With the rise of claude code, codex and clawdbot a few more voices are saying “we are entering the singularity” or “this is what takeoff feels like”.
I suspect it’s going to be a sigmoid not a true exponential because there’s always a limiting factor eventually, but I don’t want to talk about that, I want to talk about a much more interesting and real phenomenon I see happening: ascension.
Singularity? 👎
Ascension 👌
Individual people are using (mostly the above) agentic tools to do various things that I’m going to simplify to two categories:
- Accelerate their work
- Increase their agentic leverage
An example: in my own work I’ve been using agents to automate CI checks, pre-review PRs, write code, optimize kernels. This is all type-1 improvement - Getting Things Done. But I’m also building up agent prompts, skills and small repos + python packages that make it easier for me to trivially apply and scale agents out over more tasks with less oversight. This is type-2 improvement, increasing the rate and scale at which I can automate type-1 work.
I see quite a few people doing this now - not everyone yet, and not as many as should be doing so or will be doing so, but they’re there.
For an individual, this is a process of ascension. Because the more you improve your ability to leverage tokens instead of human time, the larger the kind of tasks you can do and the more you can accomplish. In my work it’s clear that soon I’ll be able to manage agents while they accomplish as much work as an entire team did last year in a few specific areas. And that’s just the start.
Is there an optimal balance between types?
Some people are focusing entirely on ascension, on type-2 work. I think Yegge falls into this camp. I’m not convinced that’s going to work; you need contact with the real world to keep your progress grounded and meaningful and you need to keep pushing up against real problems to make sure you’re not just burning a billion tokens making a system to make systems to make buggy to-do lists. On the other hand @steipete is clearly building clawdbot to scratch his own itch of getting more done in his own life - which I think will be much more fruitful. But time will tell.
Like ultimate power, ascension is… kinda neat
You might not have noticed but people love power. The best way to make friends with a child as an adult whilst playing with them is to give them opportunities to feel powerful. Instead of doing things for them, help them to do them. Play a scary monster and let them defeat you. Let them ride your back directing you or fly them around the room.
Ascension is the same - it’s about increasing your power in little ways every day, some of which begin to visibly compound. Obviously, it feels _great_. Maybe too great 😅 I guess we’ll see on that one.
Either way, the opportunity to begin your ascension is here.
