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@Noahpinion

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Paul Graham

@paulg

Aug 5

It may be a mistake to ask which occupations are most safe from being taken by AI. What AI (in its current form) is good at is not so much certain jobs, but a certain way of working. It's good at scutwork. So that's the thing to avoid.

For example, is programming safe from AI? At the bottom end, definitely not. Those jobs are already disappearing. But at the same time the very best programmers (e.g. the ones who are good enough to start their own companies) are being paid exceptional amounts.

So I think the best general advice for protecting oneself from AI is to do something so well that you're operating way above the level of scutwork. But that does in turn rule out occupations that consist mostly of this kind of work.

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Paul Graham

@paulg

May 18

I was curious how well I have an essay loaded into my head when I'm working on it, so I tried reproducing the one I'm currently writing from memory. I reproduced it almost perfectly. But the differences suggest I don't have it memorized like lines in a play.

Instead I seem to have it (or at least parts of it) stored as ideas rather than words. Mostly these come out the same, right down to the punctuation, but occasionally they turn into different words.

For example, "You'd think that such an arbitrary constraint would" became "You'd expect such an arbitrary constraint to". In another place "you always end up sacrificing" became "it's always at the expense of". There was one whole paragraph that got turned around like this.

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Paul Graham

@paulg

May 4

I just realized something most people are going to lose when (as they inevitably will) they start using AIs to write everything for them. They'll lose the knowledge of how writing is constructed.

This is a very common kind of knowledge to be lost as technology progresses. Very few people now know how to weave cloth or turn pots or make baskets. But it's strange to think that writing will now enter this category.

And indeed I worry that something much bigger will be lost when most people stop writing. It's not that big a loss if you don't weave your own cloth. But writing is thinking. So if people stop writing, that's a whole kind of thinking they'll stop doing.

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Paul Graham

@paulg

Feb 22

The worst thing a pitch to professional investors can be is confusing. Professional investors are willing to give early stage startups the benefit of the doubt. They're ok with risk. But they can't invest in a startup whose pitch they can't even follow.

It is therefore a big mistake for early stage startups to conceal the risks they face by being vague or evasive. You're hiding something that won't bother experts using something that will. Just admit the risks upfront, and explain why the EV is high nonetheless.

A related mistake founders make is to underestimate how easy it is to confuse investors with an unclear pitch. The founders are familiar with their idea, but investors are seeing it for the first time. So even a small loss of clarity can lose them.

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Paul Graham

@paulg

Feb 10

The classic software startup writes code to solve users' problems. If AI makes writing code more of a commodity, understanding users' problems will become the most important component of starting a startup. But it already is.

What YC asks about in interviews is how well you understand users' needs, not your programming ability. I explained this years ago in this essay I wrote about how to ace your Y Combinator interview:

paulgraham.com/ace.html

So even if AI becomes very good at writing code, it won't change starting a startup that dramatically. Understanding users' needs will still be the core of starting a startup. And the best way to understand users' needs will still be to have them yourself.

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Paul Graham

@paulg

Jan 29

What most people don't realize about Boom is that if they ship an airliner at all, every airline that flies internationally will have to buy it or be converted against their will into a discount airline, flying tourists subsonically.

Ticket prices will be about the same as current business class prices on international flights. How can this be? Because the flights are so much shorter that you don't need lay-flat beds. You can use the seat pitch of domestic first class.

If business class travelers have a choice of a 10 hour subsonic flight from Seattle to Tokyo or a 5 hour supersonic one at the same price, they're all going to take the 5 hour one. Which means all the business class travelers switch to supersonic.

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