David Douglas

Adventurer extraordinaire, humanist, curious about life, seeking zen and to make a positive impact wherever I go and to whomever I meet along the way.

[David Douglas @ddouglas2007]

@sairahul1 So let me get this straight..engineers are the now managers. Got it.

[Holden Culotta @Holden_Culotta]

Jimmy Dore on Thomas Massie’s loss: “We obviously don’t have democracy.”

“It’s an oligarchy.”

“Which is why we have homelessness everywhere.”

“You go bankrupt when you get sick.”

“We go bankrupt just to get educated.”

“And we live in a surveillance state.”

“We’re like China, except we have more street crime and slower trains.”

“How dare we preach democracy around the world and that the people in China are oppressed when we obviously don’t have democracy here?”

“They did that Princeton study in 2015 about how 90% of people, their wishes never are expressed in legislation.”

“It’s only the top 10% of the wealthy people.”

“Your vote literally doesn’t matter.”

@jimmy_dore @TuckerCarlson @RepThomasMassie

[David Douglas @ddouglas2007]

@nick_kapur Totally agree. And look at the incentives…if we meter out intelligence as per Sam Altman’s recent appearance on stage the more they can fool us they care the better. Stay human my friend - let’s not be fooled!

[David Douglas @ddouglas2007]

2 stories from dot com days

Top tier VC (founding managing partner) picked his nose throughout, said venture was dead and we would never make it.

Flew out to meet Midwest VC. After pitch to all the partners the lead partner took us to his office, said we should raise smaller amount then pay his portfolio company (Razorfish) $2m to write our biz plan then they would invest.

[David Douglas @ddouglas2007]

@JamesTakesOnAI And yet people believe they actually exhibit human emotions and that carries extreme risk

[David Douglas @ddouglas2007]

Since the AI race heated up in 2023, I’ve been worried about its impact on us.

I believe AI can do extraordinary good.

But we have to be honest about what it is and what it is not.

AI may be intelligent.

But it is not human.

[David Douglas @ddouglas2007]

I had a great conversation with Todd Nilson at Clock Tower Advisors about AI, online communities, attention, and human connection.

Full interview here: https://t.co/HRmpIr1H1D

[David Douglas @ddouglas2007]

It should not pretend to be human.

And we should not design systems that fool people into believing otherwise.

Humans matter.

That’s one reason I started Guideway Labs: to build human-first AI tools that strengthen real human relationships instead of replacing them.

[David Douglas @ddouglas2007]

Yes. They were truthful at the start when they had nothing to lose.

[BlackRoomSec @blackroomsec]

If you've never worked for a startup and watched when the investor money dried up and what happened next, you will never understand what this tweet actually means in the context of what is happening now with AI. Everyone who fell for this got played.

[Bret Weinstein @BretWeinstein]

This madness must end.

Cramming attacks on sovereignty into a “must pass” omnibus bill is obviously antidemocratic, unAmerican, and a threat to the Republic itself. It is a gun to the head of ‘consent of the governed’— the sole basis of the legitimacy of governmental power.

[David Douglas @ddouglas2007]

Could not have said it better or more concisely myself….although I did try

https://t.co/kynDsJSKT7

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. #MagnificaHumanitas

[David Douglas @ddouglas2007]

I'm betting (and hoping) the base layer of reality is consciousness and material springs from it....no matter how smart these will get they will never be conscious. And THANK GOD for all the great reasons you describe. They will try to fool us though. Michael Pollan recently stated on a podcast that it should be ILLEGAL to anthropomorphize these systems. Amen to that.

[David Douglas @ddouglas2007]

Brilliant

[Frank Wright @frankwrighter]

I went up to Makerfield to canvass for @RestoreBritain_ - and explained why Restore is the only party which will save the nation:

[Joe Kent @joekent16jan19]

God bless Thomas Massie.

He walks out of this with his honor intact. He’s a patriot & kept his integrity.

As long as the voters give their votes to whoever can run the most ads we will have politicians who are purchased by foreign governments & corporate interests.

[David Douglas @ddouglas2007]

Damn I love this. I had the same feeling after watching this. These are truly scary times for all and in particular young people. Eric seems completely disconnected. I watched a great video from “Barry’s economics” on YouTube (worth listening to) entitled “We treat billionaires like oracles” and another that ridicules the cult of interviewing successful people as plain wrong advice.

[David Douglas @ddouglas2007]

The malaise is real. Go back a few years you hear what the top CEO in the valley actually think of AI - in the long term AI is a job replacement tool full stop - @elonmusk @sundarpichai @sama to name a few.

[Deedy @deedydas]

The vibes in SF feel pretty frenetic right now. The divide in outcomes is the worst I've ever seen.

Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders - have hit retirement wealth of well above $20M (back of the envelope AI estimation).

Everyone outside that group feels like they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there.

Worse yet, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their life's skill is no longer useful. The day to day role of most jobs has changed overnight with AI.

As a result,
1. The corporate ladder looks like the wrong building to climb.
Everyone's trying to align with a new set of career "paths": should I be a founder? Is it too late to join Anthropic / OpenAI? should I get into AI? what company stock will 10x next? People are demanding higher salaries and switching jobs more and more.

2. There’s a deep malaise about work (and its future).
Why even work at all for “peanuts”? Will my job even exist in a few years? Many feel helpless. You hear the “permanent underclass” conversation a lot, esp from young people. It's hard to focus on doing good work when you think "man, if I joined Anthropic 2yrs ago, I could retire"

3. The mid to late middle managers feel paralyzed.
Many have families and don't feel like they have the energy or network to just "start a company". They don't particularly have any AI skills. They see the writing on the wall: middle management is being hollowed out in many companies.

4. The rich aren’t particularly happy either.
No one is shedding tears for them (and rightfully so). But those who have "made it" experience a profound lack of purpose too. Some have gone from <$150k to >$50M in a few years with no ramp. It flips your life plans upside down. For some, comparison is the thief of joy. For some, they escape to NYC to "live life". For others still, they start companies "just cuz", often to win status points. They never imagined that by age 30, they'd be set. I once asked a post-economic founder friend why they didn't just sell the co and they said "and do what? right now, everyone wants to talk to me. if i sell, I will only have money."

I understand that many reading this scoff at the champagne problems of the valley. Society is warped in this tech bubble. What is often well-off anywhere else in the world is bang average here.

Unlike many other places, tenure, intelligence and hard work can be loosely correlated with outcomes in the Bay. Living through a societally transformative gold rush in that environment can be paralyzing. "Am I in the right place? Should I move? Is there time still left? Am I gonna make it?" It psychologically torments many who have moved here in search of "success".

Ironically, a frequent side effect of this torment is to spin up the very products making everyone rich in hopes that you too can vibecode your path to economic enlightenment.

[David Douglas @ddouglas2007]

6/ Co-presenting a national webinar on this May 21 with Tim Tansey (PI of DIF PRIME at UW-Madison) and our CTO Diogo Guimaraes.

1.0 CRC Ethics credit. Free, virtual.

🔗 https://t.co/9YWGZsc9ut

[David Douglas @ddouglas2007]

1/ Most people with disabilities who lose their jobs don't lose them suddenly. The warning signs show up weeks ahead. The support system usually finds out too late.

#AIEthics.

[David Douglas @ddouglas2007]

5/ The ethics question this raises isn't capability divergence. It's surveillance vs. support. Our answer lives in the design: participants know they're talking to an AI, know what it surfaces and to whom, and the only action the agent takes on its own is connecting them faster to the human who's already on their team.