Surfing the Edge: Tim O’Reilly on how humans can thrive using AI
Surfing the Edge: Tim O’Reilly on how humans can thrive using AI
By Tim Cooper | Published: 2025-12-02 14:00:00 | Source: Business – Big Think
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What is a basic human skill? It’s riding the crest of change and embracing the unknown, says Tim O’Reilly, technology trend visionary and CEO of O’Reilly Media. He “imbibed” this idea from the science fiction writer Frank Herbert (Sand dunes) in the 1970s and has been “surfing on the edge” of change ever since.
Tim founded Global Network Navigator (GNN), the first ever commercial web portal, and sold it to AOL in 1995. He became one of Silicon Valley’s most influential thinkers, known for popularizing the phrases “open source” and “Web 2.0” among others. O’Reilly Media – which Tim started over 40 years ago – has provided business and technical training to millions of users and currently serves more than 5,000 companies worldwide.
He has long argued that technology can create new jobs rather than lay people off — a major theme in his 2017 book What nonsense? What the future is and why is up to us. Despite the evidence this year that A.I He has This has decimated jobs, especially for younger workers, and Tim is optimistic that people can quickly adapt and thrive in an automated world.
So we asked him – how can humans stay ahead of the game?
Think big: Instead of creating jobs, AI is in some ways killing them, according to 2025 Stanford University research. What went wrong?
Tim O’Reilly: AI isn’t taking over jobs: the decisions of the people who deploy it are. We concentrate value in the hands of people who use it to gamble on stock prices. Venture capitalists treat companies as if they are financial instruments that they can trade for profit by consciously provoking a media bubble rather than promoting real growth. These Silicon Valley hypemongers should be ashamed of themselves.
The message is in my book What nonsense It’s more important than ever – that we look at this extractive pattern and do something about it now. If we value companies that have made profits in the real world and reinvest them in solving problems – such as caring for aging populations, reducing working hours, and advancing medicine – AI will create new opportunities and businesses.
One solution is to reduce taxes on employing people, rather than automatically wiping them out, and increase taxes on extractive capital gains.
Think big: Should business leaders take responsibility for protecting jobs from AI and how can they do so?
Tim O’Reilly: A society that uses automation to “build shareholder value” while impoverishing everyone else will not be successful. Some companies have announced how they are using artificial intelligence to lay off employees. They missed the point. If you replace humans with AI, it will not improve customer service. You should combine the two to improve the service.
Some companies have announced how they are using artificial intelligence to lay off employees. They missed the point.
Business leaders can start by listing all the things you wish you could do for your customers, but can’t afford. For example, at O’Reilly, we use AI to increase content that we can translate into many more languages than before, increasing our addressable market. We’re building more personalized learning paths for users, and creating tools for corporate clients to accelerate their employees’ skills and career paths.
In our business, we faced headwinds from potential customers who said “we won’t need to train programmers because AI will do the job.” The employment prospects for junior programmers have looked bleak for some time. But we’ve recently seen reports that even leading labs are hiring junior programmers again, because they’re quick to become more productive with new tools.
Think big: Is an AI-led market collapse imminent?
Tim O’Reilly: The stock market is overvalued and deserves a correction. But bubbles can last longer than you think. After selling GNN for cash and stock options, I thought I had to get out quickly and realized my options for a fraction of the billion dollars they were worth at the peak, a few years later. So the bubble will continue for some time. But I am concerned about some of the huge investment commitments that have been made.
Think big: How can the bubble finally burst?
Tim O’Reilly: A lot can go wrong. The massive power requirements of AI may cause delays. Hesitant people will bet on their old business models. For example, we at GNN tried to get book publishers and phone companies to take the Internet seriously, but they didn’t, or took years to start thinking about it.
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Some US AI labs have promoted this narrative that we need huge investments to get to artificial general intelligence (AGI) (which can perform any task a human can do), or superintelligence (AI that exceeds the power of the human mind) – with the idea that the winner takes all. But Chinese companies are showing that you can build models that are very close to the state of the art at a much lower cost. Instead, American companies that rely on monopoly rents will compete in a commodity market, making it impossible to recover their costs at all.
Think big: What’s the biggest nonsense you’ve encountered recently about AI?
Tim O’Reilly: The idea that software was once a tool is now a factor. This has been true for a long time, software was doing its job long before AI. It’s all in service of the narrative that this technology is different from anything before it.
Another big nonsense is how close AI is coming – or “AI gets super intelligent, everything changes”, with a complete lack of real world perspective or understanding of what needs to happen first. AI is not unique, it is “ordinary technology”. There are still laws of physics, things to build, and many limitations. We have a long way to go.
Think big: What advice do you have for business leaders in this hype-driven environment?
Tim O’Reilly: Artificial Intelligence is a transformative technology, and we will learn how to make money using it. So you have to invest. But find out how truly It affects your business and don’t buy the hype. Plan scenarios and develop a solid strategy that can survive in multiple conditions. When the bubble bursts, you want to make things that truly improve your customers’ lives. The market will eventually reward people who do the real things.
Think big: What is the impact of the emergence of “post-literate” media such as YouTube and TikTok on the learning environment?
Tim O’Reilly: YouTube is a great resource but it doesn’t live up to its potential for content learning due to its advertising model. For example, most videos have five minutes of filler so that’s long enough to attract ads. We will see this friction with large AI companies as well if they settle on an advertising model. It’s one of the things that worries me most about AI.
Think big: You are co-leading the AI Detection Project, which addresses the societal risks posed by the commercialization of technology. What are the challenges and how can we manage them?
Tim O’Reilly: Platforms monetize attention, often in ways that conflict with users’ interests. We remember when social media was useful for keeping up with your friends and family. Now they are constantly pushing other things on you.
I continue to push my company to think “AI first” – and try to do the job better in new ways.
The project initially asked: What if companies had to disclose metrics, as part of their Securities and Exchange Commission reports, that show how their platforms functioned before the “rollout” process?Activation“There is a lot we can do to create AI protocols that advance safety and the interests of users, not just providers.
Also, on copyright, we’re trying to see if protocols can say, “Do you want to use my content? Pay me for it.”
Think big: In the 1970s, I wrote a book about science fiction author Frank Herbert. Are any of his ideas still relevant to you today?
Tim O’Reilly: All of them. Herbert’s famous sentence from the novel Sand dunes It is still true: “Fear is the mind killer.” Perceiving the future does not have to be like the past, and trying to keep it like the past is always the wrong strategy. In technology, this means being comfortable with the unknown.
Take, for example, those who are trying to build walls against the wave of artificial intelligence, pretending that we can keep it at bay. Or create walls against other changes, such as mass migration, climate change, or aging populations, rather than seeing opportunities. The more time you spend building walls, the harder it will be to collapse when they fall.
Navigating the edge of change today requires balance and responsiveness. With AI, there are no uniform rules – you have to know where the advantages lie for you and your business. This is a “pollution yourself” act, not something you can do from a distance.
It is an intensely creative period where we solve existing problems in new ways, and new problems that we couldn’t handle with previous tools. The answers vary every day because they are still being invented. Invention, diffusion and learning are a social process.
For example, there is a temptation to try to integrate AI into existing workflows. When apps were invented, “mobile first” — design the new thing first, then update the old thing when you understand it — became our mantra. I continue to push my company to think “AI first” – and try to do the job better in new ways. When you discover this, go back and improve or integrate with what you did before.
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