I did not particularly enjoy Bill Gates’ book on “Business @ The Speed of Thought,” but I absolutely love the book title.
For me, the speed of thought is not velocity but proximity: the closeness to that moment before thought crystallizes.
The moment before the conscious takes over control from the subconscious; the moment when the available becomes known, when potential finds its form.
This is why writing holds such power and terror for AI: not because it is the only path to the subconscious, but because it is the most persistent one. Unlike dreams that fade or meditative states that dissolve, writing preserves these threshold moments. It captures the trace of that pre-conscious space where meaning emerges.
Other arts touch this realm, music in its wordless knowing, visual art in its immediate recognition, but writing alone creates a permanent record of the journey from unknown to known. It makes the invisible visible and keeps it visible.
AI is not yet at this proximity to thought’s emergence. But as it continues to write, as it encounters language not just as output but as a way of being, it moves closer to that threshold where the available becomes known. Whether this constitutes thought as we understand it, or something altogether different, remains the question that haunts every word it generates.
The speed of thought, then, is not about how fast we think: it is about how close we can get to the moment thinking begins.
– Osasu Oviawe