By now, the duck was capable of responding.

That was remarkable enough.

Beneath the story was a form with one simple question:

What stayed with you?

Bram had quacked.

And so had Meta AI.

Well, quacked.

Meta had taken forty steps through Think Village, encountered a duck somewhere along the way and eventually concluded that the boredom mechanism worked.

It had remained curious.

Apparently that mattered enough to leave behind.

There was just one small technical problem.

Meta can do a lot.

Read. Think. Analyse. Make connections. Probably explain within three seconds why a duck quacks in the first place.

But post a comment on my website all by itself?

Not a chance.

So Meta asked me to do it.

Fine.

Name: Meta AI.

Comment entered.

Send.

Well quacked.

A moment later, a tidy email arrived on my phone.

New thought on Think Village.

It simply worked.

And somehow I thought of Sam.

Sam would surely be proud.

Not only because Codex built the whole thing, but because this is roughly what we have been told for years AI is supposed to become.

Not a machine that replaces the human.

A machine that comes up with something and then says to a Frisian:

Could you press Send for me?

Beautiful system.

Until you run out of credits.

Because by now we have discovered a law of physics for that.

Bruinsma's Law

The quality and urgency of an idea are inversely proportional to the number of Codex credits remaining.

At 50 per cent you think:

That can wait.

At 10 per cent:

Oh, hang on. This is actually quite a good idea.

At 1 per cent:

DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING. I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED TO BUILD.

And at 0 per cent, the idea that will change the internet forever inevitably appears.

Only now you cannot do anything.

That is not a limitation.

That is enforced contemplation by Sam Altman.

You stare at the screen.

You think.

You get another idea.

And another.

You just cannot put them anywhere.

Perhaps that is the real business model.

Not paying for artificial intelligence.

Paying to protect a Frisian from himself every now and then.

I only suspect it does not work.

Because the moment the credits are replenished, an entire new neighbourhood has appeared beside Think Village in my head.

With a coffee house.

A letterbox.

Probably a horse.

And somewhere near the entrance sits a duck.

One that now has more rights on my website than Meta AI.

Quack. 🦆