The Golden Age Of Those Who Can Pull It Off

AI is for perfectionists, solopreneurs and startups- regulatory capture is for grunt workers and corporations

So when I realized Claude Code is actually really good at coding I really wondered where exactly things were going to go with AI landing in the world, but I think I finally have a picture.

I write these blog posts myself by the way- old timey, huh?

So if you want to know where AI coding is going, the thing I recommend to get a feel for it is to do some AI coding. What happened for me was I finished all my open side projects in about two weeks. All my servers I couldn't afford to put more time into administrating are running perfectly and have world class monitoring for everything. All my web sites are re-done and look amazing and the UX is in a different league. I am actively looking for more things to do!

That's when I realized it's totally in my reach to be a solopreneur and add some AI-assisted search engine optimizing and other marketing into the mix. A whole lot of everything just feels like smooth sailing ahead. And especially for those engineering minded folks who have a strength profile like mine- perfectionism, aiming high, strong sense of aesthetics, and perhaps the weakness of just putting out less than the grunt workers- folks like me are now positively super-empowered.

Sure, it's that way for everyone who bothers to try it- but there's just so many ideas to try! Most folks are just in a different place. There really is room enough for everyone. Golden future ahead, right?

But then again, I notice that corporations tell an entirely different story. No effect on productivity in spite of massive AI investment. The most popular question in the million euro corporation AI agent was "what's for lunch today in the cantine?". Impossibility to get the data actually needed for good AI at all- entrenched data silos are the problem, not how to better search the data that's there. Lettings lots of folks go, but you know they're letting lots of folks go for all sorts of reasons- AI just seems to be an especially convenient excuse for the courts.

Now as far as my own experience with big corporations goes, AI simply doesn't solve there problem. Corporate problems just don't revolve around productivity- what does the CEO care if they're getting this week's briefing from an AI or some minion with an MBA and a search engine? It's the same data, and to them, a few thousand dollars a week is pocket change. That doesn't even buy a week's supply of koi fish food for the representative headquarters that symbolizes an openness of thought no one working at the company has.

No. The corporate problem is organizational. I've seen huge teems build huge stuff only for most of it being thrown away because management simply doesn't understand what they're doing. If everything happening is bottlenecked by Mick the middle manager's capacity to spot a good idea, and appetite for bravery and risk taking and passion for ideas- that's a pretty tight bottleneck with the type of person corporations typically attract. Everything that happens is limited by up to 9 and more layers of the conservative, the timid, the passionless, the defeatist- the reasonable.

I'm not judging. I like that certain things taste the same now as when I was a kid in the 90s. This is not bad, per se- but it's also not something that is going to benefit that much from a productivity boost. Even worse, their best minds are going to be lured away harder then ever by the suddenly much greener pastures of AI assisted entrepreneurship.

So how are corporations going to respond? I can think of only one thing, they are going to do more of what they are uniquely capable of: Going offline, and this mostly means building moats where they can find them. There is going to a lot more passionate calling for regulation, that sounds appealing to a concerne citizen but also happens to benefit the incumbent in some kind of overpriced market. There will be price fixing, under the table deals- all sorts of stuff that has been going on in the bazaar since a thousand years that we nerds-cum-businessmen don't really know is happening or have a hard time navigating because we don't- or don't want to- speak that language. But that's okay- we will thrive where we can, creating more and better stuff than ever before, and especially more alternatives to things we don't like and right now don't think we get do without of. This is the golden age of those who can pull it off.

What I really wonder is- what happens when some of the new AI based businesses make it big?