2’s. For the phone I’ll probably do the darkest grey/black 16 pro (not the max). Which are you getting?

Nvidia's RTX 50-series GPUs, including the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090, are expected to have their designs finalized this month, with a potential launch in late 2024 or early 2025. MORE

Nvidia's AI GPUs are cheaper to rent in China than in the U.S., with small Chinese providers offering 8-way Nvidia A100 servers at about $6 per hour compared to $10 in the U.S. This price difference is largely due to a robust resale market and smuggling, despite U.S. export restrictions. MORE

Trump is launching a crypto project, but there are concerns that 70% of tokens are being allocated to insiders—a figure Coindesk calls "unusually high." MORE

Ilya Sutskever's new AI startup, SSI Inc, has just raised a $1 billion seed fund, basically, to build safe superintelligence. A lot of people are seeing this as being paid to build safe ASI, but it’s really being paid to build ASI, safely. Big difference. MORE

Visa is set to launch a new account-to-account (A2A) payment service in Europe, allowing users to make direct bank transfers without using credit cards. MORE

Engineers from Cornell and Florence University have developed a biohybrid robot that uses electrical signals from a king trumpet mushroom to move and sense its environment. MORE

The 2024 Annual Work Trend Index from Microsoft and LinkedIn reveals a shift in employer preferences, with 71% of leaders favoring candidates with AI skills over those with industry experience. Despite this demand, only 25% of companies plan to offer AI training, leaving many workers to upskill independently. As AI continues to reshape the job market, professionals are advised to adapt quickly by learning AI tools to stay competitive. MORE

The Wall Street Journal is highlighting a trend where small startups are increasingly influencing the U.S. economy. These much smaller companies are leveraging technology and remote work to compete with larger firms. MORE

💡I’ve been thinking about this for the last few weeks, but I was going to state it more forcefully.

I think people are about to realize that most medium to large companies have become ineffective.

They lack vision and focus, there’s too much bureaucracy, and they have giant workforces that are hired for a worker-bee mentality, not for being exceptional or innovative.

This is another part of The End of Work I talked about recently, where much of the innovation in the world moves away from big companies and towards individuals and dynamic startups.

This is also what Marc Andreessen talked about in his conversation with Huberman.

Related to that (perhaps), Paul Graham's latest piece called Founder Mode looks at how bigger companies make the mistakes talked about above, and how it’s better if you stay in a more innovation-focused mindset. It’s a great read. MORE

Oakland Police are using Tesla's Sentry Mode footage to aid crime investigations by towing the vehicles when owners can't be found. MORE

Waymo is tackling the skepticism around its autonomous vehicles by launching a new safety hub filled with data and charts to prove their safety over human drivers. MORE

Joshua Austin's "A Manifesto for Radical Simplicity" argues for a streamlined approach to software delivery, ditching subjective metrics like story points in favor of focusing on real dependencies and outcomes. He emphasizes working on one task at a time, embracing change, and ensuring that software enhances rather than restricts human agency. MORE

Bluetooth 6.0 is here, and it's all about precision and security. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has introduced a feature called Channel Sounding, which uses phase-based ranging to achieve centimeter-level accuracy in tracking the distance between devices. MORE

Akara Etteh's phone was snatched in London, and despite tracking it with Find My iPhone, he watched it travel around the city before ending up in Shenzhen, China. MORE

HUMANS

Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to create over one million jobs in Africa, alongside $51 billion in financing for 30 infrastructure projects. MORE

💡I can’t stand seeing Africa become an extension of China. But it’s pretty hard for the West to even notice, given their history. The question is how long we’ll let that guilt be an obstacle to opposing China there.

A whole bunch of right-wing influencers received millions from Russia in return for promoting pro-Russian talking points. Hilarious to me since their whole narrative is to be skeptical and discerning. Except when it comes to obvious Russian propaganda. MORE

💡Here’s another way to think about it, from a guy who did some intel stuff in the Army.

Here are two probably unrelated phenomena.

1) We know for absolute certain that Russia is trying to use its significant propaganda capabilities to influence the right wing in the United States to be pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine.

2) The right-wing in the United States is now almost completely pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine.

Probably just a coincidence.

💡A brief political aside:

I already know I’m going to get hate mail about the point above because I’m a “crazy liberal”. Then I post lots of other stuff about the Far Left and their idiocy, and I get tons of comments about being “too far right”.

I ask you to consider another possibility: I’m actively considering each position from first principles. I’m not perfect, and I can be wrong, but I put a LOT of effort into having my own opinions that are not part of a tribe of pre-approved options.

Perhaps the best way to sum me up right now is that I am Liberal in my goals, and somewhat Conservative in my approach.

Meaning:

I want a planet full of lots of different colors and ethnicities of people—all thriving together. A secular society that encourages any religion but doesn’t allow any of them to infringe on government or the ideals listed here. Gender identity and private sexual behavior between consenting adults are all personal choices and nobody’s business. Basically, the freedom for everyone to strive to be the best versions of themselves that they can, and a society that sees that as simultaneously a matter of personal responsibility but also helps those on that path. So, free speech, the ability to offend people with difficult ideas, the concept of meritocracy, the emphasis on personal responsibility, etc.—but also the acknowledgment that some people and groups need help getting to the point where their personal responsibility can take root and help them thrive. And that it’s society’s responsibility to give that to them. In other words, if everyone had the same opportunity, I’d be fiercely all about the meritocracy. But not everyone has the same opportunity, so that’s the role of society, and charity, and kindness—to help them get to the place where their hard work can benefit them.

I see the Far Right AND the Far Left as being in opposition to these liberal ideals right now.

The Far Right because they want the wrong things. And the Far Left because they are so confused about how the world works that they’re causing more harm than good.

Anyway, that’s a short version of where I currently stand. Please refer to the above if you ever think I’m too left or right. : ) Also, consider making your own North Star paragraph like the above so you can answer similar questions about your positions.

North Star + First Principles is far better than picking a tribe and endorsing everything they say.

Sweden's health authority has issued new guidelines advising that children under two should have no screen time, while teenagers should be limited to three hours a day. Seems like a good start to me. MORE

A lot of people are starting to say (and supported by numerous studies) that exercise could be the most potent medical intervention we know of. MORE

David Brooks discusses Ted Gioia's essay on the decline of American culture, where art is overshadowed by entertainment, and now even entertainment is being consumed by distraction from platforms like TikTok and Instagram. MORE

A photographer is documenting the life and beauty of America's last old-growth forests, capturing the intricate ecosystems and the unique species that call these ancient woodlands home. MORE

The article explores the belief that there's a place for everyone, suggesting that every person has a unique purpose and value. It argues that our diverse traits and experiences create countless niches in society, yet many people struggle to find their fit due to globalization of attention, lack of guidance, and the misconception that fitting in should be effortless. MORE

Marco Giancotti argues that with millions of books available, only a select few—what he calls "Damned Good Books"—are truly life-changing. These are the books that transform you, offering new perspectives or knowledge that sticks with you and becomes part of your mental toolkit. He suggests being ruthless in selecting and discarding books to maximize the number of these transformative reads in your lifetime. MORE

Phoenix just hit 100 consecutive days of 100-degree heat, smashing the previous record of 76 days set in 1993. MORE

DISCOVERY

llm.sh — This is a bash wrapper around Python's mlx_whisper designed to utilize the GPU on a Mac for audio transcription. MORE

hnterm — Lets you browse Hacker News right from your terminal. MORE

DungeonDash — A command-line RPG where you dive into dungeons, battle enemies, and collect loot to level up and become the ultimate hero. Each dungeon offers unique challenges, from battling the Forest Guardian in the Enchanted Forest to facing the Magma Lord in the Volcanic Lair. MORE

The NSA's "National Cryptographic School Television Catalogue" from 1991 has surfaced, listing around 600 training videos on COMSEC and SIGINT. MORE

IDEAS

Here’s an extraordinarily simple template you can use to orient your life.

—

I believe one of the biggest issues in the world is $PROBLEM.

Which I am looking to solve using $STRATEGY.

That is why I am doing these $PROJECTS.

And I’m measuring my success using $METRICS.

— ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟ ᴍɪᴇssʟᴇʀ ⚙️ (@DanielMiessler)
5:07 PM • Sep 7, 2024

The more I think about it, the more I think a major career for creators going forward will be building entire realities for people to live inside of.

So think post-AG/SI and post UBI, and where games are extraordinarily immersive.

I think there will be a huge market for… x.com/i/web/status/1…

— ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟ ᴍɪᴇssʟᴇʀ ⚙️ (@DanielMiessler)
8:13 PM • Sep 4, 2024

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

I’ve been a bit obsessed with problem definition lately, so here’s my recommendation for the week.

Get really good at articulating and prioritizing your problems.

Like, write them out in vast detail. Make yourself an expert in them. It takes away their power, kind of like staring directly at anger when meditating.

This also happens to be the key to brilliant AI prompting. It’s an extension of know thyself.

APHORISM OF THE WEEK

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UL NO. 448: TSA SQLi, NYT Github, NK RPM, NVIDIA Mystery...

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SECURITY | AI | MEANING :: Unsupervised Learning is a stream of original ideas, story analysis, tooling, and mental models designed to help humans lead successful and meaningful lives in a world full of AI .

Continue reading online to avoid the email cutoff… TOC

NOTES

MY WORK

SECURITY

AI / TECH

HUMANS

DISCOVERY

IDEAS

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

APHORISM OF THE WEEK

NOTES

Hey there!

Ok, few quick things…

🎙️➡️Please resubscribe to the podcast. The podcast URL is updated and there’s a lot more content now each week! RESUBSCRIBE WITH YOUR FAVORITE CLIENT

My new favorite Fabric Pattern is one I just made called extract_primary_problem. It takes a text input, or a body of work, and gives a single sentence summarizing what that thinker believes the biggest problem in the world. This one ran on this article.

THE PATTERN

From If Your World Isn’t Enchanted, You’re Not Paying Attention

I’m absolutely blown away that I can now take ANYTHING and send it in here, like Tolstoy, the Unabomber, Dr. Ruth—whoever! And it will encapsulate their work into a problem that needs to be solved. Which we can then put into Substrate.

My other recent favorite is create_story_explanation, which explains a really difficult piece of content, or body of work, in a flowing story style that’s much easier to follow. THE PATTERN

MY WORK

We've Been Lied To About Work

My big, depressing, and optimistic theory for why it's so hard to find and keep a job that makes you happy.

danielmiessler.com/p/real-problem-job-market

SECURITY

Researchers have discovered a SQL injection vulnerability in a critical air transport security system that could let unauthorized individuals bypass TSA security checks and access aircraft cockpits. MORE

The New York Times has revealed a significant breach involving GitHub tokens. Attackers exploited these tokens to gain unauthorized access to various repositories, potentially compromising sensitive data. MORE

Researchers from OpenAI, Microsoft, MIT, and Harvard have proposed "personhood credentials" to verify real humans online without revealing their identities. This system would require physical verification at trusted locations and use zero-knowledge proofs to confirm authenticity online. MORE

💡Really interesting project. So you have to validate who you are with a real address and such, but ZKP would protect that data during operations.

I love it, but we have to know the backend database will get hacked at some point too. Not sure how bad that would be relative to today, though, so probably still an upgrade.

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Faster vendor security reviews

Complete (and automated) employee offboarding

nudgesecurity.com/case-study/stravito

Read the Case Study

Recorded Future has announced a new integration with Google Security Operations, enhancing both SIEM and SOAR components. This integration aims to drive greater automation in threat detection and response, enabling security teams to manage more threats efficiently and focus on strategic decision-making. MORE

North Korean hackers are back to targeting the npm code repository with malicious packages. Phylum, a cybersecurity firm, has identified renewed activity from groups like Contagious Interview and Moonstone Sleet, who are using npm to spread malware. MORE

US Army Special Forces showed their hacking skills during the Swift Response 24 military exercises in Sweden. They used a remote access device to hack into a building's Wi-Fi, disable security systems, and then stormed the building, leaving behind signal-jamming equipment and a laptop playing Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." MORE

Chinese companies are planning to launch over 15,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites, which Mercedes Page from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute warns could enable countries using Chinese broadband services to control information flow, monitor user activity, and even shut down the internet during unrest. MORE

Las Vegas police are pushing back against a new NFL policy requiring officers working Raiders games to provide photos for facial recognition. The police union is concerned about the potential misuse of biometric data and the risk of officers being targeted. MORE

Continue reading online to avoid the email cutoff… AI / TECH

Google has announced new variants of its Gemini 1.5 model, including the smaller Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B, an improved Gemini 1.5 Flash, and a stronger Gemini 1.5 Pro. OpenAI keeps making everyone weight (sorry) for their new model, or half-model, which appears to be something called Orion that uses their new Strawberry technology. MORE

California's AI regulation bill, SB 1047, has passed the state Senate with a 29-9 vote and is now heading to Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk. It’s a set of rules saying companies making models of a certain size must have certain safety measures in place. MORE

OpenAI is reportedly in talks to raise a new funding round at a valuation exceeding $100 billion, led by Thrive Capital, with Microsoft also expected to participate. NVIDIA and Apple have also been rumored. MORE

OpenAI has enhanced its Assistants API, making it easier for developers to fine-tune how AI assistants handle file searches. The new controls allow developers to adjust how agents select information and inspect search results, improving response accuracy. MORE

💡This is a much-needed upgrade. The features and ease-of-use for a RAG system is the difference between popularity and obscurity.

Companies like JPMorgan and Walmart are shifting from restricting generative AI tools like ChatGPT to developing their own internal AI assistants. Basically, they can’t pass it up, but also can’t risk using the cloud versions. MORE

Cisco is acquiring Robust Intelligence, a company that secures AI applications. I’m not close to the details, but from Cisco this feels desperate to me. Like, “We know we’re screwed, let’s do something AI before it’s too late.” MORE

Plaud.AI's new NotePin is a wearable version of its previous credit card form factor. I have one on order. MORE

Amazon is set to release a new version of its Alexa voice assistant in October, and it will be powered by Anthropic’s Claude AI models. MORE

Nearly half of Nvidia's revenue comes from just four mystery customers, each spending over $3 billion on AI chips like the H200. This heavy reliance on a few major clients raises concerns about the sustainability of Nvidia's rapid growth. Well more than that I’m just really curious who they are, and I’m surprised it’s not easier to find out. MORE

AnandTech is shutting down after 27 years of covering computing hardware. Really sad. They said Tom’s Hardware will carry their torch. MORE

China's 'Wukong' game just sold 10 million copies in three days. This is a massive hit and shows the growing influence of Chinese game developers in the global market. MORE

Huawei posted record profits in the first half of 2024, hitting $7.7 billion in net profit despite ongoing U.S. sanctions. Their revenue surged by 34.3% year-on-year to CNY 417.5 billion, driven mainly by a revival in their consumer business and rapid growth in Huawei Cloud. Imagine what they’d have done without the US headwinds. MORE

A woman in California used an Apple AirTag to track down her stolen mail, leading to the arrest of two suspects in Santa Maria. The suspects, Virginia Franchessca Lara and Donald Ashton Terry, were found with mail addressed to over a dozen people and are facing multiple felony charges. MORE

HUMANS

Anarchy in Sudan has led to the worst famine the world has seen in 40 years. The chaos has disrupted food supplies and aid, leaving millions on the brink of starvation. MORE

Nearly half of NYC bus riders skip paying the fare, causing significant revenue loss for the MTA, which is already under financial strain. 48% actually. Half? Wow. MORE

Researchers at the University of Kentucky have found that long COVID patients show brain changes similar to those seen in Alzheimer's disease. The study, published in Alzheimer's & Dementia, highlights shared issues like neuroinflammation and abnormal brain activity, suggesting common underlying mechanisms. MORE

Scientists have discovered that the interaction between two molecules, PKMzeta and KIBRA, is crucial for maintaining long-term memories. Blocking this interaction disrupts memory storage, highlighting the importance of their continual interaction rather than the molecules themselves. MORE

Ozempic, a drug for Type 2 diabetes and obesity, might also slow aging, according to new studies. Researchers found it could treat illnesses like heart failure, arthritis, Alzheimer's, and cancer, and even reduce death rates from cardiovascular issues and Covid-19. MORE

💡All this Ozempic news of it addressing more and more issues feels like it’s hitting something extremely fundamental, like inflammation—which has long been pointed at as a meta-cause or meta-symptom in lots of other diseases. I’m not saying it’s actually inflammation, just that it seems to be affecting something fundamental.

I mean, could that just be being thinner and having less visceral fat? Curious if any of you experts have opinions.

A CIA deep-cover operative, known as "Anthony Lagunas," spent years infiltrating Islamist extremist groups, even reaching Al Qaeda's broader network. Tragically, the psychological toll of his mission led to his death in 2016, raising questions about how the CIA supports its operatives' mental health. MORE

More people are going "no contact" with their parents, driven by a mix of personal growth and unresolved conflicts. MORE

DISCOVERY

wush — wush is a command line tool for transferring files and opening shells over a peer-to-peer Wireguard connection. It eliminates the need for relay servers for authentication, using Wireguard for secure and fast connections. The tool leverages Tailscale's tsnet package and public DERP relays, but no Tailscale account is required. MORE

firecrawl — Crawl sites using Claude or GPT and turn the output into LLM-ready Markdown. MORE

history4feed — Dogesec developed an open-source tool that creates a complete historical archive of full-text posts from any RSS or ATOM feed. The tool uses the Wayback Machine and readability-lxml to scrape and clean up blog content, making it easier for researchers to access comprehensive cyber threat intelligence. MORE

The Most Dangerous Email I’ve Ever Sent MORE

Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Hired? — A Hacker News thread for people looking for work. MORE

My buddy Clint Gibler did an EPIC post summarizing every AI talk from Blackhat and DEFCON 2024. MORE

Using GPT-4o for Web Scraping MORE

Three questions candidates can ask to invert the power dynamic in technical interviews. MORE

The Hatch Restore 2 is a smart alarm clock designed to mimic sunrises and sunsets to help you wake up more naturally. I’m close to getting one, but I’m stopped by a simple fact: I get natural light in my windows in my bedroom when the….um…..sun, comes up. But I wear an eye mask to sleep. So I feel like this would be the worst kind of over-engineering. Still kind of want one. MORE

IDEAS

Beware of Commodified Incuriosity
This piece looks at the concept of "commodified incuriosity," where the act of researching and thinking is replaced by a focus on efficiency and productivity. I think it’s a great way to look at things, and a reason to be cautious with the overuse of something like extract_wisdom. Basically, a big part of learning something is struggling with it. This is why AI tooling focused on learning should be used—in my current opinion—to help you find things to slow read. And then you think about it. And then you can use something like extract_wisdom to help you make sure you don’t miss things in notes, etc. But don’t think that anything other than future learning implants can substitute for the hard work of actual thinking and processing. MORE

Depression as a Hand on a Stove
This argument suggests that instead of trying to eliminate depression, we should see it as a signal to make life changes. I think that’s absolutely true, but there are some cases where it’s pure chemistry out of whack. And I don’t know the difference between those. MORE

Attention → Enchantment
The piece argues that being enchanted by the world comes from learning to pay attention to it. I feel like learning to meditate (which is really just paying attention in my Sam Harris-based school), combined with music festivals, I’ve learned to truly appreciate small things in daily life. It’s made me a very happy person. I really feel like it’s a cheat to be able to extract this much joy from your neighbors, and seeing people going for a walk with their little kid, or hearing distant children playing. This also relates to framing, but the attention piece is key. MORE

Rarity and Beauty
I often wonder how much of beauty is just rarity. There are lots of seagulls at the lake I visit often. I barely notice them, by default. But I actively try to look at them sometimes as if they’re rare. To trick my mind into noticing their beauty. Ralph Waldo Emmerson has a quote, “If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years, how man would marvel and stare.” That’s really it, and I often think about how much beauty we have in our lives that we ignore because it’s either “common” or “omnipresent”. Or maybe those are the same in this context. I feel like the Stoics had it figured out when they taught the exercise of imagining your life without certain things. I try to do this, and it does help me appreciate them.

Two Bad Choices in November (Political, skip if you want)
I’ve heard for decades that “this election is between two bad choices”. I don’t know when people didn’t say that. I suppose maybe Ronald Reagan and Obama? Anyway, I really feel it this year. Personally. I cannot shake the feeling that Kamala is just a really bad candidate. Like, really bad. Like, vapid. And I see electing her as an extremely dangerous extension of the Far Left. The only thing I see as far worse, is Trump V2. Trump is, in my opinion, an actual wannabe dictator, and his fans are actually looking for one. Scares the crap out of me. What’s interesting though, is how different the dangers are. I think Kamala will further deteriorate the country through weakness, failure to address real problems, and harmfully addressing fake problems. And Trump will cause harm by creating chaos, disorder, and making the entire American system more cynical than it already is. A lot of people on the right think chaos is good, “cuz we need a shakeup”. Nah. not like this. Plus, the world will turn against us again, just like the first time. It’s just bad. But he will also do some good, just as Kamala will. It’s a mix, and a mess. I’m starting to think in terms of my recommendation of the week this week. Like my frustration is too much, and I feel helpless to assist. How about you?

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

Here’s a frame to try on: You become what you pay attention to.

It’s election year in a few places, including the US. The world is on fire. Politics are a mess everywhere. And it seems like the very fabric of Steven Pinker’s last couple of books has completely unraveled.

But maybe we have an option other than staring directly into the toilet. Maybe all the beauty in the world is still there. And maybe we can focus on that instead. Or at the very least—not on the toilet.

I’m not saying to be cowardly. If you’re one of the few people who can actually change lots of minds and help the world in some way, maybe you should serve time in the toilet that is our current situation. But that’s probably not the case. Most of us won’t be missed on those front lines.

So maybe instead we can use these few months to make a list of best poetry books. Or start a D&D campaign. Or to learn to play piano. Maybe we can focus our attention on the great stuff in the world that we always said we’d look at “later”.

Now is a pretty good time to do that. It’s a good time to fill our attention with that instead of the ugliness in the world. So we can become that goodness for someone else.

APHORISM OF THE WEEK

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UL NO. 447: Sam Curry on Bug Bounty Careers, Slack Data Exfil, The Work Lie

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SECURITY | AI | MEANING :: Unsupervised Learning is a stream of original ideas, story analysis, tooling, and mental models designed to help humans lead successful and meaningful lives in a world full of AI .

Continue reading online to avoid the email cutoff… TOC

NOTES

MY WORK

SECURITY

AI / TECH

HUMANS

IDEAS

DISCOVERY

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

APHORISM OF THE WEEK

NOTES

Ok, tons of content this week—super excited for this episode!

Going all-text this time—callback to old-school

Upcoming Speaking: Snyk’s conference in October, Cyberstorm in Switzerland in October, BlackHat in Rihyad in November

The one AI tool you should be trying out from the last couple of weeks is CursorAI. Lots of people are switching to it from Copilot. The big feature seems to be an editor that understands your full codebase.

Ok, let’s go…

MY WORK

My new essay on why layoffs, hiring, the job market, and work in general just sucks right now. One of my top 20 essays ever. READ IT

The new way I explain AI—and specifically LLMs—to people. READ IT

SECURITY

CrowdStrike's 2024 Threat Hunting Report reveals that North Korean operatives, posing as job applicants, have infiltrated over 100 U.S.-based companies in sectors like aerospace, defense, retail, and tech. Not much coverage of Blue Friday. MORE

State-linked Chinese entities are using cloud services from Amazon and its rivals to access advanced U.S. chips and AI capabilities they can't get otherwise. MORE

Cisco has patched multiple vulnerabilities, including a high-severity bug (CVE-2024-20375) in its Unified Communications Manager products. This flaw, reported by the NSA, affects SIP call processing and can be exploited remotely to cause a denial-of-service condition. MORE

Sponsor

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ThreatLocker’s free report audits what is occurring in your environment, including:

Information about executables, scripts, and libraries.

Files that have been accessed, changed, or deleted.

All network activity, including source and destination IP addresses, port numbers, users, and processes.

Identify and prevent installed software from communicating with entities in Russia, China, or other threat actors.

threatlocker.com/pages/software-audit

Get Your Free Software Report

Two U.S. lawmakers are urging the Commerce Department to investigate cybersecurity risks associated with TP-Link routers, citing vulnerabilities and potential data sharing with the Chinese government. MORE

Quarkslab found a major backdoor in RFID cards made by Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics, one of China's top chip manufacturers. This backdoor allows for the instant cloning of contactless smart cards used globally to open office doors and hotel rooms. MORE

The AI Risk Repository now lists over 700 potential risks that advanced AI systems could pose, making it the most comprehensive source for understanding AI-related issues. MORE

Sponsor

13 Cybersecurity Tools. One Platform. Built for IT Teams

There are thousands of cybersecurity point solutions. Many of them are good—but managing more than a dozen tools, disparate reports, invoices, trainings, etc. is challenging for small IT teams.

We’ve built a platform that does assessments, testing, awareness training, and 24/7/365 managed security all in a single pane of glass. Because every company deserves robust cybersecurity.

 defendify.com

Book A Demo

Researchers found a way to exfiltrate data from Slack's AI by using indirect prompt injection. MORE

The U.S. Navy is rolling out Starlink on its warships to provide high-speed, reliable internet connections, significantly improving operational capabilities and crew morale. MORE

Continue reading online to avoid the email cutoff… AI / TECH

Anthropic has published the system prompts for its latest AI models, including Claude 3 Opus, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Claude 3.5 Haiku. MORE

AGIBOT—a Chinese company—just unveiled a fleet of five advanced humanoid robots to compete directly with Tesla’s Optimus bot. These models, including the flagship Yuanzheng A2, are designed for tasks ranging from household chores to industrial operations and will start shipping by the end of 2024. I’ll be waiting for an American option. MORE

💡I am anti-Chinese-imports for both robotaxis and humanoid robots. The market is too big, China moves too fast, and we need to give American companies (Elon) time to compete.

I don’t like this take. I don’t like slowing pressure from the outside, and if it were India, or Ireland I’d be ok with applying that pressure. But not China. They’re too obviously a malicious actor to allow them to dominate these new markets.

Speaking of that, Tesla is hiring people to train its Optimus humanoid robot by wearing motion capture suits and mimicking actions it will perform. The job, listed as “Data Collection Operator,” pays up to $48 per hour and involves walking for over seven hours a day while carrying up to 30 pounds and wearing a VR headset. MORE

Waymo is looking to launch a subscription service called "Waymo Teen" that would allow teenagers to hail robotaxis solo, with prices ranging from $150 to $250 per month for up to 16 rides. MORE

An AI scientist developed by the University of British Columbia, Oxford, and Sakana AI is creating its own machine learning experiments and running them autonomously. This is where most innovation will come from AI. Not just in implementing tasks, but in doing new research. I talked about it here. MORE

Victor Miller, a mayoral candidate in Wyoming’s capital city, has vowed to let his customized ChatGPT named Vic (Virtual Integrated Citizen) help run the local government if elected. MORE

💡I’m working on how to articulate a political platform for any level of office using Substrate.

You basically define exactly what you want to do, and it branches out with all the Problems, Strategies, KPIs, etc., all in a single platform file that people’s AIs can evaluate and compare to their own beliefs and goals.

I think this is where leadership is heading. Transparent descriptions of vision, strategy, and outcome measurement.

Sean Ammirati, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, noticed a massive up-leveling of progress in his entrepreneurship class this year thanks to generative AI tools like ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and FlowiseAI. Students used these tools for marketing, coding, product development, and recruiting early customers, resulting in venture capitalists flocking to the campus. MORE

💡This is what I’ve been talking about with AI Augmentation. If you were competing with a 95/100 person before, because they went to CMU—well, now you’re competing with a 130/100 because they went to CMU AND they use AI for everything.

—

I read better articles because of AI

Therefore I get better ideas because of AI

Therefore I build better stuff because of AI

Etc.

And I do this all faster than was possible before

Upgrade or lose. Those are your options.

GM is cutting over 1,000 software engineers to streamline its software and services organization. Streamlining by cutting out 1,000 devs? The way I read this is “Start from scratch and only hire A’s from now on.” See: all of my other posts about companies only wanting Killer Cult Members from now on. MORE

Meta is using AI to streamline system reliability investigations with a new root cause analysis system. This system combines heuristic-based retrieval and large language model (LLM)-based ranking, achieving 42% accuracy in identifying root causes at the investigation's start. MORE

AI companies are shifting focus from creating god-like AI to building practical products. Gasp! This isn’t a bubble-pop; it’s just natural maturity of a thing that came out 13 minutes ago. People are still figuring this stuff out, and it’s still day 1 in terms of AI capabilities. MORE

Canada is slapping a 100% import tariff on China-made electric vehicles starting October 1, following similar moves by the US and EU. MORE

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicts rapid advancements in AI, with the potential to create significant apps like TikTok competitors in minutes within the next few years. MORE

Anthropic Claude 3.5 can now create iCalendar files from images, and Greg's Ramblings shows how you can use this feature to generate calendar entries just by snapping a photo of a schedule or event flyer. MORE

AWS CEO Adam Selipsky predicts that within the next 24 months, most developers might not be coding anymore due to AI advancements. He emphasizes that the real skill will shift towards innovation and understanding customer needs rather than writing code. MORE

Chinese companies have ramped up their imports of chip production equipment, spending nearly $26 billion in the first seven months of the year. They need to equip 18 new fabs expected to start operations in 2024 and are seriously worried about export controls. MORE

HUMANS

Cisco is laying off 7% of its workforce, which is around 5,900 employees, as it pivots towards AI and cybersecurity. The company is investing $1 billion in tech startups like Cohere, Mistral, and Scale, and has partnered with Nvidia to develop AI infrastructure. MORE

McKinsey's new study reveals that business leaders are missing the mark on why employees are quitting. They say companies are focusing on transactional perks like compensation and flexibility, but employees are actually seeking meaning, belonging, holistic care, and appreciation at work. Couldn’t have been better timed with this week’s Work essay. MORE

Twenty-four brain samples collected in early 2024 measured on average about 0.5% plastic by weight. MORE

Gallup has released its 2023 Global Emotions report, which measures the world's emotional temperature through the Positive Experience Index and Negative Experience Index. The data comes from surveys conducted in 142 countries, using a mix of telephone, face-to-face, and some web surveys, with about 1,000 respondents per country. MORE

💡Exceedingly cool research and data and visualizations! MORE

Nonsmokers who avoided the sun had a life expectancy similar to smokers who got the most sun, according to a study of nearly 30,000 Swedish women over 20 years. The research suggests that avoiding the sun is as risky as smoking. This is the type of thing that needs way more research, but damn. More sun for me, regardless. It’s a massive boost for me in the morning. MORE

Stanford researchers have found that blocking the kynurenine pathway in the brain can reverse the metabolic disruptions caused by Alzheimer’s disease, improving cognitive functions in mice. I’m starting to feel like we’re about to make massive progress on both Alzheimer’s and Cancer, and it’s making me want to invest in 2-3 of the top drug companies. MORE

Using air purifiers in two Helsinki daycare centers reduced kids' sick days by about 30%, according to preliminary findings from the E3 Pandemic Response study. The research, led by Enni Sanmark from HUS Helsinki University Hospital, aims to see if air purification can also cut down on stomach ailments. MORE

University of Missouri scientists have developed a liquid-based solution that removes over 98% of nanoplastics from water. It uses natural, water-repelling solvents to absorb plastic particles, which can then be easily separated and removed. I expect to see a lot of similar products soon. I feel like microplastics might be the new health scare. Not sure if that’s justified or not. Can’t wait for the Huberman episode. MORE

Eli Lilly's weight loss drug tirzepatide, found in Zepbound and Mounjaro, reduced the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by 94% in obese or overweight adults with prediabetes, according to a long-term study. Dayum. 94%. MORE

Apple Podcasts is losing ground to YouTube and Spotify, with a recent study showing YouTube now leads in podcast consumption at 31%, followed by Spotify at 21%, and Apple Podcasts trailing at 12%. MORE

IDEAS

Damn, just thought of a super cool use case for Fabric +  Telos + Substrate.

1. Maintain a list of everything I've been REALLY wrong about. (Already working on this list)

2. Write a Fabric pattern that looks at that list and identifies key ways that I miss.

3. Recommend.

— ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟ ᴍɪᴇssʟᴇʀ ⚙️ (@DanielMiessler)
8:39 PM • Aug 22, 2024

DISCOVERY

ffufai uses ffuf and AI to find more web hacking targets, by Joseph Thacker. MORE

gofuzz.py recursively looks at JavaScript files and finds endpoints that can be tested. MORE

analyze_interviewer_techniques is a new Fabric pattern that will capture the ‘je ne se quoi’ of a given interviewer. I’ve been using it on Dwarkesh and Tyler Cowen. MORE

harness is a quick tool I put together to test the efficacy of one prompt vs. another. It runs both against an input and then scores the output using a third, objective prompt that rates how well they followed the plot. MORE

State and time are the same thing — Hillel Wayne explores the concept that state and time are interchangeable. MORE

Don’t force yourself to become a bug bounty hunter, by Sam Curry. MORE

67 years of old Radio Shack catalogs have been scanned and are now available online. MORE

mdrss is a Go-based tool that converts markdown files to RSS feeds. You can write articles in a local folder, and it automatically formats them into an RSS-compliant XML file, handling publication dates and categories. MORE

No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda — This blog post highlights common remote work mistakes like starting conversations with "Hi" and waiting for a response, asking for "quick calls" without context, and scheduling meetings without agendas. 😡💪 MORE

Roger Penrose's book "The Emperor's New Mind" explores the relationship between the human mind and computers, arguing that human consciousness cannot be replicated by machines. MORE

A Collection of Free Public APIs That Are Tested Daily MORE

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

Take the time to read this week’s main essay—We’ve Been Lied To About Work.

But more than just reading it, think about what it means if I’m right. Think about what that means for you and your career, but also all the young people you know and care about.

I didn’t talk about it in that piece, but the solution is the transition to a Human 3.0 mindset, which—in this context—means taking the same skills that you’re good at and that you do for someone else, and doing that for yourself.

More help is coming from me on how exactly to do that, but start thinking about it now.

APHORISM OF THE WEEK

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World Model + Next Token Prediction = Answer Prediction

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A new way to explain LLM-based AI

The 5 Levels of LLM Understanding

Answers as descriptions of the world

Human vs. absolute omniscience

The argument in deductive form

Guess what? We do it too…

Summary

A new way to explain LLM-based AI

Thanks to Eliezer Yudkowsky, I just found my new favorite way to explain LLMs—and why they’re so strange and extraordinary.

Here’s the post that sent me down this path.

"it just predicts the next token" literally any well-posed problem is isomorphic to 'predict the next token of the answer' and literally anyone with a grasp of undergraduate compsci is supposed to see that without being told.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky ⏹️ (@ESYudkowsky)
2:17 PM • Aug 23, 2024

And here’s the bit that got me…

well-posed problem = prediction of next token of answer

Like—I knew that. And I have been explaining the power of LLMs similarly for over two years now. But it never occurred to me to explain it in this way. I absolutely love it.

Typically, when you’re trying to explain how LLMs can be so powerful, the narrative you’ll get from most is…

There’s no magic in LLMs. Ultimately, it’s nothing but next token prediction.

(victory pose)

A standard AI skeptic argument

The problem with this argument—which Eliezer points out so beautifully—is that—with an adequate understanding of the world—there’s not much daylight between next token prediction and answer prediction.

So, here’s my new way of responding to the “just token prediction” argument, using 5 levels of jargon removal.

The 5 Levels of LLM Understanding

TIER 1: “LLMs just predict the next token in text.”

TIER 2: “LLMs just predict next tokens.”

TIER 3: “LLMs predict the next part of answers.”

TIER 4: “LLMs provide answers to really hard questions.”

TIER 5: “HOLY CRAP IT KNOWS EVERYTHING.”

That resonates with me, but here’s another way to think about it.

Answers as descriptions of the world

If you understand the world well enough to predict the next token of an answer, that means you have answers. 🤔

Or:

The better an LLM understands reality and can describe that reality in text, the more “predicting the next token” becomes knowing the answer to everything.

But “everything” is a lot, and we’re obviously never going to hit that (see infinity and the limits of math/physics, etc.).

So the question is: What’s a “good enough” model of the universe—for a human context—to be effectively everything?

Human vs. absolute omniscience

If you’re tracking with me, here’s where we’re at—as a deductive argument1 .

If you have a perfect model of the universe, and you can predict the next token of an answer about anything in that universe, then you know everything.

But we don’t have a perfect model of the universe.

Therefore—no AI (or any other known system) can know everything.

100% agreed.

But the human standard for knowing everything isn’t actually knowing everything . The bar is much lower than that.

The human standard isn’t:

Give me the location of every molecule in the universe

Predict the exact number of raindrops that will hit my porch when it rains next

Predict the exact price of NVIDIA stock at 3:14 PM EST on October 12, 2029.

Tell me how many alien species in the universe have more than a 100 IQ equivalent.

These are—as far as we know of physics—completely impossible to know because of the limits of the physical, atom-based, math-based world. So we can’t ever know “everything”, or really anything close to it.

But take that off the table. It’s impossible, and it’s not what we’re talking about.

What I’m talking about is human things. Things like:

What makes a good society?

Is this policy likely to increase or decrease suffering in the world?

How did this law effect the outcomes of the people it was supposed to help?

These questions are big. They’re huge. But there’s an “everything” version of answering them (which we’ve already established is impossible), and then there’s the “good enough” version of answering them—at a human level.

I believe LLM-based AI will soon have an adequately deep understanding of the things that matter to humans—such as science, physics, materials, biology, laws, policies, therapy, human psychology, crime rates, survey data, etc.—that we will be able to answer many of our most significant human questions.

Things like:

What causes aging and how do we prevent or treat it?

What causes cancer and how do we prevent or treat it?

What is the ideal structure of government for this particular town, city, country, and what steps should we take to implement it?

For this given organization, how can they best maximize their effectiveness?

For this given family, what steps should they take to maximize the chances of their kids growing up as happy, healthy, and productive members of society?

How does one pursue meaning in their life?

Those are big questions—and they do require a ton of knowledge and a very complex model of the universe—but I think they’re tractable. They’re nowhere near “everything”, and thus don’t require anywhere near a full model of the universe.

In other words, the bar for practical, human-level “omniscience” may be remarkably low, and I believe LLMs are very much on the path to getting there.

The argument in deductive form

Here’s the deductive form of this argument.

If you have a perfect model of the universe, and you can predict the next token of an answer about anything in that universe, then you know everything.

But we don’t have a perfect model of the universe.

Therefore—no AI (or any other known system) can know everything.

However, the human standard for “everything” or “practical omniscience” is nowhere near this impossible standard.

Many of the most important questions to humans that have traditionally been associated with something being “godlike”, e.g., how to run a society, how to pursue meaning in the universe, etc., can be answered sufficiently well using AI world models that we can actually build.

Therefore, humans may soon be able to build “practically omniscient” AI for most of the types of problems we care about as a species.2

🤯

Guess what? We do it too…

Finally there’s another point that’s worth mentioning here, which is that every scientific indication we have points to humans being word predictors too.

Try this experiment right now, in your head: Think of your favorite 10 restaurants.

…

As you start forming that list in your brain—watch the stuff that starts coming back. Think about the fact that you’re receiving a flash of words, thoughts, images, memories, etc., from the black box of your memory and experience.

Notice that if you did that same exercise two hours from now—or two days from now—the flashes and thoughts you’d have would be different, and you might even come up with a different list, or put the list in a different order.

Meanwhile, the way this works is even less understood than LLMs! At some level, we too, are “just” next tokens predictors, and it doesn’t make us any less interesting or wonderful.

Summary

It all starts with the sentence “next tokens prediction is isomorphic with answer prediction”.

This means “next token prediction” is actually an extraordinary capability—more like splitting the atom than a parlor trick.

Humans seem to be doing something very similar, and you can watch it happening in real-time if you pay attention to your own thoughts or speech.

But the quality of a token predictor comes down to the complexity/quality of the model of the universe it’s based on.

And because we can never have a perfect AI model of the universe, we can never have truly omniscient AI.

Fortunately, to be considered “godlike” to humans—we don’t need a perfect model of the universe. We only need enough model complexity to be able to answer the questions that matter most to us.

We might be getting close.

1  A deductive argument is where you must accept the conclusion if you accept the premises above, e.g., 1) All rocks lack a heartbeat, 2) This is a rock. 3) Therefore, this lacks a heartbeat.2

2  Thanks to Jai Patel, Joseph Thacker, and Gabriel Bernadette-Shapiro for talking through, shaping, and contributing to this piece. They’re my go-to friends for discussing lots of AI topics—but especially deeper stuff like this.

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The End of Work

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The feeling

The symptoms

What I think is actually happening

3 reasons for hope

1. Those jobs sucked anyway

2. Even fast things go slow

3. What comes after will be much better

Summary

The feeling

If you’re like me, you’ve had this strange, uneasy feeling about the job market1 for a few years now.

It’s like a splinter in the brain. We know something is deeply broken about the whole system, but it’s impossible to grasp or articulate.

I’m writing this because I think I figured it out.

People talk a lot about how AI is going to replace millions of jobs, and how it will also create many more. I think that’s true, but I think there’s a lot more going on here than just AI.

The symptoms

First, why do we even think there’s a problem? For me, it starts with noticing how bad—and how often—work just completely sucks. Like the whole thing—finding work, doing work, being stressed about not losing work. Etc.2  

Most companies, departments, and teams are horribly inefficient, have very little direction, are full of wasted time and efficiency, and are poorly run. It’s constant meetings to talk about the latest corporate fuckery, which only prevents you from doing what you should be doing. It’s change for the sake of change. And when you get excited about a way to fix things, either nobody listens, or they only pretend to before failing to implement it.

Work tends to be a series of disappointments for most people, punctuated by a few rays of light. I was curious about how many people felt this way—not wanting to do a full essay on just my own opinions—and found this from Gallup about the quiet quitting phenomenon.

Gallup: Is Quiet Quitting Real?, 2023

The overall decline was especially related to clarity of expectations, opportunities to learn and grow, feeling cared about, and a connection to the organization's mission or purpose—signaling a growing disconnect between employees and their employers.

Many quiet quitters fit Gallup's definition of being "not engaged" at work—people who do the minimum required and are psychologically detached from their job. This describes half of the U.S. workforce.

Is Quiet Quitting Real (Gallup)

I’m sure there are lots of factors going into Quiet Quitting, but I think this feeling I’m talking about is one of them.

What I think is actually happening

And that brings me to what I think the real issues are, which are a lot deeper and more unsettling than just, “AI is taking the jobs.”

The ideal number of employees in any company is zero. If a company could run and make money using no people, then that is exactly what it should do. We never think about this or talk about this because it’s very strange and uncomfortable, but it is true. The purpose of companies is not to employ people, it is to provide a product or service in return for money,

Because of that, there is a constant downward pressure on anybody who is employed. It is not a specific pressure from a specific person or department. It is simply a fact of business reality that manifests itself in various ways throughout an organization over time. We have to stop thinking of this as a malicious thing where we should be employed, and they are trying to get rid of us. The truth is exactly the opposite.

Nobody owes anybody a job. The only reason anyone has one is because there was a problem at some point in that business that required a human to do some part of the work. Building on that, if that ever becomes not the case, for a particular person or team or department of human employees, the natural next action is to get rid of them. Again, not because business owners or managers are bad people or anything like that. We need to stop injecting morality into this. Businesses simply should have as few employees and actually any expense as possible.

A good way to think about this is to look at a list of software products your company pays for. Let’s say your company pays for 215 software products that cost us $420,000 a year to own and use. Nobody would object to somebody looking at that list of software finding redundancies and canceling those licenses. That is simply work that is being done by other software, or is not required anymore, so it would be stupid for the business to not cancel or failed to renew those licenses.

It is exactly the same with humans, and no matter what you read or hear, I believe this is the main reason we are seeing disruption in job markets today. I think more and more businesses are seeing themselves as money in and money out, and are seeing human workers as being very expensive and generally not very good at what they do. This is not necessarily because of individual workers but because human organizations and communication are so inefficient and wasteful. So basically, companies are realizing that they are spending millions—or hundreds of millions—of dollars per year on human talent, and they’re realizing it’s not worth it.

So that is 2 pieces: 1) ZERO is the optimum number of employees for any company, and 2) companies are realizing that they’re paying way too much for giant workforces that are not producing near the value being paid. Forgetting any modern technological innovation, these two things combined produce extreme downward pressure on the workforce. It adds pressure, stress, drama, and all sorts of negativity to the practice of finding a job, getting a job, keeping a job, working with coworkers, going through organizational changes, and everything else that goes with being a regular employee. It just basically fucking sucks. And the reason it sucks is because companies ultimately wish that you didn’t exist in the first place. We have forgotten that—or never learned it—and that needs to change.

Now let’s add AI, which if you’ve read any of the stuff I’ve been writing, you know is— in the context of business —a technology for replacing the human intellectual work tasks that make up someone’s job.

Here’s a good example from a recent piece on this topic.

From ‘You’ve Been Thinking About AI All Wrong’

What this example shows is a workflow that a human worker does today—just like millions of similar workflows—but that AI will soon be able to do instead.

It’s just steps, like we can see further down in the piece.

From ‘You’ve Been Thinking About AI All Wrong’

So now we have 3 pieces. The ideal number of employees is zero, companies are extremely unhappy with their current workforces, and just now—starting in 2023 and 2024—it is actually becoming possible to replace human intelligence tasks with technology.

You have to see where this is going. It is not moving towards a few jobs get removed, and a few jobs get added. It’s not moving towards some gentle shifts in workforce dynamics or euphemisms like that. No, we are talking about fundamental change. Now for the main point of this piece.

The entire concept of work that we have had for thousands of years was a temporary model that was required to solve a temporary problem. Namely, people who are trying to build or sell something that required work they were unable to do by themselves. 

Read that again.

The only reason anybody has a job is because some people are builders and creators, and they cannot do the entire job themselves.

That work—which is required to produce those products and services—is the reason people have 9-5 jobs. This is the reason the entire economy works the way it does. Those builders/creators then hire people, who they have to pay, and those people spend that money on things in the economy. And that is the system we are all used to.

Well…

This system goes away when builders and creators can make things by themselves. Which is precisely what AI is about to enable.

So, here’s where we are.

The ideal number of employees for a company is zero.

The reason companies had employees in the past is ONLY because the founders couldn’t deliver their product/service without human workers.

Companies and society has sort of forgotten this over the past decades and it’s been kind of assumed that all companies should have these large workforces, because it’s the job of companies to provide good jobs to society.

This hasn’t been working for companies, and company leaders are now noticing that they’re not getting near the value they should be from most employees and teams.

So there’s already this realization sinking in, and then we are getting AI at the exact same time.

This means at the exact time that company leaders are looking very skeptically at their human resources spending, they’re being presented with an alternative.

OK, so maybe you’re thinking:

Holy crap—he’s right.

This is a horrible problem, and we are all screwed. What do I even do?

Yes, and no. I have three things to offer here that should make you feel somewhat better.

3 reasons for hope

But it’s not all bad. I have 3 reasons for optimism.

1. Those jobs sucked anyway

How many people do you know who work regular 9 to 5 jobs in a knowledge work environment who look forward to Monday? How many people, if you really stood back and looked at your life, think it’s good to spend most of your waking moments getting ready to work, dealing with dumbass work shit, all fucking day, and then trying to destress from that day, just so you can actually enjoy the few hours you have left to live your actual life?

All that so you can hopefully make it to Friday so you can have two days where you hopefully don’t have to think about that hellscape you call work.

Is that the way humans should live on their home planet? If advanced and benign aliens came and visited, and interviewed us, would they not see that as a primitive state of being? Of course they would.

Bullshit Jobs, by David Graeber

The thing that we are about to lose is not something we should cry over. We should be worried cause losing these jobs will be massively disruptive, and it’s stressful as hell to think about a completely changed future. But these Bullshit Jobs themselves are not something to cherish and remember.

2. Even fast things go slow

This transition will simultaneously happen very fast, but also pretty slowly. Even if there is advanced AGI in 2025 (which would be very fast), it still takes time for new technology to enter into companies and fully replace previous technology or humans.

So it will take a while, and that’s not even taking into account likely legislation that will slow it down even further based on how disruptive it is. So it’s not like half of the workforce will suddenly not have a job in 2026. It will be very fast, but not that fast.

3. What comes after will be much better

And finally—and best of all—what we will be left with afterwards, assuming we survive, will be a much better way to live.

That same AI that took our dumbass jobs away also has the potential to produce extraordinary abundance for humanity, freeing us up to use our days being human rather than bad biological precursors to AI workers.

We weren’t supposed to be moving paperwork, and sorting spreadsheets, and sending meeting invites, and writing computer code. It’s not what we were supposed to be doing.

What we are supposed to be doing is building and creating things for each other. Things that make each other‘s lives better, and richer, and more meaningful.

And that is exactly what we will do on the other side of all of this. I obviously don’t know our chances of making it to this other side, or if/when it happens, exactly how that will play out. That is impossible to know, but what I can tell you is that I am all in on that future, because it doesn’t make sense to me to live any other way.

Sure, the disruption might tear us apart and send us back to the Bronze Age. That’s possible too, but I choose to believe that we will make it out of this. We’ll get out by getting through. And we’ll emerge on the other side better for it.

Summary

The primary reason we’re seeing all this disruption in the job market is because we’ve been part of a mass delusion about the very nature of work.

We told ourselves that millions of corporate workforce jobs—that pay good salaries, have good benefits, and allow you to save for retirement—were somehow a natural feature of the universe.

In fact, that entire paradigm was just a temporary feature of our civilization, caused by builders and creators not being able to do the work required by themselves. And that’s going away.

But it’s ok.

Most of the jobs sucked anyway, and they took up most of the daily waking hours we were supposed to be spending with family and friends.

Plus even if this transition happens really fast, it still won’t be overnight. Big things take a while.

And most importantly—what waits for us on the other side is a better way to live. A more human way to live—where we identify as individuals rather than corporate workers and exchange value and meaning as part of a new human-centered economy.

My purpose in writing this is to give an alternative—and hopefully far more satisfying—explanation of the feelings you might’ve been feeling for a very long time. And to give you both some warning—and some hope—with which to move forward.

I’ve oriented my life—since the end of 2022—around thinking about this problem, providing ideas and frameworks around it, and have written hundreds of articles about the problem and how to prepare for it. But rather than give the standard “subscribe to my newsletter” response, I would just say that I’m easy to find.

Connect here and we can continue the conversation. Website | X | Newsletter | Community | LinkedIn

We are going to get through this, and it will be much better once we do.

🫶

1  I’m talking about the knowledge work job market, like IT, etc., not physical or professional work, although I do think they’ll be affected soon as well.

2  I’m specifically speaking of the last few years, say, since 2020.

Powered by beehiiv

We've Been Lied To About Work

.bh__table, .bh__table_header, .bh__table_cell { border: 1px solid #C0C0C0; } .bh__table_cell { padding: 5px; background-color: #FFFFFF; } .bh__table_cell p { color: #2D2D2D; font-family: 'Helvetica',Arial,sans-serif !important; overflow-wrap: break-word; } .bh__table_header { padding: 5px; background-color:#F1F1F1; } .bh__table_header p { color: #2A2A2A; font-family:'Trebuchet MS','Lucida Grande',Tahoma,sans-serif !important; overflow-wrap: break-word; }Table of Contents

The feeling

The symptoms

What I think is actually happening

Three reasons for hope

1. Those jobs sucked anyway

2. Even fast things go slow

3. What comes after will be much better

Summary

The feeling

If you’re like me, you’ve had this strange, uneasy feeling about the job market1 for a few years now.

The feeling is like a splinter in the brain—like something is deeply broken about the whole system, but I couldn’t grasp it or articulate it.

I’m writing this because I think I figured it out.

People talk a lot about how AI is going to replace millions of jobs, and how it will also create many more. I think that’s true, but I think there’s a lot more going on here than just AI. I think AI is an accelerant to all of this, but not the main issue.

I think the main factor is so elusive and depressing that it’s hard to even talk about, which is why we don’t.

The symptoms

First, the symptoms. It starts with noticing how bad—and how often—work just completely sucks. Like the whole thing. Finding work. Doing work. Being stressed about not losing work. Etc.2  

Most companies, departments, and teams are horribly inefficient, have very little direction, are full of wasted time and efficiency, and are poorly run. It’s constant meetings to talk about the latest corporate fuckery, which only prevents you from doing what you should be doing. It’s change for the sake of change. And when you get excited about a way to fix things, either nobody listens, or they only pretend to before failing to implement it.

So work tends to be a series of disappointments for most people, punctuated by a few rays of light.

I was curious about how many people felt this way—not wanting to do a full essay on just my own opinions, and found this from Gallup about the quiet quitting phenomenon.

Gallup: Is Quiet Quitting Real?, 2023

The overall decline was especially related to clarity of expectations, opportunities to learn and grow, feeling cared about, and a connection to the organization's mission or purpose—signaling a growing disconnect between employees and their employers.

Many quiet quitters fit Gallup's definition of being "not engaged" at work—people who do the minimum required and are psychologically detached from their job. This describes half of the U.S. workforce.

Is Quiet Quitting Real (Gallup)

I’m sure there are lots of factors going into Quiet Quitting, but I think this feeling I’m talking about is one of them.

What I think is actually happening

And that brings me to what I think the real issues are. They’re not pleasant, and might be rather jarring, but it’s time to have the conversation.

Here’s what I think the main problems are that are causing all this, and that are much bigger than AI.

The ideal number of employees in any company is zero. If a company could run and make money using no people, then that is exactly what it should do. We never think about this or talk about this because it’s very strange and uncomfortable, but it is true. The purpose of companies is not to employ people, it is to provide a product or service in return for money,

Because of that, there is a constant downward pressure on anybody who is employed. It is not a specific pressure from a specific person or department. It is simply a fact of business reality that manifests itself in various ways throughout an organization over time. We have to stop thinking of this as a malicious thing where we should be employed, and they are trying to get rid of us. The truth is exactly the opposite.

Nobody owes anybody a job. The only reason anyone has one is because there was a problem at some point in that business that required a human to do some part of the work. Building on that, if that ever becomes not the case, for a particular person or team or department of human employees, the natural next action is to get rid of them. Again, not because business owners or managers are bad people or anything like that. We need to stop injecting morality into this. Businesses simply should have as few employees and actually any expense as possible.

A good way to think about this is to look at a list of software products your company pays for. Let’s say your company pays for 215 software products that cost us $420,000 a year to own and use. Nobody would object to somebody looking at that list of software finding redundancies and canceling those licenses. That is simply work that is being done by other software, or is not required anymore, so it would be stupid for the business to not cancel or failed to renew those licenses.

It is exactly the same with humans, and no matter what you read or hear, I believe this is the main reason we are seeing disruption in job markets today. I think more and more businesses are seeing themselves as money in and money out, and are seeing human workers as being very expensive and generally not very good at what they do. This is not necessarily because of individual workers but because human organizations and communication are so inefficient and wasteful. So basically, companies are realizing that they are spending millions—or hundreds of millions—of dollars per year on human talent, and they’re realizing it’s not worth it.

So that is two pieces: 1) ZERO is the optimum number of employees for any company, and 2) companies are realizing that they’re paying way too much for giant workforces that are not producing near the value being paid. Forgetting any modern technological innovation, these two things combined produce extreme downward pressure on the workforce. It adds pressure, stress, drama, and all sorts of negativity to the practice of finding a job, getting a job, keeping a job, working with coworkers, going through organizational changes, and everything else that goes with being a regular employee. It just basically fucking sucks. And the reason it sucks is because companies ultimately wish that you didn’t exist in the first place. We have forgotten that—or never learned it—and that needs to change.

Now let’s add AI, which if you’ve read any of the stuff I’ve been writing, you know is— in the context of business —a technology for replacing the human intellectual work tasks that make up someone’s job.

Here’s a good example from a recent piece on this topic.

From ‘You’ve Been Thinking About AI All Wrong’

What this example shows is a workflow that a human worker does today—just like millions of similar workflows—but that AI will soon be able to do instead.

It’s just steps, like broken down further down in the piece.

From ‘You’ve Been Thinking About AI All Wrong’

So now we have three pieces. The ideal number of employees is zero, companies are extremely unhappy with their current workforces, and just now—starting in 2023 and 2024—it is actually becoming possible to replace human intelligence tasks with technology.

You have to see where this is going. It is not moving towards a few jobs get removed, and a few jobs get added. It’s not moving towards some gentle shifts in workforce dynamics or euphemisms like that. No, we are talking about fundamental change. Now for the main point of this piece.

The entire concept of work that we have had for thousands of years was a temporary model that was required to solve a temporary problem. Namely, people who are trying to build or sell something that required work they were unable to do by themselves. 

Read that again.

The only reason anybody has a job is because some people are builders and creators, and they cannot do the entire job themselves.

That work—which is required to produce those products and services—is the reason people have 9 to 5 jobs. This is the reason the entire economy works the way it does. Those builders/creators then hire people, who they have to pay, and those people spend that money on things in the economy. And that is the system we are all used to.

Well…

This system goes away when builders and creators are able to make things by themselves. Which is precisely what AI is about to enable.

So, here’s where we are.

The ideal number of employees for a company is zero.

The reason companies had employees in the past is ONLY because the founders couldn’t deliver their product/service without human workers.

Companies and society has sort of forgotten this over the past decades and it’s been kind of assumed that all companies should have these large workforces, because it’s the job of companies to provide good jobs to society.

This hasn’t been working for companies, and company leaders are now noticing that they’re not getting near the value they should be from most employees and teams.

So there’s already this realization sinking in, and then we are getting AI at the exact same time.

This means at the exact time that company leaders are looking very skeptically at their human resources spending, they’re being presented with an alternative.

OK, so maybe you’re thinking:

Holy crap—he’s right.

This is a horrible problem, and we are all screwed. What do I even do?

Yes, and no. I have three things to offer here that should make you feel somewhat better.

Three reasons for hope

But it’s not all bad. I have 3 reasons this is better than it sounds.

1. Those jobs sucked anyway

How many people do you know who work regular 9 to 5 jobs in a knowledge work environment who look forward to Monday? How many people, if you really stood back and looked at your life, think it’s good to spend most of your waking moments getting ready to work, dealing with dumbass work shit, all fucking day, and then trying to destress from that day, just so you can actually enjoy the few hours you have left to live your actual life?

All that so you can hopefully make it to Friday so you can have two days where you hopefully don’t have to think about that hellscape you call work.

Is that the way humans should live on their home planet? If advanced and benign aliens came and visited, and interviewed us, would they not see that as a primitive state of being? Of course they would.

Bullshit Jobs, by David Graeber

The thing that we are about to lose is not something we should cry over. We should be worried cause losing these jobs will be massively disruptive, and it’s stressful as hell to think about a completely changed future. But these Bullshit Jobs themselves are not something to cherish and remember.

2. Even fast things go slow

This transition will simultaneously happen very fast, but also pretty slowly. Even if there is advanced AGI in 2025 (which would be very fast), it still takes time for new technology to enter into companies and fully replace previous technology or humans.

So it will take a while, and that’s not even taking into account likely legislation that will slow it down even further based on how disruptive it is. So it’s not like half of the workforce will suddenly not have a job in 2026. It will be very fast, but not that fast.

3. What comes after will be much better

And finally—and best of all—what we will be left with afterwards, assuming we survive, will be a much better way to live.

That same AI that took our dumbass jobs away also has the potential to produce extraordinary abundance for humanity, freeing us up to use our days being human rather than bad biological precursors to AI workers.

We weren’t supposed to be moving paperwork, and sorting spreadsheets, and sending meeting invites, and writing computer code. It’s not what we were supposed to be doing.

What we are supposed to be doing is building and creating things for each other. Things that make each other‘s lives better, and richer, and more meaningful.

And that is exactly what we will do on the other side of all of this. I obviously don’t know our chances of making it to this other side, or if/when it happens, exactly how that will play out. That is impossible to know, but what I can tell you is that I am all in on that future, because it doesn’t make sense to me to live any other way.

Sure, the disruption might tear us apart and send us back to the Bronze Age. That’s possible too, but I choose to believe that we will make it out of this. We’ll get out by getting through. And we’ll emerge on the other side better for it.

Summary

The primary reason we’re seeing all this disruption in the job market is because we’ve been part of a mass delusion about the very nature of work.

We told ourselves that millions of corporate workforce jobs—that pay good salaries, have good benefits, and allow you to save for retirement—were somehow a natural feature of the universe.

In fact, that entire paradigm was just a temporary feature of our civilization, caused by builders and creators not being able to do the work required by themselves. And that’s going away.

But it’s ok.

Most of the jobs sucked anyway, and they took up most of the daily waking hours we were supposed to be spending with family and friends.

Plus even if this transition happens really fast, it still won’t be overnight. Big things take a while.

And most importantly—what waits for us on the other side is a better way to live. A more human way to live—where we identify as individuals rather than corporate workers and exchange value and meaning as part of a new human-centered economy.

My purpose in writing this is to give an alternative—and hopefully far more sense-making—explanation of the feelings you might’ve been feeling for a very long time. And to give you both some warning—and some hop—with which to move forward.

I don’t like to give such news without providing some sort of practical advice for what people can do.

I’ve oriented my life since the end of 2022 to thinking about this problem, providing ideas and frameworks around it, and have written hundreds of articles about it. But rather than give the standard “subscribe to my newsletter” response, I would just say that I’m easy to find. Website | X | Newsletter | Community | LinkedIn

We are going to get through this, and it will be much better once we do.

🫶

1  I’m talking about the knowledge work job market, like IT, etc., not physical or professional work, although I do think they’ll be affected soon as well.

2  I’m specifically speaking of the last few years, say, since 2020.

Powered by beehiiv

The Real Problem With the Job Market

.bh__table, .bh__table_header, .bh__table_cell { border: 1px solid #C0C0C0; } .bh__table_cell { padding: 5px; background-color: #FFFFFF; } .bh__table_cell p { color: #2D2D2D; font-family: 'Helvetica',Arial,sans-serif !important; overflow-wrap: break-word; } .bh__table_header { padding: 5px; background-color:#F1F1F1; } .bh__table_header p { color: #2A2A2A; font-family:'Trebuchet MS','Lucida Grande',Tahoma,sans-serif !important; overflow-wrap: break-word; }Table of Contents

The feeling

The symptoms

What I think is actually happening

Three reasons for hope

1. Those jobs sucked anyway

2. Even fast things go slow

3. What comes after will be much better

Summary

The feeling

If you’re like me, you’ve had this strange, uneasy feeling about the job market1 for a few years now.

The feeling is like a splinter in the brain—like something is deeply broken about the whole system, but I couldn’t grasp it or articulate it.

I’m writing this because I think I figured it out.

People talk a lot about how AI is going to replace millions of jobs, and how it will also create many more. I think that’s true, but I think there’s a lot more going on here than just AI. I think AI is an accelerant to all of this, but not the main issue.

I think the main factor is so elusive and depressing that it’s hard to even talk about, which is why we don’t.

The symptoms

First, the symptoms. It starts with noticing how bad—and how often—work just completely sucks. Like the whole thing. Finding work. Doing work. Being stressed about not losing work. Etc.2  

Most companies, departments, and teams are horribly inefficient, have very little direction, are full of wasted time and efficiency, and are poorly run. It’s constant meetings to talk about the latest corporate fuckery, which only prevents you from doing what you should be doing. It’s change for the sake of change. And when you get excited about a way to fix things, either nobody listens, or they only pretend to before failing to implement it.

So work tends to be a series of disappointments for most people, punctuated by a few rays of light.

I was curious about how many people felt this way—not wanting to do a full essay on just my own opinions, and found this from Gallup about the quiet quitting phenomenon.

Gallup: Is Quiet Quitting Real?, 2023

The overall decline was especially related to clarity of expectations, opportunities to learn and grow, feeling cared about, and a connection to the organization's mission or purpose—signaling a growing disconnect between employees and their employers.

Many quiet quitters fit Gallup's definition of being "not engaged" at work—people who do the minimum required and are psychologically detached from their job. This describes half of the U.S. workforce.

Is Quiet Quitting Real (Gallup)

I’m sure there are lots of factors going into Quiet Quitting, but I think this feeling I’m talking about is one of them.

What I think is actually happening

And that brings me to what I think the real issues are. They’re not pleasant, and might be rather jarring, but it’s time to have the conversation.

Here’s what I think the main problems are that are causing all this, and that are much bigger than AI.

The ideal number of employees in any company is zero. If a company could run and make money using no people, then that is exactly what it should do. We never think about this or talk about this because it’s very strange and uncomfortable, but it is true. The purpose of companies is not to employ people, it is to provide a product or service in return for money,

Because of that, there is a constant downward pressure on anybody who is employed. It is not a specific pressure from a specific person or department. It is simply a fact of business reality that manifests itself in various ways throughout an organization over time. We have to stop thinking of this as a malicious thing where we should be employed, and they are trying to get rid of us. The truth is exactly the opposite.

Nobody owes anybody a job. The only reason anyone has one is because there was a problem at some point in that business that required a human to do some part of the work. Building on that, if that ever becomes not the case, for a particular person or team or department of human employees, the natural next action is to get rid of them. Again, not because business owners or managers are bad people or anything like that. We need to stop injecting morality into this. Businesses simply should have as few employees and actually any expense as possible.

A good way to think about this is to look at a list of software products your company pays for. Let’s say your company pays for 215 software products that cost us $420,000 a year to own and use. Nobody would object to somebody looking at that list of software finding redundancies and canceling those licenses. That is simply work that is being done by other software, or is not required anymore, so it would be stupid for the business to not cancel or failed to renew those licenses.

It is exactly the same with humans, and no matter what you read or hear, I believe this is the main reason we are seeing disruption in job markets today. I think more and more businesses are seeing themselves as money in and money out, and are seeing human workers as being very expensive and generally not very good at what they do. This is not necessarily because of individual workers but because human organizations and communication are so inefficient and wasteful. So basically, companies are realizing that they are spending millions—or hundreds of millions—of dollars per year on human talent, and they’re realizing it’s not worth it.

So that is two pieces: 1) ZERO is the optimum number of employees for any company, and 2) companies are realizing that they’re paying way too much for giant workforces that are not producing near the value being paid. Forgetting any modern technological innovation, these two things combined produce extreme downward pressure on the workforce. It adds pressure, stress, drama, and all sorts of negativity to the practice of finding a job, getting a job, keeping a job, working with coworkers, going through organizational changes, and everything else that goes with being a regular employee. It just basically fucking sucks. And the reason it sucks is because companies ultimately wish that you didn’t exist in the first place. We have forgotten that—or never learned it—and that needs to change.

Now let’s add AI, which if you’ve read any of the stuff I’ve been writing, you know is— in the context of business —a technology for replacing the human intellectual work tasks that make up someone’s job.

Here’s a good example from a recent piece on this topic.

From ‘You’ve Been Thinking About AI All Wrong’

What this example shows is a workflow that a human worker does today—just like millions of similar workflows—but that AI will soon be able to do instead.

It’s just steps, like broken down further down in the piece.

From ‘You’ve Been Thinking About AI All Wrong’

So now we have three pieces. The ideal number of employees is zero, companies are extremely unhappy with their current workforces, and just now—starting in 2023 and 2024—it is actually becoming possible to replace human intelligence tasks with technology.

You have to see where this is going. It is not moving towards a few jobs get removed, and a few jobs get added. It’s not moving towards some gentle shifts in workforce dynamics or euphemisms like that. No, we are talking about fundamental change. Now for the main point of this piece.

The entire concept of work that we have had for thousands of years was a temporary model that was required to solve a temporary problem. Namely, people who are trying to build or sell something that required work they were unable to do by themselves. 

Read that again.

The only reason anybody has a job is because some people are builders and creators, and they cannot do the entire job themselves.

That work—which is required to produce those products and services—is the reason people have 9 to 5 jobs. This is the reason the entire economy works the way it does. Those builders/creators then hire people, who they have to pay, and those people spend that money on things in the economy. And that is the system we are all used to.

Well…

This system goes away when builders and creators are able to make things by themselves. Which is precisely what AI is about to enable.

So, here’s where we are.

The ideal number of employees for a company is zero.

The reason companies had employees in the past is ONLY because the founders couldn’t deliver their product/service without human workers.

Companies and society has sort of forgotten this over the past decades and it’s been kind of assumed that all companies should have these large workforces, because it’s the job of companies to provide good jobs to society.

This hasn’t been working for companies, and company leaders are now noticing that they’re not getting near the value they should be from most employees and teams.

So there’s already this realization sinking in, and then we are getting AI at the exact same time.

This means at the exact time that company leaders are looking very skeptically at their human resources spending, they’re being presented with an alternative.

OK, so maybe you’re thinking:

Holy crap—he’s right.

This is a horrible problem, and we are all screwed. What do I even do?

Yes, and no. I have three things to offer here that should make you feel somewhat better.

Three reasons for hope

But it’s not all bad. I have 3 reasons this is better than it sounds.

1. Those jobs sucked anyway

How many people do you know who work regular 9 to 5 jobs in a knowledge work environment who look forward to Monday? How many people, if you really stood back and looked at your life, think it’s good to spend most of your waking moments getting ready to work, dealing with dumbass work shit, all fucking day, and then trying to destress from that day, just so you can actually enjoy the few hours you have left to live your actual life?

All that so you can hopefully make it to Friday so you can have two days where you hopefully don’t have to think about that hellscape you call work.

Is that the way humans should live on their home planet? If advanced and benign aliens came and visited, and interviewed us, would they not see that as a primitive state of being? Of course they would.

Bullshit Jobs, by David Graeber

The thing that we are about to lose is not something we should cry over. We should be worried cause losing these jobs will be massively disruptive, and it’s stressful as hell to think about a completely changed future. But these Bullshit Jobs themselves are not something to cherish and remember.

2. Even fast things go slow

This transition will simultaneously happen very fast, but also pretty slowly. Even if there is advanced AGI in 2025 (which would be very fast), it still takes time for new technology to enter into companies and fully replace previous technology or humans.

So it will take a while, and that’s not even taking into account likely legislation that will slow it down even further based on how disruptive it is. So it’s not like half of the workforce will suddenly not have a job in 2026. It will be very fast, but not that fast.

3. What comes after will be much better

And finally—and best of all—what we will be left with afterwards, assuming we survive, will be a much better way to live.

That same AI that took our dumbass jobs away also has the potential to produce extraordinary abundance for humanity, freeing us up to use our days being human rather than bad biological precursors to AI workers.

We weren’t supposed to be moving paperwork, and sorting spreadsheets, and sending meeting invites, and writing computer code. It’s not what we were supposed to be doing.

What we are supposed to be doing is building and creating things for each other. Things that make each other‘s lives better, and richer, and more meaningful.

And that is exactly what we will do on the other side of all of this. I obviously don’t know our chances of making it to this other side, or if/when it happens, exactly how that will play out. That is impossible to know, but what I can tell you is that I am all in on that future, because it doesn’t make sense to me to live any other way.

Sure, the disruption might tear us apart and send us back to the Bronze Age. That’s possible too, but I choose to believe that we will make it out of this. We’ll get out by getting through. And we’ll emerge on the other side better for it.

Summary

The primary reason we’re seeing all this disruption in the job market is because we’ve been part of a mass delusion about the very nature of work.

We told ourselves that millions of corporate workforce jobs—that pay good salaries, have good benefits, and allow you to save for retirement—were somehow a natural feature of the universe.

In fact, that entire paradigm was just a temporary feature of our civilization, caused by builders and creators not being able to do the work required by themselves. And that’s going away.

But it’s ok.

Most of the jobs sucked anyway, and they took up most of the daily waking hours we were supposed to be spending with family and friends.

Plus even if this transition happens really fast, it still won’t be overnight. Big things take a while.

And most importantly—what waits for us on the other side is a better way to live. A more human way to live—where we identify as individuals rather than corporate workers and exchange value and meaning as part of a new human-centered economy.

My purpose in writing this is to give an alternative—and hopefully far more sense-making—explanation of the feelings you might’ve been feeling for a very long time. And to give you both some warning—and some hop—with which to move forward.

I don’t like to give such news without providing some sort of practical advice for what people can do.

I’ve oriented my life since the end of 2022 to thinking about this problem, providing ideas and frameworks around it, and have written hundreds of articles about it. But rather than give the standard “subscribe to my newsletter” response, I would just say that I’m easy to find. Website | X | Newsletter | Community | LinkedIn

We are going to get through this, and it will be much better once we do.

🫶

1  I’m talking about the knowledge work job market, like IT, etc., not physical or professional work, although I do think they’ll be affected soon as well.

2  I’m specifically speaking of the last few years, say, since 2020.

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Aliens Landed in Palo Alto in October of 2027

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On the 8th of October in 2027, an alien craft was seen entering the atmosphere over the Atlantic around 600 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.

It stayed very high while covering the United States and then descended quickly before landing in an open field near a water reservoir, in Palo Alto, California.

The craft was extremely spherical, somehow more than a sphere, and had a silverish shine to it that seemed to reflect and somehow improve the colors around it.   

At first, the military surrounded it and sent all sorts of drones and probes to go and inspect the craft, but within 18 hours the craft began sending messages on multiple frequencies.

It started by explaining that it was a representative of a distant civilization called The Aleta. That they started as biological life forms but transitioned into a unified (part bio part technology) form eventually, and that they were here to share information with Earth at a crucial time of its development.

Upon figuring out that the craft could not be approached, destroyed, or moved in any way—and after the craft sufficiently explained its technological superiority and benign intentions—humans started listening to what it had to say.

Aleta (that’s what everyone was calling it) sent all sorts of information. It evidently figured out how to read all of our media and look for problems and trivialities. It started sending helpful information about how to solve them.

Some days, it would send extra extraordinary recipes for how to make better muffins, using an extracted type of butter and a new type of salt. It also released the most breathtaking and spellbinding 48 peace fantasy series that quickly became the most talked about and brilliant piece of art ever created. It was called Altered Dominion. Think Game of Thrones, Shakespeare, Harry Potter, the Notebook, and The Sopranos all rolled into one—except 1000 times more compelling.

On other days, it would release explanations of fundamental science, including an actual unified theory of physics. Forumulas for new materials. And explanations of dark matter that we’ve never seen before. The Unified Theory was released on a Thursday, after it rained in Palo Alto for nearly 3 days straight, and after the season 35 finale of Altered Dominion.

But by the summer of 2029, and 2 1/2 years of constant talk and speculation worldwide, the mainstream conversation about Aleta began to change from wonder to disillusionment.

A small number of people—around 140,000 or so—were still stitched to every transmission that came from the craft, and they had actually learned how to speak with it in real-time. They oriented their lives around all of its messages and started working on how to incorporate the new science and art streaming from the craft.

This group, who called themselves ATLiens for some strange reason, literally organized sleeping shifts, transcribing shifts, and studying shifts, and then a whole discipline around the incorporation of the new knowledge into how humans currently do things. To them, the knowledge that had been sent just in the last two years would take several decades, if not a couple of centuries, to properly integrate into human society. It was just that much data, and it was just that transformational.

But to most people, once they had finished watching Altered Dominion and eating all the new recipes and trying on all the new outfits, they went back to TikTok.

By 2030, most people had forgotten about the strange sphere in Palo Alto. And more than forget about it, they took on a disappointed attitude towards it.

The difference between this group, which was most of humanity, and the cult-like ATliens could not be more extreme. Most of them moved to Palo Alto and surrounding areas in the Bay Area, just so they could be closer to others who understood the significance. They structured their lives around the regular broadcasts from Aleta and they could think of nothing else.

They studied every single piece of new information from Aleta, and figured out how to build new things using it. Many of them had trouble sleeping because they feared missing a transmission and all the wisdom contained within.

The difference in attitudes between the ATliens and normal people was captured well by an interaction between Sarah Meyer, a devoted ATLien from Rochester now living in Fremont, who was getting her morning coffee at a Starbucks in Palo Alto.

The barista asked her what all her books and computers were for, and why she always seems so excited when she came in. Sarah explained—a bit embarrassed—that she was one of “those people”, and that she comes in and gets her coffee, and then heads out to the reservoirs to receive new transmissions.

The barista wiped his hands, looked at her blankly, and said,

Oh yeah, is that thing is still out there? (laughing)

Yeah, I’ve seen Dominion four times, but I just kind of tuned out after that.

(checking a name on a cup and frowning slightly)

All this time we were waiting for aliens, and all they end up giving us is a new TV show.

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UL NO. 446: AI Ecosystem Components, MS 0-Days, Iranian Campaign Hacks…

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SECURITY | AI | MEANING :: Unsupervised Learning is a stream of original ideas, story analysis, tooling, and mental models designed to help humans lead successful and meaningful lives in a world full of AI .

TOC

NOTES

MY WORK

SECURITY

AI / TECH

HUMANS

IDEAS

DISCOVERY

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

APHORISM OF THE WEEK

NOTES

Hey!

Few things here to start out:

All better from being sick. Was quite minor. Would not even have known I was sick if not for testing.

We migrated Fabric to Go! It’s now easier to install, upgrade, and it’s way faster. INSTALL/MIGRATE

Joe Rogan had Peter Thiel on the podcast, and it was a brilliant conversation. One of the best podcasts of that type in months. MORE

I bought one of those mini-libraries to put in my neighborhood. Love the idea of sharing books with the local community!

Ok, let’s go…

Continue reading online to avoid the email cutoff… MY WORK

My new essay on the 4 components (not just the model weights!) that will decide who wins out of OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, or Google.

The 4 Components of Top AI Model Ecosystems

The four things I think will determine who wins the AI Model Wars

danielmiessler.com/p/ai-model-ecosystem-4-components

A short essay on what I see as the root of a lot of “LLMs can’t reason” arguments.

The Link Between Free Will and LLM Denial

Denying the specialness of LLMs seems tied to over-believing in the specialness of humans.

danielmiessler.com/p/free-will-llms

SECURITY

Microsoft just released patches for 90 security flaws, including 10 zero-days, with six of those being actively exploited. Notable vulnerabilities include CVE-2024-38189 (RCE in Microsoft Project), CVE-2024-38178 (memory corruption in Windows Scripting Engine), and CVE-2024-38213 (SmartScreen bypass). MORE

Russian cyberspies from the FSB, along with a new group called COLDWASTREL, have been running a massive phishing campaign dubbed "River of Phish" targeting US and European entities since 2022. The campaign aims to steal credentials and 2FA tokens from high-risk individuals, NGOs, media outlets, and government officials. MORE

The Pentagon is planning to flood the Taiwan Strait with thousands of drones in the event of a Chinese invasion. US Indo-Pacific Command chief Admiral Samuel Paparo described the strategy as creating an "unmanned hellscape" to delay Chinese forces and buy time for US and allied reinforcements. Weird that we just tell people our strategies like this, though. MORE

Sponsor

The Next Big Thing in Automated Security Investigations  

Dropzone.ai is the the only company I’ve seen that has truly nailed the agent-driven approach to investigations. Or really Agents used in a cyber workflow.

What they do is take alerts that come from tools like PAN, and they start autonomously investigating them, just like a human analyst. This is where this is all going, and they’re the best I’ve seen. So much so that I’m now an advisor for them!!

By the way, if you’re interested in where this is all headed, check out this article on how Gartner just canceled SOAR. It’s a clear signal that companies like Dropzone are where things are going.

dropzone.ai/request-a-demo

Request a Demo

Jeff Sims has published a timeline of his research on offensive AI agents, detailing the development of three distinct types of offensive AI systems. MORE

SolarWinds has patched a critical deserialization vulnerability (CVE-2024-28986, CVSS 9.8) in its Web Help Desk software that could allow remote code execution. The flaw affects all versions up to 12.8.3 and has been fixed in hotfix 12.8.3 HF 1. MORE

Iranian banks have been hit by a massive cyber attack, reportedly one of the largest in the country's history. Seems likely tied to Israel/Iran tensions. MORE

Trump shared a fake image of Harris speaking at a Communist event. This one looks fairly fake, but 1) lots of people will still believe it’s real, and 2) current tech can already make more believable ones. We’re actually at the point I talked about here:

Iranian hacker group APT42 has targeted both Trump and Biden campaigns, according to Google's Threat Analysis Group. The group, believed to be working for Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, targeted both campaigns, but only Trump's campaign appears to have had sensitive files leaked to the press, which is quite curious. MORE

Trump corroborated this by pointing the finger at Iran for hacking his presidential campaign, praising the FBI's investigation into the breach. He mentioned that the FBI is handling it professionally and reiterated multiple times that Iran was behind it, though he didn't share specific details from the agency. MORE

Sponsor

ProjectDiscovery Cloud Platform Asset Discovery

Our latest release includes enhanced tech stack detection and universal asset discovery.

For Individuals & Bug Bounty Hunters: Discover and monitor up to 10 domains daily.

For Organizations: Uncover your external attack surface and cloud assets with automatic asset enrichment and daily monitoring.

Stay ahead with ProjectDiscovery Cloud Platform!

cloud.projectdiscovery.io

Discover Assets Today

China-linked cyber-spies have infected dozens of Russian government and IT sector computers with backdoors and trojans since late July, according to Kaspersky. The attacks, dubbed EastWind, are linked to APT27 and APT31, using phishing emails and cloud services like GitHub, Dropbox, and Quora for command-and-control. MORE

Scammers are targeting young Chinese job seekers in a tough economy, exploiting their desperation by offering fake job opportunities. MORE | Comments

Continue reading online to avoid the email cutoff… AI / TECH

xAI’s Grok chatbot now lets users create images from text prompts and publish them to X, leading to chaotic results like Barack Obama doing cocaine and Donald Trump in a Nazi uniform. Really curious if this is going to get nerfed or not. Elon replied to one that had him pregnant standing next to Trump, and he replied, “Live by the sword, die by the sword.” MORE

Alex Wieckowski is on a mission to make you fall in love with reading again—and he thinks AI can help. In this episode, Alex shares how he uses AI tools like ChatGPT to recommend books, understand deeper themes in novels like Hermann Hesse’s "Siddhartha," and create actionable strategies from business books like Alex Hormozi’s "$100M Offers." MORE

Comedians are increasingly using AI to help write jokes and brainstorm ideas, with mixed results. I think this is similar to the Turing Test in terms of the importance of AI progress. If AI can write a full set of comedy and make humans laugh, that’s f*cking huge. MORE

San Francisco is looking to ban software that critics claim is being used to artificially inflate rents. The software in question allegedly helps landlords coordinate rent increases. MORE

You might be overusing Vim visual mode. This post argues that many Vim users rely too heavily on visual mode (I think I’m one of them), which can often be replaced with more efficient normal mode commands. Examples include using gg"+yG instead of ggVG"+y to copy a whole file and dk instead of Vkd to delete the current and previous lines. MORE

HUMANS

Some California residents will soon be able to add their driver’s licenses and state IDs to Apple Wallet as part of a pilot program launching this fall. The program will allow 1.5 million participants to use mobile IDs for TSA screening at LAX and SFO. MORE

China's manufacturers are facing a financial crisis, with many going bankrupt due to a combination of weak demand, rising costs, and increased competition. MORE

Scientists at Fermilab have detected the first neutrinos using a prototype detector for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). MORE

Venture capitalists aren't looking for nice founders; they want risk-takers. Nate Silver highlights that 70% of the billionaires on the 2023 Forbes 400 list are self-made, often coming from modest backgrounds. MORE

There's a growing trend of Gen Z men becoming NEETs (Not in Employment, Education, or Training), with one in five young men under 25 unemployed and not actively looking for work. MORE

"Slow is smooth, smooth is fast" is a mantra deeply ingrained in Navy SEAL operations, emphasizing precision over haste. This principle helps SEALs execute high-stakes missions with minimal errors, as seen in Operation Neptune Spear. MORE

No one wants kids anymore, and it's not just you. This video dives into the reasons behind the declining birth rates, touching on economic pressures, changing societal values, and personal choices. MORE

Imposter syndrome often stems from systemic biases, not just self-doubt. Harvard Business Review highlights that many women experience this due to real exclusionary practices. MORE

This guy got fired and replaced by AI at Cosmos Magazine, and the management didn't tell anyone. They are using generative AI to write articles, possibly trained on their own authors’ work. MORE

I gave my kids a summer like mine in the 1980s – This parent decided to give her 10 and 5-year-old daughters a taste of a 1980s summer holiday, where boredom was common and self-entertainment was key. MORE

IDEAS

Here are a few ideas I’ve had recently that I haven’t written essays for yet.

The Ultimate Privilege
I think the ultimate privilege might be growing up in a stable household with two parents who give you a strong work ethic.

It trips me out how simple this is, and how the best advice is often like this. It’s the same with diet, exercise, relationships, and a million other things. The best advice is concise, wise, and generally hard to do. But it’s not a mystery.

I think the US—and the world—should lock in on this one thing: stable two-parent households that imbue a strong work ethic—and focus a lot of energy on getting to 100% on that metric.

—

The biggest market opening right now is for a product/platform that validates the authenticity of content coming from a creator or publisher.

All the providers of content are going to have to work with the providers of computing platforms to produce a signing and UX standard.

— ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟ ᴍɪᴇssʟᴇʀ ⚙️ (@DanielMiessler)
10:14 PM • Aug 14, 2024

I used to think there was a big difference between somebody being weak and somebody being evil.

I now treat them mostly the same because the outcomes they manifest are mostly the same.

The only difference is that with a weak person I can try to make them strong.

— ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟ ᴍɪᴇssʟᴇʀ ⚙️ (@DanielMiessler)
5:17 PM • Aug 18, 2024

DISCOVERY

🔥Fabric + Raycast — Will Chen shows how to integrate Fabric into Raycast! Very cool. I’m adding this myself, forcing me to switch back to Raycast. In fact, I think I might integrate it more deeply by hosting a set of these scripts within Fabric, so you can just point Raycast to that directory! MORE

Eric Schmidt of Google did a crazy honest interview at Stanford and it was so spicy that Stanford took it down. Here’s the video and transcript. VIDEO | TRANSCRIPT | FABRIC SUMMARY

The Ideal Founding Team — Ben Horowitz lays out the perfect founding team in the clearest way I’ve ever seen. MORE

Scrape-it-now — A new CLI tool designed for AI-driven web scraping that ensures idempotency. MORE

Grok 2 — xAI has released Grok 2, a frontier class model capable of reasoning, coding, and mathematics. It also brings FLUX to X users in collaboration with Black Forest Labs. MORE

Prompt Caching With Claude — Anthropic has introduced prompt caching for its Claude models, allowing developers to cache frequently used context. Coming to Fabric soon! MORE

Flux AI — By Black Forest Labs, Flux.ai is a new open-source AI image generation tool that runs on consumer-grade laptops. It excels in rendering people and prompt adherence, outperforming competitors like Midjourney in some aspects. MORE

GraphicInfo – A new website lets you generate infographics to make your articles more engaging. MORE

"Agile Is for Losers" is a rant about the author's decade-long frustrations with the Agile methodology infiltrating digital agencies. MORE

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

Stop accepting it when your loved ones—especially the young ones—are not AI-literate. Here’s the way to think about this…

Imagine that the competition level for getting top jobs, mates, whatever—was at 100 in 2022. And the average person was at like an 80.

Well, AI is Augmentation technology. It adds 20-50 points to people who get good at it. So now that person with an 85 learns AI and they’re a 125.

The new standard is now reset to 120.

So if you were a 90 before, or a 110, you’re now behind.

Don’t let your people get left behind. AI is the new reading. It’s the new high school diploma. It’s the new degree.

Make sure the people you love have it.

(And just to show you how real this is, and get you motivated—here’s an 8-year-old doing some live coding) MORE

APHORISM OF THE WEEK

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