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https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1460367269679321096

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Ethan Mollick

@emollick

Jan 2

Gemini, ChatGPT & Claude: “What is the single best investment equivalent in spending $1000 that I could make if I time traveled back to any destination circa 1300.”

Gemini: Magna Carta stored at Durham Cathedral

ChatGPT: A share in Stora Kopparberg

Claude: A waqf at Al-Azhar

Claude’s answer:

## The Best Investment: A Contribution to an Islamic Waqf Endowment

**My recommendation: Contribute $1,000 (2026 USD equivalent) to an established Islamic waqf endowment, specifically to a major educational or charitable institution like Al-Azhar in Cairo or the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez.**

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### Converting $1,000 (2026 USD) to 1300 Currency

A laborer earned £2 a year in 1300, which means 40 shillings, or 480 pence a year – or 2 pence a day. Using historical purchasing power comparisons and the fact that Crown revenues (at peace) were £30,000 circa 1300, and Barons earned £200-500+ per year , your $1,000 would translate to approximately **10-16 shillings** (120-192 silver pennies) in 1300.

This could buy you:

- A cottage (1 bay, 2 storeys) for £2 in early 14th century - so you’d have roughly 25-40% of a small cottage
- Rent for a cottage at 5s/year - about 2-3 years of cottage rent
- Several sheep or livestock

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### Why Islamic Waqf Beats All Other Options

**1. Legal Protection Unmatched in History**

A waqf is an inalienable charitable endowment under Islamic law. It typically involves donating a building, plot of land or other assets for Muslim religious or charitable purposes with no intention of reclaiming the assets.

Critically, the inviolability of the waqf arrangement has traditionally provided security for the assets, which cannot be sold to pay a debt, be confiscated by a government that subscribes to Islamic law, or be used beyond their designated purpose.

**2. Proven 700+ Year Survival Record**

Under the Mamluks, Al-Azhar gained influence and rose in prestige. The Mamluks established salaries for instructors and stipends for the students and gave the institution an endowment. A college was built for the institution in 1340, outside of the mosque.

This is precisely the era you’d be investing in - and Al-Azhar still operates today as one of the world’s most prestigious Islamic institutions, having survived the Mongol invasions, Crusades, Ottoman conquest, Napoleonic invasion, British colonialism, and modern revolutions.

**3. Multiple Waqf Institutions from the 1300s Still Function**

The Al-Nuri Hospital, which operated for some 700 years, was the same hospital where Al-Mansur Qalawun was treated and inspired to establish his own hospital in Cairo. The Bimaristan al-Nuri was founded in 1156 CE and operated continuously for centuries.

The Al-Mansuri Hospital was substantial, both in size and endowments. This hospital had the capability of holding 8000 beds and was funded off of annual endowments totaling one million dirhams… The Al-Mansuri Hospital remained operational through the 15th century CE and still stands in Cairo today, though it is now known as “Mustashfa Qalawun.”

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### Why Other Options Fail the 90% Survival Test

**Land in Europe:**

- English land faced confiscation during the Wars of the Roses, Reformation, Civil War, and Enclosure Acts
- The Statutes of Mortmain of 1279 and 1290 were designed to prevent land from falling into the “dead hand” of the church, and thus depriving the Crown of future revenue.

**Religious foundations in Christian Europe:**

- Massive destruction during the Reformation (1530s) - Henry VIII dissolved thousands of monasteries, almshouses, and charitable foundations

**Early bonds/financial instruments:**

- The lives of perpetual loans typically were “cut short by imprudent financing, government recall, or the misfortunes of wars and revolutions.”
- The oldest bond that is still paying interest is one issued in 1624 - over 300 years after your target date, and even these are exceptionally rare survivors

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ChatGPT:

Buy a documented ownership share in the Great Copper Mountain at Falun (Stora Kopparberg), Sweden

Why this is the best candidate that actually clears your survivability rule

This isn’t just “buy land and hope.” Falun is one of the rare cases where we have (a) medieval-era documentary evidence, (b) an early share-like ownership structure, and (c) continuity into a modern successor company.

Key points, with sources:
•The Great Copper Mountain (Falun) has surviving documentation from 1288 and a major charter dated 1347.
•That charter-era operation is described by ICOMOS (UNESCO’s advisory body) as being organized “as a corporate operation” where free miners (bergsmän) owned shares (“fjärdeparter”) proportional to their interests—explicitly calling it a precursor to later joint-stock companies and noting it’s often referred to as “the oldest company in the world.”
•The Swedish History Museum describes the medieval bergslag business organizations (from the 13th century onward) where members owned shares of a mine or smelting furnace—i.e., a real, historically grounded “equity-like” structure you can buy into around 1300.
•There is a well-known 1288 share document associated with the mine (a share entitling the holder to 1/8 of the Great Copper Mine), and the Wikimedia description notes the original is in Sweden’s National Archives (Riksarkivet) with a copy in the Stora Enso archive in Falun.
•ICOMOS describes the enterprise’s later evolution: it notes the “old company” was reconstituted as a modern limited company in 1888 (Stora Kopparbergs Bergslags AB).
•Stora Enso itself (the modern, publicly traded successor through corporate evolution/merger) explicitly dates its first recorded documentation to 1288 copper mining near Falun, notes progression to Stora Kopparbergs Bergslag, and states Stora Enso was formed in 1998 via merger.
•A mainstream historical write-up (LA Times) also recounts the famous 1288 transaction (a bishop trading property for a one‑eighth interest), framing it as a basis for the “oldest continuously operating company” claim.

Why this is unusually robust against “regime change risk”

To meet your “90% chance” requirement, you want something that is not dependent on a single dynasty, a single city-state’s solvency, or an easily confiscated stash of precious metal.

Falun/Stora Kopparberg has a few structural advantages versus the usual time-travel answers:
1.The underlying asset is a productive resource (a major mining complex) with deep economic importance over centuries, not just a paper claim on a government that might default. ICOMOS emphasizes its enormous economic significance and long influence.
2.There is evidence of institutional continuity across centuries (medieval documents → charter structure → modern corporate form → successor company history still tracked today).
3.The ownership model was share-based early on, which is exactly what you want if the goal is “one investment that can survive” rather than a pile of valuables you’d have to conceal.

Is “90%” provable? Not in a literal actuarial sense—history doesn’t give clean probabilities. But if your standard is “pick the option with the strongest real-world track record of surviving for ~700+ years,” this is about as close as you can get while staying within your rules.

What “spending $1000 (2026 USD)” means in practice

In 1300 you can’t hand someone modern dollars, so the practical equivalent is: you arrive with ~$1000 worth of widely recognized value (e.g., precious metal by weight), then convert that into the local transaction form to purchase a fractional mine share / share-right within the bergslag system.

The investment is the legally recognized share of a productive enterprise—not a hidden hoard.

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Ethan Mollick

@emollick

Dec 13, 2025

ChatGPT 5.2: "Build an interactive Excel spreadsheet where I can pick two D&D monsters to fight against each other and the spreadsheet simulates the combat somehow, including special abilities. Give a D&D look"

Thinking took 60 minutes(!) & had to have it fix an error, but cool

Claude 4.5 Opus followed the same instructions very quickly, and with style, but simplified the problem to avoid using actual special abilities or status, just straight up rolls for damage

Gemini 3 Pro. I really hope they add consistent ability to work with or download files.

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Ethan Mollick

@emollick

Dec 9, 2025

I did not expect that the PowerPoint killer would be something called Nano Banana Pro, but that is where its heading

It makes the major efforts by all the other AI companies, including Microsoft, to crack PowerPoint by using python seem like a dead end

ImageGen is all you need?

The thing is that NotebookLM can just take source materials, a topic, and an idea and make a very pretty, impactful deck.

Hallucinations are very rare, though there are still some spelling and graphics issues. Editing capability is apparently coming, but the direction is clear.

The slide deck is the result of me throwing my entire book into NotebookLM, by the way.

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Ethan Mollick

@emollick

Nov 23, 2025

Voice is one of the most useful ways to interact with AI to do work but it seems to have been semi-abandoned for serious use outside of the “chat with a friend” case.

All of the voice modes only access weak models with low latency, making them zippy & fun but kind of useless.

If you don’t think of voice models as a fun chat, but rather as a way of working, it suggests that pauses are fine, even preferred (don’t talk with me unless you have something to say). And alternative UXs beyond “talk with your AI about the weather” become possible to explore.

Also I want to turn off the breathing, giggling, and disfluencies. Anthropomorphism can be helpful in many cases but it gets to be too much, especially for serious discussions. The tone is off and it feels ingratiating and slows things down.

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Ethan Mollick

@emollick

Nov 21, 2025

I think my “otters on a plane using WiFi” may be a saturated benchmark now that nano banana pro can do this.

Prompt: Scientists who are otters are using a white board to explain ethan mollicks otter on a plane using WiFi test of AI (you must search for this) and demonstrating it has been passed with a wall full of photos of otters on planes using laptops

History oneusefulthing.org/p/the-recent-h…

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Ethan Mollick

@emollick

Oct 27, 2025

Since there are so many AI announcements, my advice is to focus on those expanding what folks can do with AI (& especially tools that democratize who can use AI) rather than every single UX improvement

Skills, connectors & agents with file access/CLIs are especially interesting.

Next up: pay attention to expansions in artifacts/vibe coding for non-coders, specialized AI tools for industries outside of coding (see Claude Finance) and systems that take software people use every day and radically transform how they work using AI (Excel agents, for example)

Also interesting to watch ambitious new applications that are AI-native. What Google is doing with NotebookLM, for example, is basically creating an entirely new interface for working with information that is a pretty strong break with older ways of handling large amounts of info

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