ASI is coming, work is leaving, but yes there will be ways to get "ahead"

The vibe has shifted since OpenAI released o3. Many are accepting that AGI is here (or imminent) while others move the goalposts. Now, some people are wondering "how can I get ahead in the future?"

What did Ilya see? Numbers.

IQ is not a particularly useful measurement (but it’s better than nothing). As Sam Altman and others at OpenAI promised, we’re entering the era of “saturating benchmarks” which basically means “AI is acing every test we can throw at it.” Math, law, science, everything. Even abstract reasoning. It seems that “scale is all you need” was mostly true. A few algorithmic breakthroughs, and then scaling “test-time compute” (i.e. making models think longer) really was all you needed.

Many people in the industry are considering o3 to be AGI. If this paradigm continues for any length of time… well we’re on deck for ASI—artificial SUPER intelligence.

The good news is that, even though AI is surpassing human intelligence, it hasn’t really shown any signs of being uncontrollable or intrinsically evil. Some of the Doomers are keeping up the good fight, claiming “you haven’t seen anything yet” and “just wait… it will happen… eventually…” Many, however, have taken the hint and gone dark.

One type of comment I’ve seen on the rise as more and more people see the writing on the wall goes something like this:

Okay, I get it. AGI is here and ASI is just around the corner. We’re all going to lose our jobs (as we know them) so how can I get ahead in this future?

For many people, the pursuit of monetary advantages simply won’t make sense. The combination of redistribution plus technologically powered deflation means that, for all intents and purposes, we’re probably going to end up with what Elon Musk calls “UHI” or “universal high income.” Certainly we’re expecting to see a GDP far and away beyond what any of us could imagine. Even if we only get a “shaving off the top” our quality of life, due to economic and technological changes, will be beyond what any of us enjoy today.

As some are saying, life depicted for the average Earth citizen in Star Trek is actually going to be quite a bit below what we can live like in the future.

Will Money Even Stick Around?

Yes.

Many things may become “too cheap to meter” or so cheap that they will become a trivial expense. Consider air and sunlight. So abundant you wouldn’t even think about paying for them. Imagine your power bill drops to $15 per month due to local solar microgrids (low maintenance, no fuel). Imagine your internet bill drops to $5 per month, and your grocery bill drops to $200 per month. We’re going to get compounding returns for a few reasons.

The virtuous cycle here is that AI is so power-hungry that it will force us to build more power infrastructure, and that will mostly be safe, scalable, clean sources of energy, including solar, wind, nuclear, and so on. Eventually, the vast majority of energy will be used by AI and robots, simply due to elastic demand.

50% of energy usage in the future will be AI, which means we need even more energy than we’re generating today.

Now, even if things are super cheap, someone still has to pay for them.

Some people keep asking me “Have you heard of a Resource Based Economy and the Venus Project?”

I usually block these people. The short version is this: RBE proposes “we do away with money and instead barter directly with resources.”

It is as stupid as it sounds. How do you decide the relative value of those resources? What if you have steel and I don’t want steel? It’s almost like we need an abstracted unit of standard value? Ah, and to solve the problem of barter, we need some sort of debt mechanism that allows me to swap for some general purpose resource that everyone wants, like a kind of medium of exchange…

Ignore David Graeber (who really needs to stay in his lane, along with Yuval Noah Harari), the actual definition of money is this:

1. A unit of account (i.e. a standard abstraction of value)

2. A medium of exchange (which solves the double coincidence of wants)

3. A storehold of wealth (which means it keeps its value)

Money ain’t going anywhere. Most of the people who want to get rid of money are either broke or don’t understand basic economics, or broke. The notion of “getting rid of currency” is the quintessential “solution in search of a problem.” They see money as the root of all evil, so they idea is “just get rid of money” in much the same way that anarcho-libertarians want to just get rid of the government.

The impulse to abolish fundamental social technologies like money or government often stems from a psychological displacement of personal grievances onto systemic structures. Those who advocate for the wholesale elimination of currency or state apparatus typically demonstrate a form of externalization defense mechanism, where the complex sources of socioeconomic pain are reduced to a single, targetable entity that can be symbolically destroyed. This pattern manifests in both monetary abolitionists and anarcho-libertarians, who share a remarkably similar cognitive framework despite their ostensibly opposed political orientations.

The critical error in both cases is the failure to recognize that these institutions emerged as solutions to fundamental coordination problems in human society. Just as the absence of government inevitably leads to the emergence of de facto governance structures—often more predatory and less accountable than formal institutions—the elimination of currency would necessarily result in the spontaneous development of new monetary systems to facilitate exchange. Rather than addressing the underlying issues of wealth inequality or governmental dysfunction, the abolition approach represents a form of destructive ideation that conflates the elimination of visible symptoms with the resolution of root causes.

Okay, so if money is sticking around, but none of us can get jobs, how can we get ahead?

What Does “Getting Ahead” Even Mean?

Take a minute to think about the lifestyles of the rich and famous. What do they have that means they can “get ahead”? Is it the fabulous wealth? The artifacts of success? Or is mostly how they spend their time?

I have a theory that time sovereignty is the best metric of getting ahead—how much of your time do you spend doing what you want to be doing rather than something you must be doing?

I prioritized all these “real luxuries” in 2024. I am not rich.

The one thing you should change about the above meme is this: According to advertisers, luxury is:

Enter Edward Bernays, the grandfather of “public relations” which is really just a euphemism for propaganda. It was Bernays who first called people “sheep” because of how easy he found it to manipulate the masses. Fabricated demand, consumer culture, all of it was systematized and weaponized by Bernays at the behest of the government and business.

You will own nothing and be happy!

Some people are afraid that the Davos/WEF crowd (which they used to protest Bilderberg summits, ahh the good old days) want to enact a subscription-based model for the whole world but, uh, I got some news. You can’t extract rent from people with no money.

Anyways, there are plenty of ways to “get ahead” where money is totally irrelevant. The first is time sovereignty.

There will be plenty of ways to make money in the future, which I’ve discussed quite extensively under the umbrella of Post-Labor Economics. Mostly, I think it will be a combination of investment-based income, local goods and services (think local musicians), and redistribution policies. But the notion of exchanging labor for wages (in most cases) is going away. People will be able to parlay fame into money forever, whether influencers, commentators, athletes, and cults of personality. Humans love humans, and are always willing to spend some money on other humans. The capitalists will also continue making money, but most people are not capitalists.

Status Games Other Than Money

Money is only one way to “get ahead” but there are plenty. I highly recommend you read the book THE STATUS GAME by Will Storr.

Money can’t buy this physique.

One status game is centered entirely on the body. How you look. Considering the fact that we’re going to have a long time to live, and plenty of free time, I suspect that many people will index on physique as a status game. The more attractive you are, the higher status in some circles. That means more fame, popularity, clout, and sex.

In his book, Will Storr identifies three primary status games:

1. Dominance (Strength) Games: This is the most basic and primal, and includes things like high-contact sports, police, military, and “tough guys.”

2. Success (Skills) Games: In modern economies, this almost always just means money. It can also mean success in other kinds of competences, such as coding, music, and so on.

3. Virtue (Piety) Games: This is the more intellectual, values-driven set of games (think winning debates, chess tournaments, and that sort of thing). Mostly, however, it means piety—strict adherence to certain values.

These three categories cover just about everything, but I would further subdivide them. Within these games, there are many permutations and variations, as well as more nebulous games. One rule of thumb is that any time you have two or more humans, you always have status and pecking order. Even in groups that claim to oppose ordinal values “we are all equal here” well, some people are more equal than others. This is what I call a referent in epistemic tribes. In the case of an epistemic tribe with an egalitarian referent, well, you will still have people who virtue signal (or costly signal) this value more than others. For instance, I used to be a member of a local Burner community where one of the referents was “men and women are equal IN ALL WAYS.” This narrative is not particularly scientifically defensible, but pretending like it was true, factual, and obvious made one higher status in that group. In this case, the value-referent of egalitarianism is an example of a “virtue” game.

However, I would add that social status is itself another sort of game. Proximity to group leaders, network centrality, and number of connections you have simply make you appear to be higher status. People who seem to know and connect everyone are de facto high status individuals. How close you are to the movers and shakers of a group raises your status, hence why “name dropping” is another way to borrow status. Being fun to be around, being funny, quick-witted, as well as being kind and supportive are all ways to elevate one’s status within many groups (though many groups are more dog-eat-dog and competitive).

How To Get Ahead, Then?

Pick your poison.

• Hit the gym. If you are competitive and want to be sexy, get a great body. Work out, count your macros, and get lean. Maybe compete in CrossFit challenges.

• Read a book. Plenty of groups out there are more intellectual. Join a debate club, a reading circle, or a philosophy club. Plenty of Meetup groups out there.

• Become an influencer. Have a lot of opinions and a big mouth like me? Share them with the world. Content creation and social media influence are exact sciences now.

• Join a religion. Piety sells. If you are spiritual and have a lot of love to share, you can get pretty high status in a church setting.

• Pick up an instrument. Musicians are almost universally considered desirable. Some studies have shown that, all else being equal “they are a musician” increases the desirability of a person.

But rather than picking something arbitrarily because you want status, do something you love. Authenticity is another referent, a value, that exists in many groups. I am a writer, and I don’t write for clout. I don’t even write for money (I just got paid $17 for my book Heavy Silver!) but I do it because I love it. I have a local writing group that I love to see frequently and we all spend the holidays together (usually).

Here are a few mantras to help you figure it out.

• There is no substitute for passion. You also cannot force passion.

• Be authentic. The truth is always easier to maintain than a lie or a fabrication.

• Follow your bliss. This sounds hokey but it’s true. Challenge yourself.

• Live in alignment with your values. Alignment is one of the most important concepts I’ve ever learned.

• Keep it real. Experiment. Play. Explore.