alt Hacker NewsI've been thinking about this a lot recently, and I don't know if it is possible to stop. I've been thinking the most impactful thing would be to create open-source tools to make it easier to build agents on top of open-source models. We have a few open-source models now, maybe not as good as Gemini, but if the agent were sufficiently good, could that compensate?
I think that would democratize some of the power. Then again, I haven't been super impressed with humanity lately and wonder if that sort of democratization of power would actually be a good thing. Over the last few years, I've come to realize that a lot of people want to watch the world burn, way more than I had imagined. It is much easier to destroy than to build. If we make it easier for people to build agents, is that a net positive overall?
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> If we make it easier for people to build agents, is that a net positive overall?
If we make it easier for people to drive and have cars, isn't that a net positive? If we make it easier for X, isn't that better? No, not necessarily, that's the entire point of this series of essays. Friction is good in some cases! You can't learn without friction. You can't have sex without friction.
Pareto almost never goes away. Democratization usually improves the baseline (rights, resources, time) but it rarely flattens power distribution. Even with open-source models, power will likely tilt toward those with the most compute or the best feedback loops. So considering the imbalance as inevitable , the discussion should be about ensuring the new 'baseline' for humanity is actually net positive.