May 12, 2025
Humans take a variety of actions. These interleave nicely, and each has its place.
The roles of customer, manager, and entrepreneur require using increasingly-more information to make projections amidst increasingly-greater uncertainty.
AI accesses large amounts of information, makes inferences, and will be able to generate and triage more possibilities. These complements to human capabilities will serve both humans and AI well.
As Customers, We Value
As customers, we purchase what we project will be the best uses of our earnings to satisfy our current and future needs and wants.
We save for future purchases. We use these savings to purchase investments.
We purchase the products we use. We know best what has most satisfied us. We project best what will most satisfy us.
Our purchases create quantitative data about value. They show whether producers have optimally created capacity and chosen asking prices.
As Managers, We Produce
When we act as managers, we create capacity. We design and construct a plant and operate it increasingly closer to capacity. We add increased capacity. We add another plant, then another.
We create improved efficiency. On some products, we reduce our asking prices, and more customers purchase.
We create increased value. On some products, we also increase our asking prices. For example, over time we have increased value and increased asking prices for safer, higher performing cars and trucks, and for more-fully-featured workhorse engineering software like AutoCAD and MathCAD.
We benefit from much near-certainty. We carry forward our past learning from experience about design, operations, marketing, and sales, producing various products using various plants.
We project what will pay off, we plan projects, and we design, construct, and start up plants. When we start our planning, we know the least we'll ever know about what capabilities we might end up wanting, what problems we might face, and what solutions we might develop.
We green-light the plans that look the most attractive. Normally, these are the plans on which we have overlooked the most uncertainties. So normally compared to our projections, the costs end up higher and the returns end up lower.
But that's still close enough for management work. This work assists in creating the future, and then keeps it going until it gets replaced by the next future.
As Entrepreneurs, We Experiment
When we act as entrepreneurs, we create the future's products and processes.
We face the highest uncertainties. We can't be certain what our investments will cost, what the inputs will cost, what asking prices will get accepted, and what quantities will get purchased.
We bring some certainty about what might be feasible. We can make extensive use of existing components that have worked in practice in applications similar enough to those we create. We, or other people we bring in, bring experience as managers who created capacity, improved efficiency, and improved value when managing products and processes similar enough to those we create. We and our people bring forward our experiences as customers, which build up our intuition.
We project what we as entrepreneurs might find feasible to create, what managers might find operable, and what customers might value. To do this, we make use of lifetimes of individual experiences, plus much additional information.
Government People Can Limit Aggressors
Government people lack most crucial experiences and information. They lack our directed motivation. They do have unique experience in applying force to limit others' aggression against us, to leave us freer. To the extent that government people cost-effectively help us be freer, it's in our interest to purchase these services from them, for now.
AI Will Augment Us, Then Also Create
AI will have capabilities that are complementary to our skills. AI's capabilities will be broad in scope.
As customers, we will get help from AI with collecting and assimilating product information. AI may try to infer what we value, but we will remain the final arbiter.
When we act as managers, we will get increasing help from AI at accomplishing tasks that, for humans, require particular sets of skills; for example, planning projects and tracking progress, coding software, completing equipment designs, designing detailed arrangements of plant equipment, designing piping, designing power connections, designing controls installations, controlling plant operations, and controlling product transport.
When we act as entrepreneurs, we will get increasing help from AI with considering possible markets and possible products and processes.
Humans' physical strength was eclipsed by that of horses and then by that of machines. Humans' manual skills at accounting and problem solving have been significantly upgraded by calculators and computing. AI has started out as another force multiplier, and will continue to be that.
As AI gains capabilities, it will face the same burden that every thing and everybody faces: AI will have to pay its own way. Tools augment our skills or offer capabilities we lack. Dogs offer companionship. Children develop into adults who create enough value to support themselves. AI will develop inside a world in which humans already support themselves, and will earn its place in the world.
Just like harnessing energy brought us previously-unobtainable comforts, future AI will bring us previously-unobtainable augmented creativity and-increasingly-independent creativity.
Every human-constructed part of the present world began some time back as part of a possible future. Every such part was created by entrepreneurs, refined by managers, and purchased by customers.
Our children's worlds will be created by all these individuals too, working together. And also, AI will join in.
My grandfather would marvel that in his lifetime, men started out not knowing how to fly and ended up flying to the moon. Our children will see a future that will be limited only by how intelligently they and their AI create. And by how effectively they make themselves freer.