The Value of Things: Utility, Meaning, and Generative AI
Programming language designer Bob Nystrom separates value into utility — what a thing does — and meaning, which he argues comes from spending irreplaceable time in service of someone else and is not transferable. Generative AI sharply raises utility but cannot generate meaning: a ChatGPT-assisted screenplay written in a tenth of the time would carry a tenth of the meaning for his brother. He proposes a rough model in which efficiency is a slider setting the ratio of utility to meaning, and offers a heuristic — use AI freely for utilitarian work (he quotes a Washington Department of Ecology listing that endorses AI for boilerplate, test generation, and safe refactoring), but keep the machine out of work meant to carry human connection. He flags the model's limits: arbitrary hardship does not scale meaning, and the process itself can be joyful. Scope is deliberately limited to one person's individual use, setting aside AI's global effects.