Bet On Growth
When something suddenly starts getting good, the question is not, “How good is it?”, the valuable question to ask is, “How long will it improve?”
One of the objections to my comment that 90% of my skills are worth $0 but 10% are worth 1000x is that ChatGPT (& friends) are still not that good at writing code. I read this objection as, “…and therefore my coding (or whatever) skills are still as valuable as they were and therefore I can ignore Large Language Models.” Here’s why I think that’s a mistake.
The S Curve
Improvement seems to come along an S-shaped curve. For a while (too long, it always seems), nothing (or seemingly nothing) happens. Then suddenly things get much better. Then after a while they get better more and more slowly.
Here’s the thing—this curve only looks this tidy in retrospect. While it’s happening, you just don’t know. This is where we are now:
How good is ChatGPT going to get at coding/writing contracts/writing songs/marketing? We don’t know. What we do know is that it’s getting better fast, faster than anyone but a wide-eyed true believer would have believed.
Can we coders/lawyers/songwriters/marketers safely ignore Chat GPT? Maybe, but probably not. Times of the greatest change are the times when creating options is most valuable.
In technology:
Growth rate matters far more than absolute values. If I’m bigger than you but you’re growing faster the end is just a matter of time.
Limits to growth are enormously valuable to overcome & so receive enormous resources.
Bet on growth rate.
I think it's hard to tell what the growth rate will be because the conversation is confused by hype. And part of that confusion is people not being clear about whether they're talking about the present or future.
You can *bet* on the future, but it's hard to have valuable conversations about it, because it's just comparing opinions. In-depth articles are better written about the present.
Reminds me of the disrupting innovation S-curve of growth mentioned in the Innovator's Dilemma.