---
title: "Power, in the good sense"
url: https://raskell.io/notes/power-in-the-good-sense/
author: Raffael Schneider
date: 2026-10-25
description: "The right word for what AI gives an individual builder is power, meant as capability rather than domination. It is refreshing to say so."
tags: [augmentation, democratisation, ai-engineering, ethics]
---

# Power, in the good sense

The word I have settled on for the feeling in [ideas stop waiting](https://raskell.io/notes/ideas-stop-waiting/) is power. Not in the sense the word usually carries, power over someone, but in the plain sense: being capable of doing something, having possibilities, having a moat of your own. Through the AI services anyone can subscribe to, we became powerful.

It is an uncomfortable choice of word at first, and the longer I sit with it the more I like it. We have trained ourselves to hear power only as hierarchy, and to look for a victim in every arrangement that has some. This is a kind of power nobody took from anyone. It was not redistributed; it was created, and handed out to whoever cared to learn it. Capability is power, and it is a relief to say so without apology. It is the capability of one person directing many hands, which is what [sixteen agents under one manager](https://raskell.io/articles/what-sixteen-ai-agents-taught-me-about-management/) turned out to be about. What makes it more than a personal feeling is that the capability is [democratised](https://raskell.io/notes/a-capability-democratised/), which is where the interesting consequences start.