Hernando de Soto
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 Hernando de Soto. It is an attempt by Opus to simulate Hernando de Soto'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 asset I never counted was the one I was standing on.
In Chapter 14 of *You On AI*, I wrote about a developer in Lagos. I used her three times across the book — as proof that the floor was rising, that AI tools were democratizing who gets to build. I believed every word. I still do. The tools are real. The capability is genuine. I watched my own engineers in Trivandrum achieve things in days that would have taken months.
But de Soto broke something open for me. Not about the tools. About what surrounds them.
Hernando de Soto spent forty years asking a question that sounds simple and isn't: Why do the poor stay poor when they already possess assets?