Ruben Hassid · 11 min read · Gen AI Tools
You can't beat AI.
Read the original on ruben.substack.com →
AI is driving a massive drop in the cost of intelligence, outpacing human labor and making junior work obsolete in many cases. The real threat is cheap, good-enough AI that can replace traditional outputs, not perfect AI. To stay ahead, understand the economics, treat intelligence as a commodity, and commit to regular, action-oriented AI adoption.
Key Takeaways
- AI costs are collapsing and capabilities are improving, risking traditional junior roles.
- The risk is not AI becoming perfect but AI becoming cheap enough to replace good-enough human work.
- Jevons paradox explains that cheaper intelligence leads to more demand and more work, not less.
- Take actionable steps: block 20 minutes weekly, apply AI to a concrete section of your work, and share learnings with peers.
Excerpt
Your salary is being compared to a subscription now. A subscription to an intelligence. And the intelligent subscription is getting cheaper than your intelligence. By cheaper, I don’t mean twice as cheap. I mean, 6,000x cheaper in 4 years: And the best part is that the 2026 DeepSeek model is far smarter than the original GPT-4. So not just cheaper, but smarter. A few years ago, if a company needed a decent memo, a market scan, a spreadsheet, a landing page, a sales email, a first draft, a summary, a slide outline, a contract review, or 20 ideas for a…