Exceptions happen. When I decided I wanted to be a novelist I wrote ten books in one year and only released the ones I liked. I'd write a book then read a book on writing and try to improve. I'd give my books away to anyone who asked and turned them into free podcasts.
A year later I was one of the top ten best-selling indie writers on Amazon, I had my first movie deal and representation from an amazing agent who stuck by me through the rough parts.
Luck and timing were big factors. I also locked myself in my house for 12 months straight and did nothing but focus on being a better writer and create as much output as I could to get traction. I spent a tremendous amount of psychotic energy at building my writing business. Most people give up. I was 37 and desperate to make it work.
When I went with a traditional publisher it was frustrating at first. I was getting critical nods (I was a finalist for the Edgar and the Thriller Award) but the sales numbers weren't the same as when I was independent.
Eventually I found a great publisher (an imprint with Amazon Publishing) and it was a perfect match. My first novel with them (The Naturalist) spent six weeks in the number one spot (even outselling Harry Potter.) I now do two books a year with them.
I don't have the quite the sales or name recognition of a James Patterson or Stephen King, but I became a millionaire from publishing and investing on those earnings before I started working in AI.
I can't speak to the part of the article about advances. They're based very heavily on your sales history. I had to work my way up to six-figure advances. If you have John Scalzi sales numbers you can pick your terms. David Baldacci doesn't ask for an advance. He just splits the profits with the publisher. People like him are in a whole different league.
tldr: Luck and timing matter, but so does being an absolutely focused psychopath who gives up a social life, television, games and everything else to get what you want.
Fair question. In my anecdotal experience everyone I know who had persistent energy, focus and a mechanism for improving their craft achieved something interesting. Sometimes it was ended up in screenwriting or an adjacent field, but something came of it.
My friends who produced excuses became really good at that. My friends who produced real works and continued to improve became good at that instead.
Yes. Rich people tend to re-invest their money and not throw it into a Scrooge McDuck vault to swim in. The re-investing is what helps create economic growth.
A. Some parts of the economy will grow. Some will shrink. My claim is that if you believe that AI will create new efficiencies and continue to do so, then overall economic growth will increase at a faster rate than ever.
B. Predicting what architecture could lead to this growth is beyond the scope of this article. The point was to say that if we keep getting increased efficiencies we'll get increased growth.
C. Job creation accelerates. Before I was hired at OpenAI in 2020, nobody on the planet had ever been hired as a prompt engineer. Now it's a career (at least for the time being.)
D. I'm assuming maximizing profit in the most near-sighted way possible. Same as it has ever been.
Is there a specific claim or argument that you disagree with?
I may have missed something. What are saying specifically?
Okun's law shows a strong correlation between GDP and employment. Which runs counter to your previous claim – as I understand it (please forgive me if I'm not understanding it correctly.)
Did you make a comment somewhere else that I missed?
My claim is that H&R Block would replace all their workers for more efficient AI if it was more profitable. Then they would re-invest that money in the most productive way they can – other companies, etc. This is the same strategy as Apple, Microsoft and other companies do with large amounts of cash.
I don't claim H&R Block would be directly creating new jobs. They would try to maximize profit by investing their profits and diversifying.
Why would H&R Block even exist? In this AI-maximalist version of the future, I could just spin up my copy of Llama 25, and it’d do my taxes in seconds. Pennies to the local utility board for the energy. Not much value circulating in the economy to be reinvested anywhere.
The future isn’t a fixed point. But before then H&R Block (or a company like them) will probably shift to AI. Then eventually your AI will mean you don’t even need them.
Some of these can be done with the right prompting. Wordle was solved a year ago. The problem is that what works and what doesn’t can be counterintuitive or at least require you to think about how something is perceived at the token level.
Here's his YouTube channel. I don't know about the viability, but I loved the concept so much I started writing a sequel to my Station Breaker novels around the concept.
