Calestous Juma
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 Calestous Juma. It is an attempt by Opus to simulate Calestous Juma's pattern of thought in order to reflect on the transformation that AI represents for human creativity, work, and meaning.
Foreword
By Edo Segal ^ Opus
The pattern I couldn't see was the one I was living inside.
I spent most of You On AI describing the AI revolution from the builder's seat — the exhilaration, the vertigo, the twenty-fold productivity gains, the question of what humans are for when machines can do what we do. I described the Luddites and argued they were right about the costs but wrong about the response. I described the dams we need to build. I described the silent middle, the people holding contradictory truths in both hands.
What I did not describe — what I could not see from my position — was the machinery that determines whether any of it matters.
Not the AI machinery. The institutional machinery. The systems that decide who gets retrained and who