{"slug": "dragoncatcher-rex-s-provocation", "title": "Dragoncatcher: Rex's provocation", "summary": "A provocation by Rex Sorgatz asks what one person could do if they were the only one with access to AI, prompting a comparison to early computer access and suggesting AI's value may be more social than individual.", "body_md": "[Rex's provocation](/lab/provocation/)\n\nI really like this prompt/provocation [from Rex Sorgatz](https://x.com/fimoculous/status/2074810215078273342?utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me):\n\nImagine you were the only person on earth with access to AI. No one else knew it existed.\n\nWhat would you do with it? How much of an edge would that give you?\n\nI suppose one “easy” answer is “I would generate and sell zero-day exploits”. But that is, obviously, extremely boring. What else? “I would write a ton of software, super cheap”? Also boring. “I would become a legendary feral mathematician, disproving conjectures without any apparent connection to the field”? Okay —\n\nYou can make Rex’s prompt retro in a revealing way:\n\nImagine you were the only person on earth with access to a computer. No one else knew they existed.\n\nWhat would you do with it? How much of an edge would that give you?\n\nThe answer is, paradoxically: not that much of an edge?? Not because a computer in isolation isn’t valuable, but because the real value of computers only emerges —\n\nSo maybe the same is true for AI. Maybe it isn’t primarily a powerful tool, but a social system. (Not again! Why do they keep being social systems?!) This feels weird to write, because AI sure *seems* like a powerful tool … yet, what’s *your* answer to Rex’s prompt?\n\n[To the blog home page](/lab/)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dragoncatcher-rex-s-provocation", "canonical_source": "https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/provocation/", "published_at": "2026-07-22 19:00:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-23 01:58:52.292532+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["Rex Sorgatz"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dragoncatcher-rex-s-provocation", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dragoncatcher-rex-s-provocation.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dragoncatcher-rex-s-provocation.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dragoncatcher-rex-s-provocation.jsonld"}}