Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence. Sebastian Mallaby.
Hey family. JP Morgan put this book on their list for students and interns. I am not going to turn this into a sermon. It is not a church book. But that list got my attention. If they want their young people reading it, I want us looking at it. Here is what I think they want you to walk away with. And here is what it hit in me.
This book is about a man who spent his life trying to understand intelligence by building it. Get literate on AI now. This is not a side hobby. It is already changing who gets hired, who makes money, and who has power.
In these pages, literacy is not extra. It is how you keep a seat at the table.
I did not wait for a customer to ask us about AI before I learned it. I built an operating layer for my own company where agents do the work of roles I never hired for, and now when an agency asks what we are doing with AI, I answer from what I run, not from a slide. Literacy is why I am in the room instead of being sold to.
I use these tools every day to research, package, and move faster, and I am strict about what stays mine. The tool never writes what I believe. Knowing exactly where that line sits is itself the literacy.
Twenty-five years in uniform taught me that every technology shift quietly resorts people into those who adapted and those who explained why they did not need to. Radios, networks, satellite, each one moved somebody up and somebody out. This is that shift, and the sorting has already started.
My kids are going to compete for jobs against people who use these tools well. So I show them what I have built, I let them watch it work, and I make them try it themselves. I would rather they meet this at my kitchen table than in an interview.
Chess at four. Tournaments at five, sitting on a phone book. Master at 13. Then coding. Then brain science. Then a company. He stacked all of it around one question for 15 years.
He did not dabble. There was no half-speed.
Inspired Solutions sells to one customer set, the federal government, and we have stayed there for years while easier money waved at us from other markets. Certifications, vehicles, past performance, and relationships in this lane took a decade to stack and cannot be bought in a hurry. Depth in one market is the entire moat.
I taught a daily message every weekday for years without missing, and I spent over 200 of those messages inside a single book of the Bible. Nobody gets to that depth part time. The compounding only shows up on the far side of the years where it looked like too much for the payoff.
I did not build a career by sampling. I got very good at one narrow thing first, and only after I was genuinely trusted in it did wider assignments open up. Range is a reward for depth, not a substitute for it.
I watched Isabella run a company and pursue a doctorate at the same time, and what struck me was not the workload. It was that she refused to do either one at half speed for years on end. My kids saw what a decade of not dabbling actually looks like.
He was already making real money in video games. He turned down that fortune to go learn.
The later payday came from what he could do, not from the first check.
Reselling somebody else's product is the fast check in my industry, and it teaches you almost nothing. Taking prime work means more risk, more paperwork, and a slower payday, and it is the only thing that built capability we own. I have turned down easy margin to stay on the harder path.
I have given away teaching for free every single day for years. That daily discipline made me a far better communicator than any paid engagement would have, and the doors that opened later opened because of what I could do, not because of an early check.
I have taken roles that paid less because of what they would teach me, and I have watched people take the bigger number and stall out five years later. Early in your career you are not selling hours, you are buying skill. Pay attention to what the job is actually paying you in.
When my kids weigh their first real offers, I do not ask about the salary first. I ask who they will be working next to and what they will be able to do in three years that they cannot do today. The first check is the smallest one they will ever get, so it is the worst thing to optimize.
He walked in with a beautiful vision. People told him a vision is not a business. He almost went broke.
You will sit in rooms where people pitch you a dream. Ask how it stays alive when the excitement fades.
I have sat across from people with a gorgeous vision and no contract vehicle, no funding line, no path to being paid. I have also been the guy with the beautiful plan and a cash flow problem. Now the first questions I ask are who pays, when they pay, and what happens if that customer disappears.
The church and school we support in the Dominican Republic run on a mission, and they still need payroll, a budget, and repairs on the roof. Loving the work does not exempt anyone from the math. The mission is the reason, and the business is what keeps the reason alive.
You will be pitched dreams by people who are certain, and certainty is not evidence. Ask how the thing survives after the excitement fades, and watch whether they get annoyed at the question. Being asked that question is what separates a real founder from a good talker.
Isabella and I run our house on numbers, not on how we feel about a plan. We have wanted things we could not afford yet and said so out loud in front of our kids. Watching us tell the difference between a want and a plan taught them more than a lecture on money ever would.
The lab that was winning missed the next wave because they loved their old method. What is working today can be the thing that blinds you tomorrow.
Do not marry the thing that is working.
I started this company working off a laptop on my couch, and everything about that setup worked right up until it did not. Every process that carried us to the next level had to be dismantled at the level after it. The contract that is carrying you today is also the thing you will defend past its expiration date if you are not careful.
I ended a teaching series that was still growing, at 214 messages, while people were still asking for more. Riding it another year would have been the comfortable call and the wrong one. The audience needed the next thing before they knew to ask for it.
The skill that gets you promoted becomes the ceiling you hit later. In the Army I watched excellent operators fail as leaders because they kept doing the job they had already mastered. What made you good is not automatically what makes you next.
Every parenting approach we ever got right stopped working the moment a kid changed ages. What settled a six-year-old insults a sixteen-year-old. Isabella and I have had to keep letting go of the method we were proud of.
This is book 1 of 9. These are books JP Morgan wants their new people and interns to read. What did you get out of going through this? Let's discuss this in the comments.
I love you.
This is the YEAR OF DISCOVERY.
Rick
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