In 1896, the world’s first speeding ticket was issued to Walter Arnold for driving at the “breakneck” speed of 8 mph.

From then until the Formula 1 of today, think of how many technological improvements cars have undergone.

For decades, it probably seemed like cars would just keep getting faster and faster as technology improved.

And yet, here we are 130 years later, and we can’t drive faster than 65 in most places.

Claude just released Fable (which was awesome), and our government immediately yanked it off the market. It’s still not back.

Does this mean we’ve gotten to the first speed limit set for AI? The point after which no future AI models can be used by ordinary people—at any price—even though Formula 1 models will continue to get better behind closed doors?

I’m sorry world for bringing the concept of an AI speed limit into existence, but you can expect my metaphor to be picked up by governments and used—I guess I’m channeling my inner Frank Luntz.

The speed limit is a powerful metaphor because it signals that there is already precedent for arbitrarily limiting technological advancement in the name of the greater good.

If this is true, and we’re setting the AI speed limit today, then for the average Joe the arms race of AI is already over. Because it’s not like any future AI models will be less powerful than the ones already banned.

Or maybe we’re going 8 mph, and this will all seem quite silly in a few years.

We all got to experience the joys of letting AI write for us.

Awesome!

We learned that LLMs could spin up 2,000 LinkedIn posts in the time it would have taken us to write one.

We learned that we could automate our entire content creation process, so we’d never have to think or be original again.

And it was glorious!

For a time.

But now, we must put away childish things.

We must remember what it’s like to think thoughts, have opinions, and write them ourselves.

Because if I had to read only one author’s writing for eternity, it’d probably be Douglas Adams, not GPT 5.5, ya feel me?

(Hint hint. Nudge nudge. Wink wink.)

Boy, this is a tough one to write for the LinkedIn crowd in this day and age.

We live in a time where so many professionals are questioning their career choices (I thought everyone said I should learn to code!?), and on a deeper level, questioning their value as people.

It’s hard to know what we should stand up for, and what we should accept.

When it comes to our ethics, our morals, our wages, or the box we’re put into by others—it’s easier to ride the wave than to stand up for ourselves.

It’s easier to slowly degrade into someone else’s view of our potential.

And history is littered with ambitious, highly intelligent people who fought for what was right and got punished for it.

In the short term? I can’t promise that standing up for yourself and your value will give you what you want.

But that’s the thing about choices made based on morals and ethics: they may not be lucrative, but they are right.

And being right is important.

Whether the world recognizes our actions or not, we have to believe that doing the right thing is its own reward.

And who knows what good is waiting for you on the other side of reclaiming your true worth?

I recently attended the SpaceTech Expo in Anaheim, and it’s certainly one of the cooler trade shows I’ve gone to.

Where else can I nerd out with actual folks from NASA?

But what always strikes me at trade shows like these is how many companies there are producing indeterminate widgets.

There are a few flagship, high-budget booths, and then there is a sea of products and categories I’ve never heard of.

This company makes ball bearings of some kind. This one makes custom fabrics for rockets. This one makes tiny sensors for… ???

More remarkable than my own ignorance is that each one of these companies somehow has enough budget to purchase a booth, to staff it with salespeople, and to fly across the country to sell ball bearings.

In the digital world, we tend to think of career paths along the most obvious and flashiest lines, but for every SpaceX, there are thousands of mid-sized companies, dotting every country on earth, pulling in millions a year in revenue with ugly business cards, poor-looking booths, and products and services no one has ever heard of.

It’s a bigger world than we imagine.

There are more options than we realize.

Peak daytime is for active work. For making the kind of decisions that only you can make.

But at night?

You can have agents go through the prior day’s code and look for optimizations, security holes, bugs, and inefficiencies. The kind of stuff that is boring and tedious during your most productive hours.

This way, when you wake up, you’re greeted with a series of updates to your apps that help you ensure that seven days a week, they are becoming more robust.

Waking up to things a little better than you left them is a powerful feeling that compounds over time.