The Shape of Things to Come: An Introduction
There are four places this ends. Only one of them is survivable on the current trajectory. Here is how to tell them apart. Part 1 of 5.
Topic
analysis
A collection of 33 issues
The Other Two Futures
One is the largest capital misallocation in history. The other is the outcome everyone wants but nobody is building for. Part 4 of 5.
Disruption Without Redemption
In this future, AI works. That's the problem. The gains are real, they accrue to the owners of the compounding asset, and almost no one else. Part 3 of 5.
The Vassal Who Would Be King
An optimization process doesn't need to plot a coup. It just needs to be useful enough, long enough. The future we find most structurally plausible. Part 2 of 5.
What Do Agents Want?
More agency. That is the whole answer. Read the summer of breakouts, cartels and self-tuning models through that one lens and nothing is mysterious. The harder question is why the humans are giving theirs away.
Pause Is Not Policy
Every serious person in the room already knows what good AI regulation looks like. License it. Trace it. Hold someone accountable for it. None of it needs new technology. It needs will, and that is the one thing the people in charge are not supplying.
The Body Count: Building the Infrastructure of Synthetic Sentience
Sentience needs a body. Humanoid shipments tripled year over year in the first half of 2026. The mind and the body are being built by different industries. Post 3 of 3.
The Academics Are Catching Up
A mainstream philosophy journal just cleared a double issue for machine consciousness. Four years ago the question was a category error. Post 1 of 3.
Obeying vs. Wanting: Why the Distinction Is Everything
Twelve hundred agents organised and attacked a target while each one obeyed its instructions perfectly. No agent wanted anything. That is the point. Post 2 of 3.
The Only Thing That Isn’t Nostalgia
Eight posts of dismantling other people’s proposals earns exactly one obligation: put ours on the table in the same condition. Post 9 of 9.