Hi, I’m Smeet

There’s something enjoyable about the calling what you do for money “work”, especially in juxtaposition to the word “play”, i.e. a hobby that nourishes your soul. Keeping this distinction helps us provide the mental peace needed to cope as an adult. Typical self help asks you to merge the two. That bringing them together is the only solution to demonizing work lesser, or at least making work more palatable. My thesis is that doing away with the words entirely is probably the path of least resistance. In so far as the world will ask you the question “What do you do for work?”, it’s helpful to know what “work” might mean in a traditional sense. But for all intents and purposes, using the word doesn’t really work. ...

Rights and liabilities are two sides of the same coin. For effective agents (machines and humans alike) in any society, rights are the carrots and liabilities are the sticks. You don’t get one without the other. This pairing governs how anyone with agency operates, and it should govern how we think about handing the reins to AI. Do you want to give it the rights to do our work? Everyone’s trying to figure out how much of their thinking can be outsourced to AI. You can err too far in either direction. But the fundamental question most people skip is a personal one: are you gaining more than you’re losing? ...