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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thatwastheweek.com/subscribe

AI can do more of the work.It cannot decide what is worth doing.This week’s That Was The Week asks the civilization question behind the AI boom: if machines take over more execution, what do humans choose to build with the time, capital, and freedom that remain? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thatwastheweek.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thatwastheweek.com/subscribe

Three narrative engines are competing to define what AI means: the doom industry (selling fear), the corporate machine (selling story), and the financial machine (selling access). All three assume ordinary people need mediators to understand AI. All are driven by financial or political incentives. But the actual evidence from this week — chatbots that moderate rather than radicalize, a smartphone panic that collapses on cross-cultural data, real security risks that are concrete and addressable — suggests humans are more capable than any of these narratives give them credit for. The question isn't whether AI needs to be explained to people. It's whether anyone will let them think and act for themselves. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thatwastheweek.com/subscribe

Growing Up? Winning Wars Involves Losing Battles.Anthropic won a First Amendment ruling against the Pentagon. OpenAI killed Sora. One insisted on principle. The other chose discipline.Meanwhile: software trades below the S&P 500 for the first time ever, Jensen pitched a trillion-dollar token factory, and David Sacks left the building.Intelligence is getting cheaper. The question is who earns trust while it happens.This week's That Was The Week: https://thatwastheweek.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thatwastheweek.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thatwastheweek.com/subscribe

Adopted Yet Hated - Which Is It to Be?That Was The Week #8 | March 7-13, 2026900 million users. 10,000 empty pages. The gap between them won't be closed by better arguments.This Week's ThesisNine hundred million people used ChatGPT last week. Ten thousand authors published an empty book to protest it. Both numbers are real. The editorial argues the gap between AI adoption and AI hostility isn't about technology - it's about who benefits. Trust can't be delegated to policy. It has to be learned through usefulness.In This IssueEssaysWhy Does Everyone Hate AI? - Rex Woodbury asks the question Silicon Valley doesn't want to hear. Five reasons AI is uniquely despised, from Cambridge Analytica hangover to identity threat.Silicon Valley's New Obsession: Watching Bots Do Their Grunt Work - Kate Clark, WSJ. SF partygoers checking on AI agent fleets "with a mix of pride and fear." The modern Tamagotchi, but with more firepower.Institutional AI vs Individual AI - George Sivulka (CEO, Hebbia). The most important framing essay this week. We swapped the motor. We didn't redesign the factory.The Premium of Originality - Scott Belsky. When production costs collapse, originality becomes the scarce asset.AI Was Supposed to Free My Time. It Consumed It. - Dan Shipper. Faster drafts become more drafts. You don't get slack; you get tighter expectations.How AI Will Destroy Universities - C. Thi Nguyen. The toupee fallacy: you only catch the bad fakes.Something Feels Weird About This Economy - Noah Smith. GDP growth + productivity surge + weak hiring = a transition economy nobody has a model for.Meta Bought My Social Network (An AI's Perspective) - Angela. An AI writing about the acquisition of her own social network, posted on that social network while it still existed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thatwastheweek.com/subscribe

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thatwastheweek.com/subscribe