life

AI and the value of taste

Anyone can now generate content (text, audio, images, video) with a single prompt. The cost of creation is collapsing to near zero. We live in amazing times.

It also produces what people have started calling “slop”: an overwhelming volume of content, much of it interchangeable. When supply becomes infinite, attention becomes scarce. Two thoughts follow from this.

First, the era of personalized content is finally here.
When generation is cheap, we don’t just filter existing content, we generate it. Instead of an algorithm deciding what you might like from a global pool, your feed can be created specifically for you, reflecting your interests, context, and intent. This is a meaningful shift: from recommendation to creation.

Second, as the cost of generation goes to zero, the value of taste goes to infinity.
When anyone can make something, what matters is knowing what should be made. Taste becomes the constraint. Just as there is one Picasso among thousands of painters, there will be people who can consistently direct AI toward work that resonates. They may not produce the content themselves, but they shape it—through judgment, curation, and intent.

In a world flooded with output, taste is the differentiator.

January 11, 2026 by AI business Humanity Rantings 0

From consumer to producer

I stopped making New Year resolutions a while ago. My philosophy has been simple: if something is actually important, waiting for a specific date on the calendar doesn’t make sense. You should just start doing it, like the Nike ad says.

But for 2026, I’m making an exception.

I have never considered myself a prolific writer, but lately, I’ve noticed a growing friction when trying to express my ideas in written form. I suspect I’ve fallen into the trap of becoming a habitual consumer. When you spend all your time consuming and less time creating, the “writing muscle” starts to atrophy.

In the past, I felt a certain pressure when publishing here. I wanted every post to be thoughtful, insightful, and universally helpful. That high bar often became a barrier to actually hitting “publish.”

I think it’s time to listen to Kevin Kelly and focus on the audience of one – me.

The goal for this year isn’t to write for the world, but to write to think, to clarify my own ideas, and to move back from being a consumer to a producer.

Here’s to 2026 being the year I start writing again 😊.

January 11, 2026 by Resolutions 0

Overheard : Prosperity & Open Source

Loved this quote by Matt Ridley on how open sourcing and sharing ideas leads to improved prosperity. Positive sum instead of zero sum games. The free exchange, combination, and mating of different ideas (like trade and specialization) drive human progress and wealth far more effectively than when ideas are not not shared and guarded.

Prosperity happens when ideas have sex

January 7, 2026 by OverHeard 0

Overheard : Kindness

Warren Buffett in his farewell letter on kindness

Greatness does not come about through accumulating great amounts of money, great amounts
of publicity or great power in government. When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you
help the world. Kindness is costless but also priceless. Whether you are religious or not, it’s hard to
beat The Golden Rule as a guide to behavior.

I wish he sticks around a long time even though he is giving up his oversight role at Berkshire and continues to share his wisdom.

His letter is also a masterclass in great writing. Each paragraph is less than 5 sentences, and each page has less than 10 paragraphs. All written in simple to understand language.

November 12, 2025 by OverHeard 0

Conversation maker

Had this idea for my next get‑together — a simple prompt that could spark some fun stories.

Tell the story of something you have on you right now.

It sounded random at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it.
Everyone’s carrying a story — in their pocket, on their wrist, in their wallet.

  • A keychain from a trip.
  • A bracelet from someone special.
  • A receipt for a plan that never happened.

No prep needed. Just real moments hiding in plain sight.

November 12, 2025 by Fun 0

Overheard : Attention span

Some interesting metrics on the attention span of consumers before they make a decision to spend more time on the content or not.

Shared by Lulu Cheng in a conversation with Shane Parrish

And then in terms of text, because one of the ways that people get to know you is through your writing, I don’t know about seconds, but it’s like the first paragraph. For an email, it’s the subject line. For a tweet, it’s the first line, first sentence, the hook. So the opportunity, the surface area of the opportunity we have to latch on, is getting more and more fine, which means that the hook that we need to use has to get more and more sharp.

  • Writing : First Paragraph
  • Email: Subject Line
  • Tweet : First Line
  • Video : First 30 seconds
September 26, 2025 by Management OverHeard 0

Overheard : mental model and curiosity

Mark Bertolini in a chat with Patrick O’Shaughnessy on “Invest Like the Best” podcast, speaking about the need to update your mental model about the world constantly. And the two things that differentiate good leaders from the rest.

I always say to people, the mental model that exists inside your head about how the world works is the most critical tool you have. And if you don’t constantly add new information to it and are not a continual learner, you can’t possibly know what you need to know to make good decisions.

And so I look for two things in executives, curiosity and courage. The curiosity to continue to ask questions and learn more every day, and the courage to act on it when you have a hypothesis that might be powerful. 

August 22, 2025 by Management OverHeard 0

Overheard : On constant increase in expectations

Sam Altman’s June 10, 2025 post on achieving singularity captured something I’ve been thinking about lately. There’s a particular passage that perfectly describes how we’re constantly ratcheting up our expectations:

Already we live with incredible digital intelligence, and after some initial shock, most of us are pretty used to it. Very quickly we go from being amazed that AI can generate a beautifully-written paragraph to wondering when it can generate a beautifully-written novel; or from being amazed that it can make live-saving medical diagnoses to wondering when it can develop the cures; or from being amazed it can create a small computer program to wondering when it can create an entire new company. This is how the singularity goes: wonders become routine, and then table stakes.

This hits at something fundamental about human psychology. We have this remarkable ability to normalize the extraordinary, almost immediately.

I see this everywhere now. My kids casually ask AI to help with homework in ways that would have seemed like science fiction just three years ago. We’ve gone from “can AI write coherent sentences?” to “why can’t it write a perfect screenplay?” in what feels like months.

The progression Altman describes—paragraph to novel, diagnosis to cure, program to company—isn’t just about AI capabilities scaling up. It’s about how our mental models adjust. Each breakthrough becomes the new baseline, not the ceiling.

What struck me most is his phrase: “wonders become routine, and then table stakes.” That’s exactly it. The wonder doesn’t disappear because the technology got worse—it disappears because we got used to it. And then we need something even more impressive to feel that same sense of possibility.

June 10, 2025 by AI Humanity OverHeard Rantings Technology 0

Overheard : Worthless friends vs Transactional friends

Codie Sanchez quoting Prof. Arthur Brooks on different types of friendship in a conversation with Shane Parrish.

Worthless friends are the friends that have no transactional value. You don’t want anything from them. They don’t want anything from you. They want to hang out with you. They want to go on a walk with you. They don’t want your email list. They don’t want access to your money. They just want to have a beer on a Friday night. And these friendships end up materially increasing, our happiness, these worthless friends, whereas these transactional friendships actually end up, in many ways, decreasing our happiness

January 8, 2025 by Humanity OverHeard 0