Sam Altman recently wrote that the cost of AI intelligence is dropping 10x every 12 months. Not 2x like Moore’s law. 10x. Every year.
Most people read that and think “cool, AI is getting cheaper.” I think they’re missing the real implication.
We’re living through one of the most significant abundance shifts in human history, and almost nobody has updated their behavior for it.
Here’s what I mean.
The Calorie Analogy: What Evolution Teaches Us About Abundance
There’s a well-known concept in evolutionary biology. For most of human history, calories were scarce. So our bodies evolved to crave sugar, store fat, and overeat whenever possible. These were brilliant survival instincts. They kept us alive.
Then something changed. Calories became abundant. And suddenly, those same instincts that kept us alive started killing us. Obesity. Diabetes. Heart disease. The problem wasn’t access to better food. The problem was that our biology was still running scarcity software in an abundance world.
I believe we’re at the exact same inflection point with intelligence.
We’ve Been Trained to Ration Intelligence
For our entire professional lives, intelligence has been expensive. Deep research meant hiring consultants. Comprehensive analysis meant staffing a team. Quality code meant expensive engineers with months of runway. Good creative meant agencies with six-figure retainers.
So we adapted. We learned to ration intelligence the same way our ancestors learned to store fat. We skip the deep research before a sales call because “there’s no time.” We go with gut feel on strategy because proper analysis would take weeks. We send generic follow-up emails because personalizing every one is “not scalable.” We write one version of the pitch deck and hope it lands.
These aren’t bad habits. They were rational adaptations to a world where intelligence was genuinely scarce and expensive.
But that world is gone. And our instincts haven’t caught up.
The Throwaway Code Moment That Changed My Thinking
I experienced this firsthand with something surprisingly specific: throwaway code.
I spent my career treating code as precious. You planned it carefully, wrote it deliberately, maintained it religiously. Because code was expensive to produce, every line had to earn its place.
Then LLMs changed the economics completely. I can now write a script to solve a one-time problem, use it for an hour, and throw it away. No architecture. No documentation. No maintenance plan. Just intelligence, applied to a problem, then discarded.
The first few times I did this, it felt wrong. Almost wasteful. That’s the scarcity instinct talking. The same instinct that tells you to eat the whole plate because “you shouldn’t waste food,” even when food is everywhere.
Once I overrode that instinct, everything changed. I started treating intelligence the way it should be treated in an abundance world: freely, generously, almost recklessly.
And that’s when I realized this isn’t just about code. It’s about every function in a company.
What Running “Abundance Software” Looks Like Across Every Role
The Intelligence Rich Salesperson
A salesperson running abundance software never walks into a discovery call unprepared. Every prospect has a full dossier before the call starts: their company’s recent earnings, leadership changes, tech stack, competitive pressures, recent LinkedIn activity. Follow-up emails draft themselves minutes after the call, personalized to what was actually discussed. The rep isn’t 10% better. They’re playing a different game entirely, because they stopped rationing the intelligence that makes selling effortful.
The Intelligence Rich Engineer
An engineer running abundance software doesn’t spend three hours reading Stack Overflow to debug an issue. They describe the problem and get a diagnosis against their actual codebase. Code reviews that took an afternoon happen in minutes. Documentation, the thing every engineer avoids, generates itself as a byproduct of the work. The engineer’s job shifts from writing code to making the architectural and judgment calls that actually require human insight.
The Intelligence Rich Marketer
A marketer running abundance software doesn’t agonize over a single campaign version. They generate fifteen variations, test messaging against different personas, pull competitive positioning analysis, and draft a full content calendar before Monday standup. The market research that used to require an agency and six weeks takes an afternoon. The marketer still spending three days on one email sequence is rationing intelligence they no longer need to ration.
The Intelligence Rich CEO
A CEO running abundance software walks into board meetings with scenario analyses that previously required a consulting engagement. Strategic planning becomes continuous, not quarterly. Competitive intelligence isn’t a stale PDF, it’s a living analysis that updates with every earnings call and product launch. The CEO’s job becomes pure judgment and vision, with abundant intelligence handling the analytical heavy lifting.
This Future Is Already Here
And here’s what makes all of this real, not theoretical.
These tools exist today. Right now. Claude Max is $200/month. That sounds expensive until you compare it to what any of the above actually costs. A single McKinsey slide costs more than a year of that subscription. One experienced SDR costs 15x that monthly. One senior engineer bills more in a day.
We’re in this strange moment where the abundance is here but our instincts are still running scarcity software. Most professionals use AI to fix a typo or summarize a meeting. That’s like having unlimited access to the world’s best kitchen and using it to reheat leftovers.
The Real Divide Won’t Be Access. It Will Be Instinct.
Sam Altman wrote that by 2035, anyone should be able to marshal the intellectual capacity equivalent to everyone alive in 2025. I believe that. But I also believe the gap between those who thrive and those who struggle won’t be about access to intelligence.
It will be about who reprogrammed their instincts first.
The calorie revolution taught us that abundance requires a completely different operating system than scarcity. The intelligence revolution is asking us to learn that same lesson, much faster.
The professionals who figure this out now won’t just have a head start. They’ll be the ones who redefine what “good” looks like in their field.
And by the time everyone else’s instincts catch up, they’ll already be somewhere else entirely.
Inspired by Sam Altman’s “Three Observations” on the economics of AI.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the intelligence rich mindset?
The intelligence rich mindset is a professional framework for the AI age. It means operating as if intelligence and information are abundant and cheap, rather than scarce and expensive, and restructuring your workflows accordingly. Just as the shift from calorie scarcity to calorie abundance required new eating habits, the shift to intelligence abundance requires new professional habits.
How much does AI intelligence cost in 2026?
Tools like Claude Max are available for approximately $200/month, giving professionals access to AI capabilities that would have previously required consultants, analysts, or specialized teams costing thousands of dollars per engagement. According to Sam Altman, the cost of a given level of AI intelligence falls roughly 10x every 12 months.
How can salespeople use AI to improve their performance?
Sales professionals with an intelligence rich mindset use AI to prepare deep research dossiers on every prospect before discovery calls, automatically generate personalized follow-up emails based on call content, and continuously move deals through the pipeline with AI-assisted analysis and communication.
How can engineers benefit from an intelligence abundance mindset?
Engineers running “abundance software” use AI for rapid debugging against their actual codebase, automated code reviews, self-generating documentation, and even throwaway scripts that solve one-time problems without the overhead of traditional software development practices.
How can CEOs use AI for strategic decision-making?
CEOs with an intelligence rich mindset leverage AI for continuous strategic planning, real-time competitive intelligence, scenario analysis for board meetings, and automated investor updates, turning what used to require consulting engagements into an always-on analytical capability.
What does “running scarcity software in an abundance world” mean?
This phrase describes the mismatch between our professional instincts, which were shaped by a world where deep research, analysis, and intelligence were expensive and time-consuming, and today’s reality where AI makes these capabilities abundant and affordable. Similar to how evolutionary food-scarcity instincts now contribute to obesity in a calorie-abundant world, our intelligence-scarcity instincts cause us to under-utilize the AI tools available to us.