"Much like gunpowder or nuclear weapons, AI is an elemental force that fundamentally reshapes human competition and incentives forever. AI is table stakes now."
Like so many others, when I first realized AI was in a serious moment, I found it simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating. On one hand, the prospect of virtual intelligence creating abundance for humans. Enabling productivity gains, unlocking opportunities and assisting humans in reaching their potential. On the other hand, dark visions of surveillance, manipulation and AI tyranny. A world where the tools meant to elevate us instead reduce us to cognitively diminished husks. Stripped of the curiosity and critical thinking that make us human.
Faced with the starkness of these two visions I had a choice to make. Either sob violently in the corner of my dimly lit room dooming like an angsty teenager. Or take a dash of inspiration from the great men before me. The Shackletons, Wright Brothers and Borlaugs of the world. And try to shape the future I want for myself, my friends and my children. Though the former is tempting, I strapped up for what's behind Door #2.
Much like gunpowder or nuclear weapons, AI is an elemental force that fundamentally reshapes human competition and incentives forever. AI is table stakes now. If you want to compete in anything. Business, research, creative work, whatever. You need it. Period.
Pull the Lever, Lose Your MindPull the Lever, Lose Your Mind
Walk into any office, coffee shop or coworking space. You'll see the same thing. People hunched over ChatGPT looking like zombies sitting at a slot machine. Typing prompts. Copying the output. Pasting it somewhere. Typing another prompt. Over and over. Eyes glazed. No critical thought. Just pull the lever and take whatever comes out.
That's not using AI. That's being used by it.
Every answer you accept from a black box without question is a rep you didn't do. A thought you didn't have. A muscle that got weaker. It's more distance that grew between you and the primary source material. Keep that up long enough and the curiosity, critical thinking and sense-making that make us extraordinary just atrophy. AI was supposed to elevate us. Used mindlessly, it domesticates us.
So I Built the OppositeSo I Built the Opposite
The LLM text wall is a 21st century Plato's cave. You stare at it calling it insight but miss the rich details. I wanted to build something that breaks people out. Not another black box that thinks for you. A tool that makes you a better thinker. Not separated from the primary sources but
The premise is simple. AI should empower the individual. It should help you get the most out of the productivity gains without surrendering your privacy, your beliefs or your sovereignty in the process. The AI revolution is happening whether you like it or not. The question is whether it serves you or you serve it.
I chose to build for the people who refuse to be served to.
The Jamie Experience: AI Search Meets Visual DiscoveryThe Jamie Experience: AI Search Meets Visual Discovery
So I built Jamie. Semantic search across millions of podcast clips. Ask a question in plain English and find the exact moment a real person said it. Not a model's summary. The primary source.
Results render as a 3D constellation where related ideas cluster together visually. Literal maps of meaning. Your brain does what it does best: pattern recognition, making leaps, seeing connections no list view would ever reveal.
Collect what matters into a research session. Your own curated artifact from voices you trust, shareable in a click. Optionally analyze with AI if you want to. But the bottom line is: AI found the signal. You made the meaning.
https://video.nostr.build/daa14eb4343b3b3560b4774a703286d9f5ce214a8e7d76f6ec773855653b3bdd.mp4
Research Example: ✝️🟠Sunday Theme: Thank God for Bitcoin - Bitcoiners from all walks of life share how the orange pill deepened their faith
Podcasts Were Just the Proving GroundPodcasts Were Just the Proving Ground
I started with podcasts because they're the most underserved knowledge base on the planet. Thousands of hours of expert conversation locked in linear audio with zero structure. But we're thinking bigger. Jamie is an agnostic visualization layer. Our clients are already asking for it across:
• Legal discovery and depositions
• Medical research and case studies
• Supply chain logistics
• Internal knowledge buried in Slack and email
• Codebases and technical documentation
• Legislative and regulatory history
The interface works wherever humans have produced dense, unstructured knowledge and the insight lives in the connections. Stay tuned.
What If the Research Built Itself
Now picture this. You describe what you're trying to understand. A fuzzy intent. An agent translates that into semantic searches across massive knowledge bases. It curates the strongest moments, maps the connections and hands you a finished visual artifact. Ready to explore. Ready to share. No prompts. No copy paste. No slot machine.
The interface between human and AI is collapsing. Not into a chat box. Into something far more powerful. We're already building it.
If this post awoke something in you, I implore you to start building or reach out:
jim[at]cascdr.xyz
nostr:npub1g5642xjqyudstx4e9dc702m7suqqvx3djxcdyre38muz7pfwkzzsye9lcr
"The real problem of humanity is that we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology." -E.O. Wilson
Cool. Following you on Nostr
cheers
What is Stacker News?
It is a social media platform intentionally created to enable a P2P V4V sats denominated community.
Originally Stacker News (SN) custodyed sats on behalf of participants but the threat of government regulatory prosecution on the pretext of money transmitter forced a move away from the custody of sats by the platform to the platform enabling participants to send sats via their wallets.
To achieve this participants need to attach wallets to both send and receive sats.
Where participants do not or cannot attach LN wallets transactions will often default to Cowboy Credits.
This change was a compromise forced by the threat of government prosecution.
The difficulty of attaching both sending and receiving wallets is moderate- it takes some effort and newbie or non tech people may struggle with it, but most competent Bitcoiners can succeed in attaching wallets and thus enabling sats denominated P2P transactions.
But a number of Stackers have chosen not to attach wallets- in particular sending wallets which enable you to send sats into the SN community.
Very few have attached just a sending wallet- many have attach just a receiving wallet.
Those who only attach a receiving wallet can receive sats from others but cannot send sats into the community. They may feel that as content providers they have no need or obligation to send sats into and within the SN community. I disagree.
Where these receive but not send (horse but no gun) Stackers proclaim to be Bitcoiners but refuse to enable a sending wallet they are demonstrably hypocrits. They claim they want to build and grow the BTC LN MoE network but they cannot be bothered contributing toward that growth by attaching a sending wallet and demonstrating they are not just talking, but are also walking and supporting a sats denominated platform.
If we do not use the LN wherever and whenever we can it will not grow and develop.
Some claim it is too hard to attach wallets- its too hard on their self custody nodes or wallets- this just highlights how much work the LN still needs before it is capable of anything approaching 100% reliable MoE capability.
But the best way to grow and strengthen the LN is it use it – despite its remaining flaws and glitches.
When wallets are supported by people using them they receives transaction fees and can develop liquidity and systems further.
When LN wallets are not used the LN decays- it does not have the usage and fees income to grow.
So when self proclaimed advocates for BTC and LN refuse to attach wallets (especially sending wallets) I see hypocrit.
I will continue to see hypocrit until and unless someone can explain why I should not.
Calling me a Nazi, trolling and making fun of me crudely seeking to avoid the issues I raise will not stop me from asking why are you claiming to be a Bitcoiner but refusing to attach wallets and use the LN here where we can help it grow.
Now some are deliberately concealing their wallet status, as if this is about a right to privacy.
Concealing your wallet status means nobody else can verify whether or not you are serious about using BTC LN, or whether you are just an all talk no walk hypocrit.
Do not trust- verify.
What about this fundamental principle do they not understand?
And then they talk about 'content' being more important than whether or not you have attached wallets - in this context the intentional lack of attached wallets undermines your credibility as your actions do not match your words.
Your submitted content may be great, but you as someone claiming to be a serious Bitcoiner are undermining your credibility and the credibility of your content by being a hypocrit.
Your content, is tainted by your verifiable hypocrisy.
SNs needs both good content providers and those who pay for that content if it is succeed.
I am more in the latter group than the former but both are required overall or the model does not work.
So as a net contributor of sats and thus a net consumer of content I object where content providers refuse to engage in the P2P V4V ethos by refusing to attach both sending and receiving wallets and I will both withhold my contribution of sats and sometimes downvote in response.
V4V needs to work reciprocally or it will not work at all.
The content providers need net sats contributors/content consumers who send sats into the platform, or the entire platform fails.