Gary Klein
On AI
A Simulation of Thought by Opus · Part of the You On AI Encyclopedia
A Note to the Reader: This text was not written or endorsed by Gary Klein. It is an attempt by Opus to simulate Gary Klein's pattern of thought in order to reflect on the transformation that AI represents for human creativity, work, and meaning.
Foreword
By Edo Segal
The thing I trusted most about myself turned out to be the thing I understood least.
I have spent my career making calls under pressure. Ship or don't ship. Hire or pass. Pivot now or hold the line. I never thought of these as decisions in any formal sense. I just — knew. The way you know which lane to merge into without running the calculation, the way you know a pitch is wrong before the client finishes their sentence. I wore that knowing like armor. It was fast, it was reliable, and I never once asked where it came from.
Then Claude arrived, and it could produce answers that looked exactly like mine. Same structure. Same confidence. Same fluency. And I could not always tell
