You may have noticed that we’ve been pretty quiet here at the Savage Collective. I’ve been traveling—both for work and vacation—and, to be honest, dealing with some health issues that made it nearly impossible to write. Brandon’s been just as swamped, with his own travel and professional obligations. The Substack is a side hustle for both of us. But we’re both committed to getting our writing back on track. Also, remember that we’ll be
Rather than fearing a potential reality in which only the most educated and wealthy can use ChatGPT in a useful way, I actually more so fear a reality where the most educated and wealthy, particularly Big Tech CEOs, are the only ones who can escape it. Cue Mark Zuckerburg's "Top Secret Hawaii Compound" with an underground bunker. Naomi Klein wrote about this type of thing, dubbing it "end times fascism": https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/13/end-times-fascism-far-right-trump-musk
Also, Tyler's idea sounds very similar to what John Maynard Keynes said in 1930 about a future "15 hour work week" because of new technology, which obviously didn't pan out..... https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/sep/01/economics
Actually. I think this is a similar point. Namely, that uber elite will be able to use digital tech to then actually escape it through good leisure. I meant to have a paragraph that talks about how we need to consider each digital tech innovation within the broader digital echosystem since all of these technologies come through the phone and someone can easily toggle back and forth between them. ChatGPT cannot be isolated from the broader changes to activities and attention grabbers that the phone gives us.
And yes. the Keynes thing is relevant. You may also want to read Bastani's Fully Automated Luxury Communism which is basically the completion of this vision.
“Smartphones make it far too easy to consume the lowest forms of entertainment.”
I find this to be true. I have a lot of useful apps, even Kindle, journaling, etc. but with a spare 10 minutes I rarely use those. Always easier to doom scroll, etc. The medium really is the message.
Likewise, Neil Postman once commented that you can’t do philosophy over smoke signals—the medium cannot support the content. There’s probably something related with smartphones there. Can these sorts of digital tools really be a good channel for leisure? I have my doubts.
Excellent work. I have a slightly different and historical perspective.
My business career came of age as Silicon Valley was exploding and the bones of the tech we now use were created. As each new function or type rolled out, we were told that it would free us to have more time for leisure, that people could accomplish complex tasks more quickly leaving them more time for family, fun, and self-improvement. It was all a lie. We accomplished more and therefore expected to do more so the savings in time was consumed by additional work.
There is a connection between technology of all kinds and the good it brings. There is no doubt we are better off due to computation unlocking the genome, or tracking and predicting weather but there is also the fact that as those things have been opened to human understanding it has caused us to what to open more and to be dissatisfied with what we know which is both good and bad. Questing for more knowledge without understanding is as dangerous as ignorance.
Technology is like the old concept of watering the stock. A crooked cattle dealer would feed his cattle salt and then just before sale allow them to drink, gaining weight and higher sale prices. We are shown technology and told of its wonders to get us to purchase it with the implicit understanding that we will soon be dissatisfied so we will be ready to buy the next version, which in turn offers more features and promises more wonders of free time to "the things we want". Witness the frenzy that used to surround introduction of a new I Phone. Remember, that to be successful, technology must attract buyers be they venture capitalists or consumers and consumers don't buy products, they first buy a concept that promises them something they desire. You never sell steak you sell the smell of cooked meat.
Dennis- This is great. Thanks so much for your perspective on this. It is a really sharp response. This feels a bit like David Grabeur. Industrialization was supposed to free us up but it came hand-in-hand with consumer capitalism which increased our consumption expectations. So we have to work more and more to keep up with ever-increasing appetites.
Thanks Grant it was great to meet Brandon this week. I have been chronicling my journey from waif in the financial industry and my connection to the developing tech world on my Substack. I started in the financial world in 1973 in Palo Alto and watched the Silicon Valley develop. I was close to the industry because of what I did and it was a unique experience.
How many times in nearly seven decades on this planet have I heard the argument "The latest Technology Will Save You Time, Allowing You To Engage in Higher Pursuits"? And the argument wasn't new when I was born. Or "Technology Will Enable Us tTo Need Only To Work Three Days/Week"? And remember the 1950s promise that nuclear-generated electricity would be so cheap it wouldn't even be worth billing us for it?
What all such blinkered linear-thinking assessments forget is that we live in a global 'money-as-debt-conjured-up-out-of-thin-air-enslaving-system' and no matter what the latest technology promises, it will never set us 'free' to engage in 'higher pursuits'. Money-slavery trumps all. Why else do people need 3 jobs to pay the rent, smart-phone in back pocket?
{PS: I don't have a smart-phone; it's a waste of time}
Josh- Yes we are often held hostage by the immense promises of the future impact of certain technologies. I also do not have a smart phone. I waste enough of my time without assistance
Heidt teaches a course at NYU Business school called "Flourishing" - you might find the syllabi interesting compared to your course at Pitt, the courses at Penn State, etc.. I can send along if you'd like. Very much looking forward to 2nd chance at teaching AI and Ethics followed by Human Flourishing in the public school, hoping Pitt will host another symposium on the topic next Spring as well. Glad to have your course and your work as a reference point!
Great as always. Strikes me as a sort of axiomatic issue that Tyler is framing this as essentially a moral problem--"lazy people are just abusing this useful tool"--while also being incapable of pushing for any sort of moral education or solution out of a commitment to the same libertarianism that pushed him to embrace AI. If there is any kind of responsible LLM use (which I'm not sure there is: https://vocationproject.substack.com/p/is-responsible-ai-use-possible-at?utm_source=activity_item), it's clear that we need to offer students not just a practical education but an education in virtue as well.
And of course, the existence of these tools undermines that education in the first place. Everything that we automate in schools means one fewer instrument for teaching students what to value, how to live well with others, etc. Hard to teach kids to treat each other fairly when we're just going to let them all cheat and pawn off their work.
It's funny to me reading Tyler's quote about using ChatGPT to learn about those Spanish and French churches, because I just have to ask myself if that allows us to do anything we couldn't before. Like, cool, ChatGPT can collate and summarize a few articles that I could've just Googled and read myself in about six minutes instead of two. That's how I feel about ~80% of the ChatGPT use cases: they're basically just giving me back a few minutes that I was going to enjoy anyways, and I can't really trust it with the things that are difficult and uninteresting.
Rather than fearing a potential reality in which only the most educated and wealthy can use ChatGPT in a useful way, I actually more so fear a reality where the most educated and wealthy, particularly Big Tech CEOs, are the only ones who can escape it. Cue Mark Zuckerburg's "Top Secret Hawaii Compound" with an underground bunker. Naomi Klein wrote about this type of thing, dubbing it "end times fascism": https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/13/end-times-fascism-far-right-trump-musk
Also, Tyler's idea sounds very similar to what John Maynard Keynes said in 1930 about a future "15 hour work week" because of new technology, which obviously didn't pan out..... https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/sep/01/economics
Actually. I think this is a similar point. Namely, that uber elite will be able to use digital tech to then actually escape it through good leisure. I meant to have a paragraph that talks about how we need to consider each digital tech innovation within the broader digital echosystem since all of these technologies come through the phone and someone can easily toggle back and forth between them. ChatGPT cannot be isolated from the broader changes to activities and attention grabbers that the phone gives us.
And yes. the Keynes thing is relevant. You may also want to read Bastani's Fully Automated Luxury Communism which is basically the completion of this vision.
“Smartphones make it far too easy to consume the lowest forms of entertainment.”
I find this to be true. I have a lot of useful apps, even Kindle, journaling, etc. but with a spare 10 minutes I rarely use those. Always easier to doom scroll, etc. The medium really is the message.
Likewise, Neil Postman once commented that you can’t do philosophy over smoke signals—the medium cannot support the content. There’s probably something related with smartphones there. Can these sorts of digital tools really be a good channel for leisure? I have my doubts.
Excellent work. I have a slightly different and historical perspective.
My business career came of age as Silicon Valley was exploding and the bones of the tech we now use were created. As each new function or type rolled out, we were told that it would free us to have more time for leisure, that people could accomplish complex tasks more quickly leaving them more time for family, fun, and self-improvement. It was all a lie. We accomplished more and therefore expected to do more so the savings in time was consumed by additional work.
There is a connection between technology of all kinds and the good it brings. There is no doubt we are better off due to computation unlocking the genome, or tracking and predicting weather but there is also the fact that as those things have been opened to human understanding it has caused us to what to open more and to be dissatisfied with what we know which is both good and bad. Questing for more knowledge without understanding is as dangerous as ignorance.
Technology is like the old concept of watering the stock. A crooked cattle dealer would feed his cattle salt and then just before sale allow them to drink, gaining weight and higher sale prices. We are shown technology and told of its wonders to get us to purchase it with the implicit understanding that we will soon be dissatisfied so we will be ready to buy the next version, which in turn offers more features and promises more wonders of free time to "the things we want". Witness the frenzy that used to surround introduction of a new I Phone. Remember, that to be successful, technology must attract buyers be they venture capitalists or consumers and consumers don't buy products, they first buy a concept that promises them something they desire. You never sell steak you sell the smell of cooked meat.
Dennis- This is great. Thanks so much for your perspective on this. It is a really sharp response. This feels a bit like David Grabeur. Industrialization was supposed to free us up but it came hand-in-hand with consumer capitalism which increased our consumption expectations. So we have to work more and more to keep up with ever-increasing appetites.
Thanks Grant it was great to meet Brandon this week. I have been chronicling my journey from waif in the financial industry and my connection to the developing tech world on my Substack. I started in the financial world in 1973 in Palo Alto and watched the Silicon Valley develop. I was close to the industry because of what I did and it was a unique experience.
Great article, thank you.
How many times in nearly seven decades on this planet have I heard the argument "The latest Technology Will Save You Time, Allowing You To Engage in Higher Pursuits"? And the argument wasn't new when I was born. Or "Technology Will Enable Us tTo Need Only To Work Three Days/Week"? And remember the 1950s promise that nuclear-generated electricity would be so cheap it wouldn't even be worth billing us for it?
What all such blinkered linear-thinking assessments forget is that we live in a global 'money-as-debt-conjured-up-out-of-thin-air-enslaving-system' and no matter what the latest technology promises, it will never set us 'free' to engage in 'higher pursuits'. Money-slavery trumps all. Why else do people need 3 jobs to pay the rent, smart-phone in back pocket?
{PS: I don't have a smart-phone; it's a waste of time}
Josh- Yes we are often held hostage by the immense promises of the future impact of certain technologies. I also do not have a smart phone. I waste enough of my time without assistance
"I waste enough of my time without assistance". Nicely put; I know the sentiment :)
Heidt teaches a course at NYU Business school called "Flourishing" - you might find the syllabi interesting compared to your course at Pitt, the courses at Penn State, etc.. I can send along if you'd like. Very much looking forward to 2nd chance at teaching AI and Ethics followed by Human Flourishing in the public school, hoping Pitt will host another symposium on the topic next Spring as well. Glad to have your course and your work as a reference point!
I quoted josef pieper in my latest substack post too!
glad you're back!
Thank you!
Great as always. Strikes me as a sort of axiomatic issue that Tyler is framing this as essentially a moral problem--"lazy people are just abusing this useful tool"--while also being incapable of pushing for any sort of moral education or solution out of a commitment to the same libertarianism that pushed him to embrace AI. If there is any kind of responsible LLM use (which I'm not sure there is: https://vocationproject.substack.com/p/is-responsible-ai-use-possible-at?utm_source=activity_item), it's clear that we need to offer students not just a practical education but an education in virtue as well.
And of course, the existence of these tools undermines that education in the first place. Everything that we automate in schools means one fewer instrument for teaching students what to value, how to live well with others, etc. Hard to teach kids to treat each other fairly when we're just going to let them all cheat and pawn off their work.
It's funny to me reading Tyler's quote about using ChatGPT to learn about those Spanish and French churches, because I just have to ask myself if that allows us to do anything we couldn't before. Like, cool, ChatGPT can collate and summarize a few articles that I could've just Googled and read myself in about six minutes instead of two. That's how I feel about ~80% of the ChatGPT use cases: they're basically just giving me back a few minutes that I was going to enjoy anyways, and I can't really trust it with the things that are difficult and uninteresting.
yes, it is all about efficiency. We can do the same things we've always done just much more quickly.