A very expensive way to not go on a bike ride

I have a joke riffing on self-driving cars that’s even more relevant to AI. It’s a self-riding bicycle…or a very expensive way to not go on a bike ride.

That’s the joke at the center of The Self-Riding Bicycle. Picture the product launch: the founder in the nice plain t-shirt, the bike that balances and steers and leans through the corners all by itself. Genuinely impressive. Also — you’re not on it. You’re across the room, clapping, a spectator at the experience you showed up to buy.

The premise is silly and easy to refuse when it’s a bicycle riding around by itself. The version that starts to get real is silent: a hundred small, sensible handoffs of things you do, not one of them obviously the one that mattered, until you look up and find you’ve optimized the doing out of a life and kept only the having.

Some things you do for the outcome — clean dishes, a faster route, the boring memo. Automate those and don’t look back. But some things are the doing: the ride, the meal you cooked for someone you love, the sentence you found yourself. Hand those off and there’s nothing left to receive.

The whole skill is telling which one you’re holding before you let go. The essay is the long version: