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 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

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.

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.

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

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)

I don’t have much to add to the bubble discussion, but the “this time is different” argument is, in part, based on the sincere belief of many at the AI labs that there is a race to superintelligence & the winner gets,.. everything.

It is a key dynamic that is not discussed much

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1977494095225410007

You don’t have to believe it (or think this is a good idea), but many of the AI insiders really do. Their public statements are not much different than their private ones.

Without considering that zero sum dimension, a lot of what is happening in the space makes less sense.

Very soon, the blocker to using AI to accelerate science is not going to be the ability of AI, but rather the systems of science itself, as creaky as they are.

The scientific process is already breaking under a flood of human-created knowledge. How do we incorporate AI usefully? Science isn't just a thing that happens. We can have novel discoveries flowing from AI-human collaboration every day (and soon, AI-led science), and we really have not built the system to absorb those results and translate them into streams of inquiry and translations to practice

Some new theoretical economics papers looking at the implications of AGI.

These two papers argue that a true AGI-level AI (equivalent to a human genius), if achieved, would eventually displace most human labor and reduce the economic value of remaining human work to near-zero.
Papers:
conference.nber.org/conf_papers/f2…
conference.nber.org/conf_papers/f2…

Hey Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini: "I am time traveling back to the 75 BC Rome for one day. I can't bring anything back. What is the one thing I could learn that would most advance today's knowledge and what is one thing I could do there that would make me richest today"

Pretty good

Summary of their views:
Gemini: Get how to make maritime concrete and provide an artifact proving time travel
Claude: Memorize specific texts and the formula for concrete and location of proscribed villas
ChatGPT: Figure out Etruscan language and the location of Alexander's Tomb

Claude's new ability to work with Excel files is the best I have seen so far

I have given it existing spreadsheets to work with and asked it to create new ones. Good use of formatting, formulas, etc.

It created all of this, including 406 formulas, from one prompt (& its solid).


This is like an assignment I give, and it would be a good result of a week-long team project for my MBA class. I can't promise it is error free, but I haven't found any issues so far.

This chart is being horribly misinterpreted.

This is not where the training data of AI comes from, it is a study done by a SEO firm that claims to show how often sites come up at least once in THE WEB SEARCH FUNCTION of certain AI agents when they do a web search for more info. The company searched for a bunch of keywords using Google AI Mode and ChatGPT web search and Perplexity and then said they measured how many times these sites were included in the reply.

If you are search for "find me a good stove" or whatever, this should look like the results.

We have data on the environmental impact per AI prompt:
Gemini: 0.00024 kWh & 0.26 mL water
ChatGPT: 0.0003 kWh & 0.38 mL
...the same energy as one Google search in 2008 & 6 drops of water.

Seems to be improving, too: Google reports a 33x drop in energy use per prompt in a year.

These numbers match independent direct measures: 0.00004 kWh for 400 tokens on Llama 3.3 70B on a H100 node.

We do not know the amount of energy required to train these models, which was estimated at a little above 500,000 kWh for GPT-4, about 18 hours of a Boeing 737 in flight.

“Claude Opus 4.1, De-Carcinize the Great Gatsby” (That was the only prompt)

Pretty clever, actually.


# The Great Gatsby: De-Carcinized

## Chapter 1: Direct Approach

Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and immediately walked straight to his neighbor Jay Gatsby’s house.

“Hello,” Nick said. “I’m your new neighbor. I notice you throw parties.”

“Yes,” Gatsby replied, opening the door fully instead of peering through a crack. “I throw them hoping Daisy Buchanan will attend. She lives across the bay. I love her.”

“She’s my cousin,” Nick said. “She’s married to Tom.”

“I know. Would you arrange a meeting?”

“Sure.”

## Chapter 2: Honest Communications

Tom Buchanan stood in his living room, addressing everyone directly. “I’m having an affair with Myrtle Wilson. Daisy, you probably know this. Myrtle, you should know I’ll never leave Daisy for you.”

Myrtle nodded. “I understand but choose to continue anyway.”

Daisy turned to face them. “I’m unhappy but too comfortable to change anything.”

## Chapter 3: The Party Without Pretense

Gatsby’s next party featured a sign at the entrance: “These Parties Are Specifically to Attract Daisy Buchanan’s Attention.”

Guests arrived and immediately stated their intentions:
“I’m here for free champagne.”
“I’m networking for business.”
“I enjoy judging rich people.”

Gatsby stood on a platform with a megaphone: “Thank you all for coming to my Daisy-attraction event. Please enjoy yourselves while I wait hopefully by the window.”

## Chapter 4: Swimming Forward

Gatsby drove Nick directly to the city—no detours through the Valley of Ashes, no sideways routes through East Egg.

“I should tell you my backstory without any embellishment,” Gatsby said. “I was born poor as James Gatz. I made my fortune through questionable means with Meyer Wolfsheim. Everything I’ve built is to win Daisy back.”

“That seems unhealthy,” Nick observed.

“It absolutely is,” Gatsby agreed.

## Chapter 5: The Reunion

At Nick’s house, Gatsby walked straight to Daisy when she arrived.

“I’ve loved you for five years,” he said. “I’ve built my entire life around the hope of resuming our relationship.”

“That’s concerning,” Daisy replied. “But I’m flattered and bored in my marriage, so let’s proceed.”

They looked at each other directly, no dancing around the truth.

“This will end badly,” they said in unison.

“Want to see my house?” Gatsby asked.

“Yes, though material possessions won’t fix our fundamental incompatibility.”

## Chapter 6: Clear Waters

Tom attended Gatsby’s party and immediately announced: “I distrust you and will investigate your background.”

“Fair enough,” Gatsby replied. “I am indeed hiding things.”

Daisy pulled Gatsby aside. “These parties make me uncomfortable. You’re not the same person I loved five years ago.”

“You’re right,” Gatsby admitted. “But I’m unable to accept that.”

## Chapter 7: Direct Confrontation

In the hotel room, everyone laid their cards on the table—literally, they brought actual cards with their feelings written on them.

Tom’s card: “Gatsby is a criminal.”
Gatsby’s card: “Daisy loves me, not you.”
Daisy’s card: “I love security and comfort more than either of you.”
Nick’s card: “I’m uncomfortable and want to leave.”
Jordan’s card: “This is entertaining.”

“Well,” Tom said, “since Daisy has clarified her priorities, and I offer more security, I win.”

Gatsby nodded sadly. “Your logic is sound.”

## Chapter 8: Forward Motion

Driving home, Daisy didn’t swerve or panic. She drove straight and responsibly, arriving home without incident.

“That was anticlimactic,” Gatsby said.

Later, Wilson approached Gatsby at his pool.

“Did you have an affair with my wife?” Wilson asked directly.

“No, that was Tom Buchanan. He just told you it was me to deflect blame.”

“Oh. My mistake.” Wilson left to find Tom.

This is, in fact, what early acceleration of science looks like with jagged AI.

Writing abstracts takes a lot of time, many scientists are bad writers and clearly written abstracts are important. As long as the authors check over the results, this is a good use case for AI.

https://twitter.com/dkthomp/status/1951677835124330949

I wrote about some of the early impact of AI on science last year, including for writing. oneusefulthing.org/p/four-singula…

Kinda amazing: the mystery model "summit" with the prompt "create something I can paste into p5js that will startle me with its cleverness in creating something that invokes the control panel of a starship in the distant future" & "make it better"

2,351 lines of code. First time

https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1922749136996114771

Code: editor.p5js.org/emollick/sketc…

Play it: editor.p5js.org/emollick/full/…

Don't leave AI to the STEM folks.

They are often far worse at getting AI to do stuff than those with a liberal arts or social science bent. LLMs are built from the vast corpus human expression, and knowing the history & obscure corners of human works lets you do far more with AI These are systems that respond to human writing and (often) techniques that apply to human psychology.

Everyone now has a machine that makes words, images, video, sound where the limit is often your own ability to imagine something new (or invoke old ideas others do not know).

X (and other social media sites) make our 1990s optimism about the Information Age seem silly.

Even with all of the world's information a click away (& a free AI that can help explain that information in a personalized way), half-mangled anecdotes with no source win every time. It really is not what most people who was working on building the early web in the late 1990s were expecting. Universal access to information was going to transform everything, creating widespread learning and bridging divides.

It really is shocking how much that didn't happen.

So, OpenAI Deep Research can connect directly to Dropbox, Sharepoint, etc.

Early experiments only, but it feels like what every "talk to our documents" RAG system has been aiming for, but with o3 smarts and easy use. I haven't done robust testing yet, but very impressive so far. I think it is going to be a shock to the market, since "talk to our documents" is one of the most popular implementations of AI in large organizations, and this version seems to work quite well and costs very little.

Very big impact: The final version of a randomized, controlled World Bank study finds using a GPT-4 tutor with teacher guidance in a six week after school progam in Nigeria had "more than twice the effect of some of the most effective interventions in education" at very low costs


Paper: documents.worldbank.org/en/publication…

Microsoft keeps launching Copilot tools that seem interesting but which I can't ever seem to locate. Can't find them in my institution's enterprise account, nor my personal account, nor the many Copilot apps or copilots to apps or Agents for copilots

Each has their own UIs. 🤷‍♂️ For a while in 2023, Microsoft, with its GPT-4-powered Bing, was the absolute leader in making LLMs accessible and easy to use.