ideafaktory

01/05/2025

Duolingo churns out 148 courses! AI is a tireless content excreter. But approach content with caution. Machines don't play by the same rules. Their infinite lifespan can devour our finite one, the same way a giant corporation can devour some lowly inventor's litigation budget and mindshare. Organic creators pay the ultimate price for our time, theirs.

01/05/2025

Notice a pattern? In 2015, dating site Ashley Madison was caught fooling married men looking for dates with bots. Foreign adversaries do the same with bots on social. In this clip, Mark Zuckerberg plans to offer users AI "friends". And finally, much of Silicon Valley believes that humanity is a transitional species meant to birth an superintelligence. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-endgame-of-edgelord-eschatology/

26/03/2025

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY OF THEM?? In my new 'The Trendaddy' video series & newsletter, I rate & analyze which & will shape your future...and which won't. Check out the first three episodes/newsletters now & sign up free: https://stevefaktor.com/thesepeople/

America's Perception Gaps Are Frightening https://youtube.com/shorts/ujsFXnupOoA?feature=share Americans’ perceptions of reality are wildly off. I noted

06/03/2025

The Information Viability Formula in The Age of AI (v1.0)
I now regularly get how-to guidance from AI, in conversational form, customized to my situation. No more cobbling it together w/search. Made me wonder—what is the incentive for anyone, besides hobbyists, to create new knowledge, for it to just be sucked into and commoditized? To have any viability new knowledge must be:
1) time-sensitive
2) released behind a paywall
3) secured from AI..to have any chance at short-term viability, before it leaks into free space...and becomes AI training .

This creates opportunities for security startups but also exposes the limits of incentivizing new knowledge creation. Some will pay a lot for specialized knowledge (eg investing, medical training, etc), but most info will be captured by cross-subject AI, same as advertising was captured by social platforms, with all value residing at platform level, not monetizing OUR individual attention at $280 a year.

This begs the question, will humans have any incentive to create AND document new knowledge? Or, will AI have to synthesize everything from this day on?

02/02/2025

The Age of Surplus, Where Volume is Power
The world of scarcity was ruled by access. Finding a prized record, dress, or berry was a feat of cunning & perseverance. Industrialization & globalization were leaps away from scarcity. Most could have a car, affordable food & clothing—from around the world. Recently, many have forecasted a golden age of abundance, an end to human struggle. But abundance is utopianism. We are heading towards The Age of Surplus, when the global balance of power will be determined by volume— & who best wields it. There are three parts.

1) Biology
For most of history, humans fought over land & resources. Power cascaded across empires. What we've never experienced was attrition, at scale. Developed nations are dying off—Europe, Japan, China, even the US (net of immigration). Meanwhile, a handful of African & Muslim populations are outpacing everyone. If this pattern persists, , trade & global power will shift away from the Geriatric West, simply with VOLUME, not violence, if we're lucky. (Deep dive on this: stevefaktorcom/forbidden)

2) Technology
Besides Russian & Chinese advances in hypersonic missiles (a serious problem), the US has superior military hardware in every category, but one. In war game scenarios, we lose to China solely based on volume. Their ability to make swarms of cheap drones & missiles would eventually overwhelm or bankrupt our pricey, 'superior' defenses. We've seen this strategy used by Ukraine & Iran recently. Again, VOLUME WINS. Luckily, there are startups, like Anduril helping the US catch up. Also, expanding overall manufacturing capacity will help.

3) Artificial Intelligence
AI is less of a technology than a new life form. More precisely, it's millions—or billions—of lifeforms...or workers—released into the economy. The same way Muslims could overwhelm the global population, AI *will* overwhelm the online population.

Consider media. See below for a chart I scribbled in 2016. Already, a huge % of 'jiggle girls' on Instagram are . They're almost indistinguishable from thousands of real women using Instagram to market their lucrative OnlyFans subscriptions. Do you think anyone will find these imperfect organic beauties in a tsunami of perfect digital ones? Millions of AI gals could be added to the platform per day—or per hour—& do everything their customers want—all at once—limited only by processing power.

I doubt we'll all become connoisseurs, insisting on organic content. As we've seen with food, the public will choose cheap, factory-farmed product 99% of the time. And we'll have to. This same tsunami of AI "laborers" is coming to every industry that sits in air conditioning. A massive deflation in jobs & wages. But I'm not pessimistic. The US was 80% agrarian until the 1920's. But every innovation spawned new careers, like the Instagram-to-OnlyFans pipeline. We shall over come.

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30/01/2025

"Will businesses just use to create their own software and ERP systems?" Someone asked me this on X. A lot of people are saying is dead & software can be made on demand. I think that's wrong. It's still not what most companies do well or should try. What we're witnessing is a *thinning* of the layer. The historical precedent is when we moved from mainframes to client-server to mobile-cloud. In each case, the customer layer was thinned towards, what is effectively, a browser.

Same is happening with SaaS. Companies won't need the heavy installs, customization, service layer. But they still will want people to call if things go wrong or if they have questions. This is also why crypto+blockchain (DeFi) never really took off as a comprehensive payments solution. People want refunds, recourse if a merchant screws them, or a number to call if there's an account issue.

For example, I'm sure Microsoft's conference rooms are buzzing with brainstorming sessions on how to innovate with AI. Problem is, they have an empire to defend. They have no incentive to 'thin their software layer'. Microsoft is as unlikely to disrupt its massive subscription base as Kodak was its film business, even though both know big change is coming. It's why unconstrained challengers have an advantage, despite incumbents' deep pockets. They can build for the world as it should be, not as it was. Until then, AI will remain a MSFT bolt-on, or focus on new markets where they have no legacy business to defend.

28/01/2025

DEEPSEEK-ing ANSWERS | Who wants to be the first executive to sign their company up for ? For to burrow deep into their confidential corporate documents? "But it's so cheap!" Sure is... "Al researchers at Meta Platforms have been in panic mode...concerned the next version of Meta's flagship Al, Llama, won't perform as well as...DeepSeek," according to The Information. DeepSeek's sudden insurgence raises three critical questions:

1) Is The West prepared for a world where quantity beats quality? Turns out, stringing lots of cheap graphics processors can outperform fewer, superior ones. Nvidia's advantage is nullified at scale—and it's reflected in stock price drops across the industry. Same goes for military. Our superior weapons and defenses would be overwhelmed by swarms of cheap drones or missiles, powered by high volume Chinese manufacturing capacity & cheap energy. How many $500 hot air balloons can we shoot down with $500,000 Tomahawks? Manufacturing *capacity* might be more important than *what* we manufacture. We need the ability to make and defend against lots of cheap drones, bombs, nano, bioweapons...and graphics cards...or we'll be bled dry by the military & tech industrial complexes AND STILL lose.

2) Some ask, did DeepSeek's quality, supposedly developed for $5M, expose that the tens of billions spent on AI here were either wasted, misguided, or a VC hustle? I think there's a better question: Have we been looking at competition and too narrowly? If we only view AI performance as what's the best GPU chip, we'd miss Deepseek's infrastructure innovation. We've made the same mistake throughout history. Brainstorming faster horse buggies, then cars replace them. Or innovating narrower TV tubes as LCD's and then LED's replaced them. Even media companies, thinking they compete with other TV channels, instead of the internet, games, and podcasts, which stole their audience's attention. It's also why you don't want to prematurely regulate nascent industries like AI, calcifying some narrow, uncompetitive version of the technology for the benefit of early leaders, who would otherwise be surpassed.

3) Are we ready to confront the reality that EVERY consequential technology is a military asset...or threat? There are no exceptions. AI, CRISPR, nuclear, MRNA, robotics, etc, are strategic assets, forever bound to state power and competitiveness. DeepSeek is like a more insidious corporate version of TikTok or RedNote, a black box. No one really knows how they get their answers. It doesn't show its work. Yet, it's there, a major attack parameter, sitting on your servers, acting in subtle ways or waiting...like a sleeper cell...gaining trust on trivial tasks to gradually gain more access...and wake up.

WAKE UP.

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23/01/2025

AI INEQUALITY...AND THE McKINSEY LEAK
A while back I wrote about 'data inequality'. While access to data and insulation from breeches remain unequal, was just a rest stop. The destination is what data—that's been analyzed and acted on—can do for you—or your competitors. We're entering a new era where splinters societies and businesses into haves & have-nots faster than finance, industrialization, or tech ever could.

A good analogy is cell phones. In the late 90's, I knew people who simply opted out. They didn't want that kind of access, intrusion, or reachability. Soon, they were opting out of their own convenience. And finally, others' expectations. Friends, family, colleagues expected them to be reachable. Opting out became costly or punitive. This became 10x with smartphones. Same happened with computers before that and will happen again with brain chip implants.

AI is still nascent, but improving fast and integrating into every aspect of our lives, products we use, and companies we work for—or do business with. Like cell phones, no one thinks they can opt out. And they're right.

What's less obvious is The Leak. Consider management consulting. There are many good, stupid, or cowardly reasons companies hire management consultants. One is "expertise"...often built on serving other, similar clients. Regardless of assurances, reality is this is a MAJOR LEAK of knowledge across firms. It's both democratizing and quietly collusive, as "best practices" spread through this connective tissue. Consultants help maximize profits, optimize labor, and remove unnecessary friction (mostly people, pay, services, features, etc).

AI is one massive, ongoing, systemic LEAK, where AI companies, like consultants, collect and disseminate "best practices" across clients (including us and our formerly-private thoughts). Maybe we could buy our way out of some of it, at the highest price tiers. In practice, it's how McKinsey clients think they buy themselves 1-way expertise. It's always a 2-way exchange.

Not only does this accelerate AI's learning, but it transfers power to middlemen (via expertise and ex*****on dependency). Not unlike the most successful tech companies of the past two decades—Amazon, Uber, AirBnB, etc. All middlemen.

Even if the privacy protections were real, guess who gets smartphones first? And those left using this era's 'dumbphone', get a life sentence...to an inferior life.

There are efforts to compete and democratize AI. I am both optimistic and skeptical. My theory is any competitive advance in AI is subject to MEGA LEAKS, where all AIs eventually advance on each other's gains. The exponential changes implied by that reality can be exciting or frightening. Much depends on what rules they've been fed, who controls these companies, and how we adapt our lives and economies. And finally, how *they* decide to manage themselves...and us...
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08/01/2025

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTTY MUSK
Until 2021 or so, Elon's public persona was an incredible asset. Tesla paid zero for marketing, as media clamored for its eccentric, visionary genius. Elon was admired by techies, white collar warriors, and limousine liberals whose Teslas became green status symbols their Priuses never could. Then something happened.

Suddenly, The Busiest Man on Earth—with six companies to run—was Tweeting nonstop. The culture war unlocked a portal to power, beyond entrepreneurship. Free speech was Elon's next world to conquer. He went all-in, buying Twitter, remaking it in his image. On "X", every trend, feature, decision, and user, exits at Elon's behest. Twitter's propaganda and censorship machine was now an Elon Fan Club; hostile to elites on it and bureaucrats festering inside.

Finally, Elon used his Meme Machine to elect Donald Trump—and burrow deep into government with DOGE. Our Magical MacGyver would fix EVERYTHING and only be accountable to Trump. All, while retaining his financial interests and 250-million-fan bully pulpit. The ultimate power play.

Only when Elon clashed with anti-immigrant MAGA did we see the limits of his power. To quell the H-1B visa flare-up, Elon diverted Club Elon to a worthy, but 10-year-old British r*pe scandal. Deflection accomplished?

This episode was a revelation — Elon had disrupted nature. Specifically, the natural ebb and flow of news cycles. For decades, stories, characters, and narratives came and went, as did media platforms that hosted them. Some lasted hours, weeks, or years, but We, The People, got to decide when to lose interest. Elon made that impossible. With X, he plunged us into eternal sunlight...of *himself*. His opinions and priorities were inescapable. And he was willing to deploy vast financial and social capital to make them stick—funding politicians, Fanclubbing his enemies, appearing on major media.

Like hoisting a second artificial sun into the sky, we'll grow more grass but get more sunburns and parched goldfish. The ecosystem will seek equilibrium. We may see:

—Bans of X in Europe, Asia and wherever Elon meddles
—New rifts with MAGA (public or insiders) that limit DOGE's access, effectiveness, or Trump's backing
—Conflicts of interest in China and elsewhere
—Elon using political donations (or threats of funding opponents) to get his way
—Citizens growing frustrated with one guy with so much influence, prompting Tesla sales declines, state regulations, foreign tariffs or restrictions on Starlink
—Viable crowdsourced news competitor to X—or migration to an existing platform that's not afraid of links

We once craved a glimpse into Elon's innovative mind, now we can't escape its psychoses. But nothing lasts forever. Even absolute power first makes you submit, then eventually, revolt. X is a luxury prison that many have escaped. Elon's power is more fragile than it looks. The marketplace that made him shine can also build us shade.

07/01/2025

INVERSE RAZORS & BLADES MODEL
You know the razor & blades (sell razors cheap & make money on refills). Printers, Keurig/Nespresso coffee machines, Kindles, and game consoles all work this way.

Thanks to my Philips beard trimmer, I just realized there's an INVERSE version, used by shaver manufacturers (maybe others). They sell a trimmer that lasts, but attachments are flimsy & impossible to buy aftermarket. Or, the rare replacement is priced so punitively, it makes more sense to toss the old trimmer and buy a new set. They also change models frequently (and unnecessarily from the consumers' & Earth's POV) to ensure prior attachments NEVER fit old models.

This is a close cousin of planned obsolescence of iPhones, Windows, and other tech, but relies on accessories as the means of invalidating the core product. It's devious and the opposite of whatever "green" is. Any other examples of this you know of? Comment below.

06/11/2024

The craziest thing is how Elon Musk will ultimately get ROI from buying Twitter (now "X"). Everyone, including Elon, thought $44B was too much to pay. But viewing X as a standalone business is a mistake. X is a Musk Amplifier, doing what publishing barons of yesteryear only dreamed - commandeering public opinion and owning the "town square".

While X is the closest approximation of free speech online, it is also a powerful marketing tool. And by using it to help amplify his endorsement of Donald Trump (like commandeering the @ America handle for his PAC), it's about to pay HUGE dividends. Elon's partnership with Trump could 20x the value of all his companies. That $44B is about to turn into TRILLIONS. A testament to an entrepreneur who never hedges his bets and goes all-in, as he has with all his insanely ambitious ventures. Betting big isn't for everyone. You need the skill to back it up and fortitude for when things go wrong. But in Elon's case, the rewards have been otherworldly. Literally.

04/11/2024

If the US wants to continue thriving, high volumes of immigration are not debatable. But **HOW** we do it absolutely is. Why?
1) There is a major shortage of labor across industries. There aren't enough Americans to do all the work.
2) Companies will start to die off as people do. Some will move operations.
3) We NEED consumers, especially if we plan on having tariffs and trade wars
4) The US will shrink quickly and painfully without immigrants. China's population is imploding from 1.4B to 600m in next 100 years. Japan, Germany, Italy, most of Europe, all dying.
5) Immigrants have been a major source of entrepreneurship and essential labor, as waves of Irish, Italian, Soviet, Indian, Hispanic, Chinese, and African immigrants came here and built railroads, skyscrapers, drove cabs, cleaned streets, then gave their kids an easier life.
6) Unlike most nations, the US's advantage is a large, dynamic economy where ethnicity is decoupled from national identity. So it can attract and assimilate more high quality immigrants to offset population declines.

We should also do everything possible to lower the cost of citizens having families, but it will end up as a quality of life policy. We know that because every other country that has tried birth incentives and family subsidies has failed miserably. I covered it in detail in this video: stevefaktor[dot]com/forbidden

I would not bet against the US in the long term, but I would bet on turmoil internalizing all this in the short term.

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