Welcome to The Nightcrawler, a weekly collection of thought-provoking articles and analysis on technology, innovation, and long-term investing. The Nightcrawler is published every Friday evening by Eric Markowitz, a partner at Nightview Capital and the firm’s Director of Research. Follow him on X. 

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In this evening’s email…

Quote of the week: “It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?” – Henry David Thoreau

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Sam Altman: the robots are coming

Superintelligent robots, AGI—and “all the things that come beyond that”—are coming. According to Sam Altman, it’s just a matter of time. 

In a short essay published this week, Altman shared his vision for OpenAI in 2025, predicting that AI agents will soon join the workforce and “materially change the output of companies.” Yes, Altman is talking his book. So some skepticism is warranted.

But it would be shortsighted not to ask a simple question: what if he’s right? After spending the week at CES—and speaking with founders and executives for the last several months—one thing is clear to me: the general public underestimates how AI could reshape the world.

“We love our current products, but we are here for the glorious future,” Sam writes. “Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity.” (For a lengthier conversation with Altman, Bloomberg’s Josh Tyrangiel spoke with him for a Q&A in Bloomberg that inspired this essay.)

  • Key quote:  “This sounds like science fiction right now, and somewhat crazy to even talk about it. That’s alright—we’ve been there before and we’re OK with being there again. We’re pretty confident that in the next few years, everyone will see what we see, and that the need to act with great care, while still maximizing broad benefit and empowerment, is so important. Given the possibilities of our work, OpenAI cannot be a normal company.”

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Embracing patience—and the magic of serendipity 

My friend Nima Shayegh, managing partner of Rumi Capital Partners LP, wrote an essay this week that beautifully captures some of the core paradoxes at the heart of investing.

My favorite segment of the piece explores the nature of idea discovery—a subject I’ve wrestled with as well. “Curiously, some of our most fruitful investment insights seem to emerge when we are doing anything but ‘investment work,'” Nima writes. “This idea flies in the face of a world which has increasingly come to believe that a ‘repeatable investment process’ is something like a machine: feed in a universe of stocks, crank the lever, and out fall a few exceptional ideas.” He continues: 

  • Key quote:  “In my experience, the best investment insights often feel more like gifts of serendipity than products of mechanical rigor. It is no coincidence that many of history’s most successful investors have deliberately woven ‘space’ into their lives. Warren Buffett, for instance, once shared that he spends around eight hours a week playing bridge. For a CEO tasked with compounding nearly a trillion dollars in equity value, his daily calendar is remarkably open. It is tempting to think Berkshire’s results could have been even better had he spent those ‘unproductive hours’ poring over more annual reports—but I suspect the opposite is true. Over a few years, perhaps; over the decades, almost certainly not.

A few more links I enjoyed: 

How My 2024 Took an Unexpected Turn in December – via Thomas Chua

  • Key quote: “‍Your inbox, social media feeds, and the content you consume are the building blocks of your digital community, constantly shaping your mindset and influencing your choices… Curating your community in the real world and online is the most powerful lever you can pull to achieve your goals. It won’t always be easy, but it is essential.”

Deep Roots, Hard Looks, and Change – via Brent Beshore (Permanent Equity)

  • Key quote: “The longer I live, the more I realize that many more things sound correct than actually are correct. Lots of things make complete sense, and just don’t work. Think of putting butter in your coffee, or communism, or the music of Nickelback. The operating partner model is another one of them. In theory it should work. In practice, it didn’t.”

Legendary Inventor Danny Hillis (Plus Kevin Kelly) — via Tim Ferriss

  • Key quote: “I think humans, as we know them today, are kind of halfway between monkeys and what we’re going to become. … We’re in this transitional phase. We’ve still got a lot of monkey in us, and I’m really excited by that thing that we’re going to become.”

From the archives:

Universal Laws of the World – Morgan Housel (2019)

  • Key quote: “If something is true in one field it’s probably true in others. Restricting your attention to your own field blinds you to how many important things people from other fields have figured out that are relevant to your own.”