# The Overhang - Ethan Mollick

<https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-overhang>

- Host: [oneusefulthing.org](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/hosts/oneusefulthing.org/)
- Saved: September 21, 2026 (2026-09-22T01:03:16Z)
- Record: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/4d912fc1f3ae/
- JSON: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/4d912fc1f3ae.json

## What Jamie wrote

Mollick continues to approach AI from a pragmatic, center-of-the-road position. In general I am an "applied" technologist. A builder. So I tend to push the most on what we can do now and in the near future. I think Mollick's reminder that even if all progress stopped in AI there is still a huge transformation in front of us.

> My point is that, while there is a lot of debate over what future models will do, the current capabilities of existing models are barely being used, and are often not even well understood.

I think his highlight of the uniquely human things that make our partnership with agents the most powerful is a good callout on where to focus:

1. Deep knowledge: the expertise that comes from understanding a field or subject so well that you build intuition around it to quickly and accurately make decisions.
2. Wide knowledge: To gain wide knowledge you need to read and study widely, across fields and formats and traditions.
3. Taste: Some people have a taste for things that many people will find popular, others have a taste that is unique to them, and still others have a taste for what is novel and new.
4. Agency: willingness to test the boundaries of what’s possible when everybody is equally confused about what AI can do.

It is notable to me that everything described there is what would make a great **Product Engineer**.

## Facts

- Kind: [Page](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/kinds/page/)

## Appears in

- [WT351: WT351 — Attention Is The Scarce Part](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/351/), Notable

## Same host

- [Three Years from GPT-3 to Gemini 3 - by Ethan Mollick](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/c0a3bae719ad/) (oneusefulthing.org, November 19, 2025)
- [Claude Code and What Comes Next - Ethan Mollick](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/d51f0b9b5746/) (oneusefulthing.org, January 11, 2026)
- [Management as AI superpower - Ethan Mollick](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/5c58c1fa59fb/) (oneusefulthing.org, January 29, 2026)
- [Claude Dispatch and the Power of Interfaces](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/8efa50abe0ef/) (oneusefulthing.org, April 9, 2026)
- [Agency and Agents - by Ethan Mollick - One Useful Thing](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/d10ab6431f26/) (oneusefulthing.org, September 3, 2026)

## Saved the same week

- [Anthropic decides to support OpenAI's markdown instructions spec](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/121e1e6235df/) (theregister.com, September 21, 2026)
- [Leaders Are Learners | jay tha](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/4291ec950a22/) (jowel.micro.blog, September 21, 2026)
- [AI is too important to fear, too powerful to use carelessly](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/c2e59d68513d/) (startribune.com, September 21, 2026)
- [The Incumbents Are Coming | Andreessen Horowitz](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/9b0f76bc2cbd/) (a16z.com, September 21, 2026)
- [I am often wrong | Boris Cherny's Blog](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/995b9040e52c/) (borischerny.com, September 22, 2026)

## Elsewhere

- Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-overhang