Steam, Steel, and Infinite Minds

Key ideas

Zhao uses steel, steam and cities to argue that AI's larger gains will come when organizations and economies redesign work instead of bolting chatbots onto it.

1. 1

   New technology first copies the old

   Zhao writes that the future tends to look like the past at first: early phone calls read like telegrams, early movies like filmed plays, and today's chatbots like search boxes. He says he does not have all the answers and offers historical metaphors for thinking at three scales.

2. 2

   Context and verifiability hold agents back

   Zhao argues coding agents got ahead because a programmer's context sits in one place and code can be tested. General knowledge work is scattered across tools and hard to grade, so he says people must still supervise and agents stay narrow until that changes. Once it does, he wants humans overseeing from a higher vantage point rather than checking each step.

3. 3

   AI could carry the organization's weight

   Zhao compares communication in large companies to iron buildings, which could only rise so far before their own weight became the limit. He says AI has the potential to play steel's role by holding context and surfacing decisions, so meetings and approval chains shrink and companies might scale without the usual decay.

4. 4

   Redesign the factory, not just the engine

   Zhao recounts that mill owners who merely replaced waterwheels with steam engines saw modest gains, and the big gains came once they moved and rebuilt their factories around the new power. He places AI at the replacement stage today. He calls Notion's use of agents for notes, IT requests and status reports only baby steps.

5. 5

   Scale will cost some legibility

   Zhao expects knowledge work to change as cities did between walkable Florence and Tokyo: bigger, harder to read, and offering more opportunity. He says weekly meetings, quarterly planning and annual reviews may stop making sense, and that the trade is less legibility for more scale and speed.

In Ivan’s words

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