# notes --- *this is a follow-up article to* [[rao, venkatesh - 2013 - the mother of all disruptions]] i largely disagree with the cavalier tone in this article; i think the devaluation of natural language is a bad thing, specifically *because* of its organic evolution, space for nuance, and expressive capabilities ([[natural language as a soft technology]]). as an ultra-mega-super-long-term theory, though, i see what he’s getting at: the more problems we solve with computing, the fewer problems we’re forced to solve with language. mostly wanted to note this as a source because of its reality check: regardless of my personal feelings on [[artificial intelligence]], it does perform its available tasks better than the vast majority of humans. that alone makes it a worthwhile tool to develop. # highlights --- >human-to-human communication was an over-served market, and that computing was driving a classic disruption pattern by serving an under-served marginal market: machine-to-machine and organization-to-organization communications. >It’s obvious that the AIs can write better than 90% of humanity all the time, and the other 10% of humanity 90% of the time. It’s not a mere tool. It’s an obviously better way to do what too many humans do. >[!note] [[2025-05-28]] > i don't know that "better" is the word i would use, and certainly disagree on writers and other creatives being disposable, but I do agree that there's a "split" in skill in terms of what ai is doing for us. it is not better than, say, me or olivia or v at writing, but it is better than lots and lots and lots -- if not most -- people. >While AIs improve in empirical accuracy, internal consistency, and logical coherence (again — humans have not set particularly high standards here), humans will need to do a good deal of supervisory work to make the AIs useful for mediating human-to-human communication. >It seems obvious to me that machines will communicate with each other in a much more expressive and efficient latent language, closer to a mind-meld than communication, and human language will be relegated to a “last-mile” artifact used primarily for communicating with humans. >There is no *fundamental* reason human society has to be built around natural language as a kind of machine code. Plenty of other species manage fine with simpler languages or no language at all. And it is not clear to me that intelligence has much to do with the linguistic fabric of contemporary society. >[!note] [[2025-05-30]] >perhaps not language, but certainly expression; that *is* humanity. i think his point might be that we don’t inherently need verbal or written language to express ourselves; on the one hand, yes, language is a container and if we can *expand* our capacity for expression, that is a good thing; on the other hand, what he’s describing is expression *to* / to be *translated by* artificial intelligence… >once a mass media complex has digested the language of its society, *starts to create* them