In the past, search engines and the open web granted access to other people’s knowledge but the task fell to you to synthesize an understanding from it and build a capability to act.

Now with LLMs, it’s possible to build things you don’t fully understand which then require a perpetual license in order to have the capacity to maintain and modify.

LLMs don’t just do things for you, they do things instead of you — and the doing is a huge part of the point. The struggle to understand, to synthesize, to explain, it all has a byproduct: you! Your own capacity to act in the world.

But now you can rent that capacity. Every time you reach for the LLM instead of struggling through it yourself, you’re borrowing against someone else’s capacity that you’re not developing in yourself.

It’s as if I used to be a car mechanic, fixing my own vehicles or looking to other mechanics for advice or a demonstration on approaching my problems. That process produced a working car — the output I wanted — but it also produced a capability within myself to fix the next one that came along.

But now, for expedience and speed, I drop all my cars off the LLM dealer for fixes and maintenance. Fast and efficient — but also more dependent than ever.

(See also: Eric Bailey on evolved antennas.)