A guide to understanding AI as normal technology

When we published AI as Normal Technology, the impact caught us off guard. It quickly became the most influential thing either of us had ever done.1 We took this as a strong signal to spend more of our time thinking and writing about the medium-term future of AI and its impacts, offering grounded analysis of a topic that tends to attract speculation. This is a shift in focus away from writing about the present-day and near-term impacts of AI, which is what the AI Snake Oil project was about. Reflecting this shift, we have renamed this newsletter. We have already published two follow-up essays to AI as Normal Technology and will publish more regularly as we expand our framework into a book, which we plan to complete in late 2026 for publication in 2027. Today, we address common points of confusion about AI as Normal Technology, try to make the original essay more approachable, and compare it to AI 2027. Table of contents Normal doesn’t mean mundane or predictable A restatement of our th

When we published AI as Normal Technology, the impact caught us off guard. It quickly became the most influential thing either of us had ever done.1 We took this as a strong signal to spend more of our time thinking and writing about the medium-term future of AI and its impacts, offering grounded analysis of a topic that tends to attract speculation. This is a shift in focus away from writing about the present-day and near-term impacts of AI, which is what the AI Snake Oil project was about. Reflecting this shift, we have renamed this newsletter. We have already published two follow-up essays