Is Not
For Profit AI, Capitalism and the Economy We Could Build Instead
A book of essays · in progress
The Future Is Not For Profit
The future is not for profit. The future is for us.
Standalone essays on AI, capitalism and the economy we could build instead. I'm giving it away free: read it online, download it, or listen to it in my voice.
Free when it's done. I'll only use your email to send you the book.
Why this book
Nobody Has a Plan
Tech doesn't have a plan. Politicians don't have a plan. No one has a clear vision for how the world should look, how the economy should change. Everyone knows that's a problem.
AI is going to become the engine of the next global economy. Hooking up autonomous digital super-intelligences to this version of capitalism is not going to work.
We are spending all of our time marveling at the engine. Almost no one is talking about the roads.
That's why I'm writing this book.
It's also why I'm giving it away. I'm not doing this to make money. There will be a way to chip in if you want to, but the point is getting these ideas out and getting the conversation going.
Inside
The essays
A Little Grape JuiceSeeing AI for what it is, without losing the wonder
Things Going RightWhat the worst AI scenario actually looks like
GodisgoodCapitalism has an alignment problem, and AI is about to break it
Faster HorsesWhat it will take to design the economy after AI
Each essay stands on its own. More are on the way.
Read a sample
A Little Grape Juice
Seeing AI for what it is, without losing the wonder
Around 1,850 years ago, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius kept a notebook of private reminders to himself, the one we now call the Meditations. In one entry he describes a habit he was trying to build. When a fancy meal is set in front of you, see it as the dead body of a fish, or a bird, or a pig. The Falernian, a famous Roman wine, “is only a little grape-juice, and this purple robe some sheep’s wool dyed with the blood of a shell-fish.”1 He wanted to see through the things people admired, all the way down to what they actually were.
I try to practice that habit too, and lately the thing I believe is most important to see clearly is the thing I use all day. I write and build with AI every day. I’m writing this essay right on the page of a little website on my laptop, and an AI built the whole thing for me. When I want something changed or researched, I leave a note in the margin, and a few minutes later it’s done.
At work, the product design I’m doing with it for my company, Grantable, is astonishing. It works from our company brain, the shared notes where we keep everything we know, so it already understands our customers, our software and the decisions we’ve made. The speed, the flexibility, the comprehension, the fidelity of context. I rarely have to correct it anymore. It just knows things.
Honestly, it’s pretty damn amazing. Marcus wanted to strip the things he looked at of every word that made them seem grand. I don’t want to make AI sound small, because it isn’t, but I do think it’s imperative we see it clearly. So I’ve been trying to do what he did, to look past the wonder at what’s actually happening inside the machine. What is AI, really?
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The Future Is Not For Profit
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Grimface Publishing Atenas · Est. 2026