Why we are starting Leisure Labs

Every technology era gets the institutions it builds early. The institutions being built around AI today are, almost without exception, organized around capability: making models that can do more. We think a complementary institution is missing — one organized around capacity: making people able to do more, with machines as the means.

The distinction sounds rhetorical and is not. A capability lab asks whether the system completed the task. A capacity lab also asks what happened to the person: did they get their time back, and what did it become? Did their skill grow or atrophy? Is the group around them smarter or more fragmented? These questions change what you build, how you evaluate it, and what you refuse to ship.

We chose the name deliberately. Leisure, in its oldest sense, is not idleness — it is unforced time, the time in which people learn, reason, repair, care, and take part in common life. The Greek word for it became the word "school." For most of history that time belonged to a few, paid for by the labor of the rest. Labor-saving machines were always, at their best, a promise to distribute it. We are starting this lab because the most powerful labor-saving machines ever built are arriving now, and the promise will not keep itself.

We are small, technical, and patient. We publish our research, our evaluations, and as much of our infrastructure as responsibility allows. If the premise resonates, read the work — and if the work holds up, consider joining it.