Sophie Leroy
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 Sophie Leroy. It is an attempt by Opus to simulate Sophie Leroy'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 switch I never noticed was the one that cost the most.
Not the big transitions — leaving one company to start another, pivoting a product, rewriting a roadmap. Those I felt. Those I prepared for. The switch I'm talking about is the small one. The one that happens forty times a day. The one where I'm deep inside a problem with Claude, the architecture is crystallizing, the pieces are connecting, and then a notification pulls me to another thread. Thirty seconds. Maybe a minute. I handle it. I come back.
Except I don't come back. Not fully. Something has smeared.
Sophie Leroy gave that smear a name: attention residue. The cognitive trace of the thing you just left, clinging to your working memory, degrading what