Scarcity Captures the Mind

This is a submission for the 2026 WeCoded Challenge: Echoes of Experience “Scarcity captures the mind. […] The mind orients automatically, powerfully, toward unfulfilled needs.” — Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much In the world of AI and software, this often means not having enough computer power—like RAM, graphics cards, cloud credits, or even the ability to run models on your own computer without it slowing down or crashing. When these resources are scarce, your equipment suffers as well as your thinking. You feel more cautious, less willing to take risks, and your innovative ideas slow down because it’s so hard to try things out. Think about many developers, especially those from underrepresented groups in tech. You might get excited to work with open-source AI models at an event, but your old laptop with only 8 GB of RAM struggles to handle the task. The smallest AI models crash immediately, and trying to fine-tune models on free pl