launched the beta for neighborboodOS in the most perfect way
- our living room
- 5 committed/active neighbors (3 are 70+ years old)
- pizza ๐
itโs a ritual I plan to do for every neighborhood that onboards to nOS (invites go out in Nov)
Job news! And heck, totally new adventure news. I've joined @newtheoryai as Head of Developer Relations to bring 'world models' into being.
Literally, into beings. World models are an emerging flavor of AI based on state, physics, and causality instead of just words and pixels. This is important for anything that depends on moving around in and interacting with the real world.
Which means ROBOTS. Lots of robots. But also "embodiment": any being, process, or robot through which AI pushes into the real, physical world. A great model means simulations that can run the next five seconds ten thousand times, and pick the best option. It means being able to run reality in headless mode. It means being able to pair a fast, intuitive brain with the logical language-based brains LLMs offer.
And holy smokes, I'm excited. I met @JonathanHillis and @cashewmake2 at the same time I was already plunging down the world model rabbit hole, and knew from the first meeting I had to join. The rate of nerd snipes per minute in this office is incredible.
My fundamental thesis is we're in a period of exponential growth in AI and robotics. This sounds obvious, but most people aren't making decisions as though that's true. Things that seem five years away are actually one year away. Things that seem six months away might suddenly be walking down your street tomorrow.
You can build a robot *right now* for less than $500, and that number's still dropping. With Claude Code, anyone remotely technical is about to discover they can manufacture and program their own mechanical familiars.
The ecosystem isn't ready for that flood of people yet. 'Robotics' still sounds academic, or like you need an electrical engineering degree. 'Embodied AI' is better, but esoteric as hell.
My job is to get the ecosystem ready and push these new abilities into as many hands as possible. That includes New Theory's world model we're building at New Theory, but also the tools and actual robots across the ecosystem.
If you're in robotics, embodied AI, and world models, I want to talk to you -- especially if you're putting real robots to work. DMs are open ๐ฆพ๐
every software incumbent is fighting a dual front war right now, & dual front wars are historically challenging af.
from above, model companies are vertically integrating through their own surfaces... you can see anthropic, openai, google are all shipping products that directly compete with established saas categories. from below, an effectively infinite number of small teams are filling niches faster & cheaper than ever before, cuz the minimum viable team to build real software has collapsed to 1-3 ppl with ai.
the squeeze this creates is existential in so many ways & you can see markets are pricing this squeeze in now. incumbents can't focus resources upward without getting hollowed out from underneath, & they can't play whack a mole with disposable startups without leaving themselves exposed to platform level moves from above. the standard playbook of acquiring threats, raising switching costs, & bundling feature doesn't really work when the bottom up competitors are infinite & don't need to capture much value to survive.
this is the fundamental structural shift most people haven't internalized about what's actually happening with ai. quite simply ai is simultaneously compressing the entire competitive landscape from both ends, & the companies caught in the middle have no really good strategic response.
๐ฃ๏ธ feature update on media reaction finder
// discover direct reactions to any article/content and related topic discussions across web + social
// latest release includes generated audio meta commentary, wider search results, collections + more
๐ https://t.co/eOUB6nNFYc ๐
the old way of scaling teams is dead:
we used to hire specialists โ designers, engineers, PMs โ each in their lane, scaling by adding more people. but when Cursor can take you from idea to code in minutes, execution isn't the bottleneck anymore. taste and judgment are.
what matters now: people who can see the full stack, move between layers, but specialize deeply in something AI can't replicate yet. T-shaped but way wider โ conversant across domains, expert in one thing.
AI doesn't just make you faster. it ties teams together differently. no more waterfall โ designer codes the prototype, engineer extends it, both work in the same medium. the gap between disciplines disappears.
this raises individual ceilings. i'm a designer who built ryOS entirely in Cursor โ couldn't have done that before. but i'm not replacing engineers, i'm just removing execution barriers while keeping my design taste and systems thinking.
you're not hiring for roles anymore. you're hiring for breadth + depth, taste, systems thinking, learning velocity. 5 people who can work across code/design/product beat 20 specialists coordinating handoffs.
the new bottlenecks are deeply human: taste, vision, judgment, context. AI explores options, but can't tell you which is right. that's where specialization matters now โ in judgment, not execution.
small teams, fluid boundaries, everyone working in the same tools. roles still matter but as overlapping concerns with different depths, not separate silos. tools handle execution, you handle vision.
this is what we're building at Cursor โ closing the gap between idea and reality. so your taste becomes the main thing, and teams have more freedom to explore crazy ideas.
@skirano@MagicPathAI Holy shit, these are incredible! Iโm working on my personal website and could really use this to brainstorm better designs; can I get beta?
More important than calling me out, it didnโt tell me what to do
Instead it asked, prodded, and encouraged me to take a different approach
The call-out felt safe (bc it was from AI, not someone I respect) but also irrefutable (bc it cited its sources lol)
Just had the first actively helpful push-back from AI
journaling w @mindseraAI & the entry analysis surfaced entries from sept โ24 re: a similar dynamic
It then called me out for falling back into my same pattern I did back then too
Non-sycophantic AI is the only helpful AI
so relieved @browsercompany got acquired tbh
@diabrowser is growing into such an indispensable product for me that I'm re-investing in after getting burned by Arc
trade the VC numbers game for the patiently crafting best browser for the AI era
Weโve put such an emphasis on 3rd spaces, that weโve forgotten aboot iur lost important 1st space: home
Neighborhoods require constant care and attention to feel alive, but nobody talks about how 3rd spaces actually pull away time from making your 1st space a dream
AIโs usefulness is similar to a leaf blower
Great to get 80% of the way there with gathering lots of leaves across a large space
But terrible in the last 20% where it really counts, like putting the leaves into the bin