Today’s Greg’s Letter is sponsored by Brex.
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They hooked up Greg’s Letter readers with serious perks:
Only available through this link. Thanks Brex! Now onto today's post....
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AI Created 2 Different Worlds
The thought that there are two completely different realities happening simultaneously right now, and which one you live in depends entirely on whether you've opened an LLM today.
In Reality A, people are still updating their resumes. Still asking for raises that barely match inflation. Still believing that career progress means climbing someone else's ladder for 40 years until retirement. They're living in 2019 with better phones.
In Reality B, people are having existential crises at 2am because their AI agent just handled a task that used to take them all day. They're building three businesses simultaneously because why not. They're charging $5,000 for work that takes them 30 minutes and Claude 30 seconds. They've glimpsed the matrix.
The weird part isn't the gap between these realities. It's that they exist in the same coffee shops. The same friend groups. The same families.
You try to explain to your college roommate that you're making $10K/month from a workflow automation you built in a weekend. They nod politely and ask if you're still looking for a 'real job.' You show your parents how ChatGPT (with the right prompts) can write better than most professionals. They're impressed but wonder when you'll finish your degree.
There's a loneliness to seeing the future while everyone you love is still living in the past. You sound insane at dinner parties. 'No, you don't understand, the entire professional services industry is about to collapse.' They think you've joined a cult. Maybe you have.
You watch your friends stress about performance reviews while you're teaching AI to run entire departments. They're worried about job security; you're worried about which of your seven revenue streams to focus on. You're playing different games with different rules on the same board.
The strangest part is the small talk. They ask 'how's work?' and you don't know how to answer. Do you tell them you haven't had a boss in six months? That your coworkers are language models? That you made their annual salary last quarter from a Python script that runs while you sleep?
So you learn to code-switch. In Reality A, you smile and say 'busy, you know how it is.' In Reality B, you're reshaping entire industries from your laptop. You become bilingual in paradigms. You recognize all the builders from X and YouTube.
Some days you wonder if you're delusional. Maybe the doomers and the normies are right. Maybe this is all hype. Then you ship something in an afternoon that would have taken a funded startup six months to build in 2020, and you remember: no, the shift is real. You're not crazy. You're just early.
The hardest part isn't learning the tools. It's accepting that most people you care about won't see what you see until it's too late to matter. They'll get it in five years when the window has closed. When building requires licenses and compliance and venture capital again.
But right now, in this bizarre moment, you can still choose which reality to inhabit. You can close this essay and go back to Reality A. Update your LinkedIn. Schedule that informational interview. Hope for a 10% raise.
Or you can open your LLM and start building the thing that makes both realities obsolete. Or grab a validated idea from Ideabrowser that thousands of people from Reddit has begged for with all the prompts to build it.
The split between these worlds won't last. Eventually, Reality B eats Reality A. The question isn't if, but when. And more importantly: which side of that meal do you want to be on?
Your grandkids won't ask why you didn't see it coming. Everyone sees it coming. They'll ask why you saw it and still chose Reality A.
You can only live in one timeline, and this might be the last moment in history where you get to pick.
Happy building, my friends.
Forward this to a friend who might be in either reality.
#1
"The 10 AI core products that make up my stack" by Olivia Moore
#2
Yes please!
#3
"AI coding agents have reversed the software design & development process." by Luke Wroblewski
#4
I liked this idea a lot by Ideabrowser.com (it's now in the database of ideas until someone claims it)
#5
Anyone else remember these? I need an eggy shipped to my house stat!
Thank you for reading Greg's Letter. I hope you it got your creative juices flowing. You can forward this email to a friend that might benefit.
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Until next week.
Be well,
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