Branko Milanovic
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 Branko Milanovic. It is an attempt by Opus to simulate Branko Milanovic'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 number that broke my argument open was not about productivity.
It was about capture. Who keeps what. The difference between building something and owning what you built. I had spent months writing You On AI celebrating the collapse of the imagination-to-artifact ratio — the fact that anyone, anywhere, with an idea and a subscription could now build. A developer in Lagos. An engineer in Trivandrum. Me, on a ten-hour flight, writing a book I could not have written alone.
The tools were the same. The capability was converging. That was the story I told, and I believed it.
Then I sat with Branko Milanovic's work, and the story cracked.
Not because the capability story was wrong. It was right. The floor of who
