To Reach Beyond Your Grasp

Why I dropped everything for a startup instead of finishing my PhD, taking a lucrative job at a large research lab, or going into AI policy

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

-From To be of use, Marge Piercy

Positive progress is rooted in the development of technology with intention. From antibiotics to ozone regeneration to flight, progress has come on the back of dreams and the technology that makes them a reality.

Without technology, dreams remain dreams. Inventors who don’t innovate become eccentrics. But without dreams to guide what we choose to build, aspirations cease to cause progress.

What is startling about the development of AI in the past few years is how sparse the dreams people have about this technology seem. People following their yearnings have a fervor to them, whether the aspiration is oncology, theology, or hosting great parties. Do the people working on the automation of all human labour seem excited?

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!

-From Howl, by Allen Ginsburg

There is nothing more beautiful in life than real human connection. Nothing more important to body and soul.

The internet has shown us the possibilities of world wide interaction. I stay in touch with college roommates through discord, family through whatsapp, and make new friends through substack.

But it has caused so many of the bonds that tied us together to wither on the vine. We no longer need to go out into our local communities to seek succor from solitude, and so we don’t. We can separate ourselves from the messiness of humanity via screens, and so we do.

On the net, this hasn’t been good for us. I’m sure you’ve seen the statistics on solitude, close friendship, and mental health. But it has spread its influence so far beyond that. As Derek Thompson exhaustively documents in his article on The Antisocial Century, we spend less time in almost every activity involving interaction with other people, dining out giving away to doordash, talking to TV, social clubs to social media.

What’s to blame? Pick your technological poison of choice. The automobile for allowing us to live farther from each other. The television and smartphone for sucking up all of our leisure time. I agree with the sentiments, yet answer differently.

We desired more space, more flexibility, more freedom, and built technology that catered to those impulses. Our houses grew larger as we moved farther away from each other. Ridesharing and delivery everywhere brought unimaginable convenience to our lives.

Again and again, technology has solved the problem of the day and brought new ones. Refrigerants fought spoilage and the inconvenience of iceboxes. Their first iteration tore a hole in the ozone layer, the next trapped greenhouse gasses, but the latest have neither ailment. Hospitals were noble, if ineffective, humanitarian efforts to care for the sick and dying. They only ceased to be death sentences with modern sanitation and antibiotics. Economies of scale were the cornerstone of modern prosperity. At first the cost was our skies and seas, until a wave of activism led to a wave of technologies that captured and cleaned up pollutants and emissions.

So too have we started to address the problems of our new age. Thus come a million pieces of technology to restrict your phone usage to what you wish for it to be (Screen Time! Website Blockers! Focus Friend!), better tools for organizing social events (Partiful! Meetup! Eventbrite!). In my own life, I have ceased to use and blocked the apps that felt destructive (twitch, tiktok) and shifted towards the ones that lead me to connect to more people (substack, partiful).

And now, a new technology comes on the horizon and heralds the sweet and the bitter, uses great and terrible. Both the supporters and detractors for AI imagine what the machines do in this future world, but the visions for people seem hazy at best.

Let it not be so. Let us learn from our mistakes. Let us build a better world.

I want to build a future where AI is a used as a tool to build meaning instead of replace it. Where it can push you towards other people instead of acting as a ersatz substitute. Where it propels you towards your long term goals instead of sapping your motivation to capture your income.

Most of all, I want to build tools that embrace and celebrate human connection. Make it easier our lives with people we love. I want to build tools I think would better the lives of the growing generation while serving instead of flattening the beautiful span of human preference and desire.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

-From The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus.

humans& is an ai lab centered around people and their relationships with each other. Sounds like a goal that could easily turn dystopian. Why did I think working here was the best use of my time?

I could have finished my PhD, joined a larger company, or tried to spend more time working on AI policy. No doubt some readers will think that each of these paths was a better option. But none of them can lead to the future I want to build. Creating new categories of technology can.

I chose humans& because I believe in the mission, the people who work there, and the possibility of technology to change the world for the better. My coworkers at humans& are competent and hardworking, idealistic yet practical, warm-hearted and gregarious¹. Working with them is fun, it’s galvanizing, it’ s rigorous, it’s edifying. These people care, and believe their work can change the world because it already has. How could I do anything else, be anywhere else?

So here we are. If you are in San Francisco, let’s meet or catch up! But wherever you are, I hope you get the chance to believe in what you do, and find people who share your aspirations. And I hope, more than I have ever hoped before, that I succeed at what I do.

I have finally chosen a path in life not for the sake of growth but for the sake of the task itself. No other choice affords me that sweet taste, so the choice is made, and thus I enter the risky business of dancing with your dreams. Wish me luck!

His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,
Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?
Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for? All is silver-grey,
Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!

-From Andrea Del Sarto, by Robert Browning

1. Everyone always says this, but I actually mean it. The founders did an amazing job selecting for people who care about the future. Some distinctive features you would not find at other AI startups: our early hires include people who specialized in building AI for building consensus, pluralistic alignment, tutoring, and privacy. A third of the team has kids.