We’re getting ready to close the doors on Cohort 2 of The AI Second Brain tonight (midnight PT).
And I’m putting the final touches on everything we’ll unveil starting on Thursday.
As I sit back and think about the big picture of what we’re about to embark on, I can’t help but think it’s not really about productivity.
I think what AI is ushering in is a new creative renaissance.
So many people are caught up in the fears, worries, outrage, and risks that AI entails. And I get it – those risks are real and possibly existential. They deserve a lot more attention and advocacy.
Yet I think the stakes and urgency of those questions tend to drown out AI’s incredible potential for play, wonder, curiosity, and joy. We’re quickly entering a world where anyone can just speak some words and watch them manifest into new creations before their very eyes.
I think back through history of the countless barriers that kept most people from realizing their heartfelt dreams, from satisfying their curiosity about the world, from experiencing intellectual surprise and exploring their full potential.
Getting the right degree, having the right information memorized, getting access to the right equipment or tools, knowing the right people in the right places. All these constraints created a ceiling on human experience. True creative expression has been the rarified privilege of the few.
Now we’re watching all those obstacles dissolve one after the other.
We find ourselves with an increasingly intelligent co-creator, who adapts perfectly to us, knows us inside out, and generates any tool we need on the fly. And yet the whole emotional atmosphere surrounding this technology is mostly grim, skeptical, and cynical.
The scarce resource in the world may no longer be intelligence, memory, or even creativity. It is the courage to act on your convictions. And doing so without denying or downplaying the risks and dangers, but holding the two contradictory feelings together.
This poem by David Whyte points to what I’m talking about:
What in your life is calling you,
When all the noise is silenced,
The meetings adjourned...
The lists laid aside,
And the Wild Iris blooms
By itself
In the dark forest...
What still pulls on your soul?
The world as we know it is coming to an end. What I want to know is, “What's good about that?”
One way to answer that is to act on it.
If something's been pulling at you through these last couple of weeks, tonight's your last chance to follow it here.
Enrollment for The AI Second Brain closes at midnight PT. The cohort starts Thursday.
Tiago
