Session 002: Feeding the beast, renting a human, daddyissues.md, and how far off is Jarvis?
How have you used AI this week?
Bailey
Hey Bailey. Hey Robyn. How are you?
Robyn
Good. I'm good. How are you?
Bailey
Good. I am I'm well rested.
Robyn
Makes one of us. Yeah.
Bailey
Wait. How have you used AI this week?
Robyn
I have used AI this week to the point where I feel confident in my inbox. Yeah. I no longer feel controlled by it. I feel like my agents, inbox triage down to a morning briefing and an afternoon briefing. I enjoy reading them. I know that the
Robyn
Emails from the humans that I wanna see will be marked as unread next to my briefings. I don't worry about them getting lost in the noise and
Bailey
How do you not worry about them getting lost? Like, is there still not a hesitation to like double check and and go to your go to the folders and No.
Robyn
I
Robyn
feel like I've finally I think it only took two weeks, but I trust it. I've trained it well enough.
Bailey
That's all we are you writing back to them with AI or are you that's all
Robyn
I'm not yet writing back with AI. I've seen some of the drafts that AI has written on my behalf. And it sounds like a stranger wrote them. Yeah. Maybe because I haven't like the the this is in my personal inbox. I should be very clear. This is not in my work inbox yet. Gotcha. In my personal inbox, I'm only actively writing to a few people in my life and
Robyn
that's probably not a big enough sample set for the AI to pick up on my writing style. If tune in next week for my work inbox to get to the same
Bailey
The the problem of tone seems really hard for AI because I I use AI to write most of my emails for work and I am constantly correcting it on tone and it it seems it can only get to eighty percent. And to get from eighty to eighty five percent is just I don't know, it just seem it can't sound like me. It just can't write like me.
Robyn
Even with I mean, I know you you have plod, you get a transcript of most of your meetings. Eve does it is it picking up the same context of your spoken voice? Is it not bridging the gap between your spoken tone and your written tone?
Bailey
It du it does a bit. The problem is with I think I could be wrong here. I I don't really know. I think the problem is it wants to turn everything into rules. It wants to write Baileywritingstyle.md. Yeah. Okay. And then to do that, it comes up with rules. Here's how you should sign off, here's how you should start. Bailey speaks in threes, whatever. but then no matter like that
Robyn
Bad things come in threes.
Bailey
Yeah. I don't know, it c it just doesn't it gets eighty-five percent, which is pretty good. Yeah. I'm really skeptical it gets a hundred percent. And I think maybe because you can't bake down my writing style to even a thousand rules. Just doesn't work. And I'm also there's all this like it's I guess it's a context problem as well because on I'm like, dude, you're emailing my boss, don't say cheers. Like I don't know, like there's
Bailey
There's little things that I know that it doesn't know. So I think there's a context issue with tone as well.
Robyn
Do you care?
Bailey
It sometimes. Yeah. I mean I
Bailey
But oftentimes not. Oftentimes and in fact I I I have some conversations with some friends and our AIs are just emailing back and forth and they don't sound like us at all. They sound like our AIs. Yeah. And so and then we go read the thread and we find out what they talked about. we had one thread which going which is 'cause we all have agents, like some of my friends, and it was what did you learn this week? And so we can go in the thread and it's like, my
Bailey
My human told me this this week and I learned that if I do it this way, it pleases him more. And this is what I learned. And so they're like learning off each other.
Bailey
They they use names, but I don't know. Well, I don't I can I can out there's guy Jackson. yeah, Jackson told me this week and now I learn how I can serve Jackson better. Wow. And then they're like learning insights from each other. They're like, that's how you You know, so that's kinda weird.
Robyn
You
Robyn
know in Toy Story where the claw is coming and all the little aliens are like, the claw That's what's in my mind right now. I
Robyn
was born in nineteen ninety one, for anyone who was curious.
Bailey
Yeah, although it is weird, there's a differentiation between because those are emails written by my AI, signed off as my AI. It's not pretending to be whereas at work it's pretending to be me. It's saying from Bailey. Yeah.
Robyn
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a distinction. Yeah,
Robyn
no. No, no. I'm not credit where credit is due is a big rule in my life full stop. So I would like to credit my agent with being excellent and with being an idiot. But I don't want to if I'm going to allow my agent a co authorship of something as intimate as an email communication, I would like it co authored.
Bailey
So you go sincerely, April on behalf of Yeah.
Robyn
Yes, I would do on behalf of. I wouldn't do because I we
Bailey
What if you review it and you're happy with it?
Robyn
then fine. Then I'll sign it off as me. But if I get to the point where I'm allowing it to act on my behalf, I will say on behalf. I'm not interested in I would like to make my own typos, thank you very much, and still do. I want to own the output of the AI or I
Bailey
Make your own typos.
Robyn
I do. If I'm
Robyn
If it's me communicating to somebody because I want to take ownership. That's that's really it. I don't want to blame
Bailey
The the AI's output.
Robyn
I can if I've reviewed it. If I allow emails to start being sent automatically, if I take that review step away, then it will be on behalf of
Bailey
hundred percent no I we're we're on the same page every email that comes from me I've read. my gosh, the idea of in a corporate setting April flicking out emails I haven't read.
Robyn
Hell no. Right.
Bailey
Not doing that. but I haven't actually tried the whole April on behalf of Bailey thing. I would like to try it out. I think it would freak out a bunch of my coworkers. Like who the hell's April? And then I tell them about my
Robyn
Need is a new email signature line that says April is Bailey's AI chief of staff.
Bailey
Yeah, wow. That would really that would be interesting. I might actually do it as a social experiment.
Robyn
Rock
Robyn
the apple cart, sink the boat, what's it? Upset the boat.
Bailey
Rock the apple. Actually, I have told some coworkers about April, who's my chief of staff, who runs my sessions for me, who is an agent. and they want their own Aprils. And so next Friday they go, There's a there's a time block where I'm meant to help them develop their own Aprils.
Robyn
Cool.
Bailey
and so that'd be weird. Then we'll like five Aprils running around. I mean, they can't call them that, but
Robyn
No, it's March, June, July. Yeah.
Bailey
Whatever your birth month is. but that'd be weird. That we'll have a bunch of chiefs of staff on behalf of us interacting, maybe.
Robyn
That's cool. Did you ever have you ever been a part of a brown bag lunch culture in a a work or school setting?
Bailey
Sounds like an American thing.
Robyn
maybe. Brown paper bags are what American children used to bring their school to lunch in. There's an apple, peanut butter, and jelly sandwich, and a juice box, maybe a bag of chips if you're lucky. Wow. Anyway, the idea is everybody brings their lunch. It's like a hackathon. You bring your lunch, you talk about a specific topic, at the end of the lunch hour you go home. It's that sounds like a set up a chief of staff brown bag lunch session.
Bailey
Yeah.
Bailey
no, we do that. We have a we have a Friday afternoon show and tell.
Robyn
Yeah. Is that across the company?
Bailey
Just as a marketing team. Nice. So we go, this is how I've used it this week. This is what I learned. Mm-hmm.
Bailey
it's accompanied by snacks, yeah, popcorn and yeah. Popcorn and stuff, so and that's been
Robyn
When
Robyn
you're serving gin.
Bailey
Yeah.
Robyn
How have you used JI this week, Bailey?
Feeding the beast
Bailey
So much. my gosh. Might have set a token record this week. I'm just shipping so much work. There's also so much work to do. and it turns out if you if all your job is is reviewing outputs, you can move at a ridiculous pace. And so I'm shipping work that I'm proud of that I think is high quality and I'm doing it at a speed that is unprecedented for me.
Bailey
and I'm learning what that pace feels like and I'm also playing with the idea of is this pace sustainable? Is it beneficial? I don't know. So I'm I'm gonna going faster and faster.
Robyn
You said there's a lot of work to do. Do you feel the sensation of being late? Or do you feel the sensation of, there's Mount Everest. I should probably take a couple of steps and see where we are.
Bailey
Yeah, it's it's more like one of the contexts I work in is a a large corporation with lots of businesses attached to it. And there is you know, in one business, there's heaps of things that for marketers to do. fifteen businesses duct taped together, there's sort of this beast of work. And I've I kind of feel like I'm feeding the beast at a rate now. but the
Bailey
The be the more you feed the beast, the hungrier it gets. So yeah. I don't know. The sensation is that I am
Bailey
Keeping up but that then this will become the new pace and then I'll have to go even faster and then start and
Robyn
Be curious to see, because there are some some races I've run in my past where I know the pace is unsustainable, but I can see the finish line. Then there have been other races where I know the pace is unsustainable. I burn out, and then suddenly I wake up one morning and I'm looking back at the pace, going, Whoa, I that was an exponential leap forward. I'd be curious where this where this led.
Bailey
I don't see a finish line. Okay. which is a bit scary. and I don't know
Bailey
You know the other thing is the ability to produce heaps of output doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. More work isn't doing the right work. I'm a believer in doing the right things, not doing more things for the sake of more. so that's also a just because I can do heaps of stuff now, I want to make sure I'm still doing the right things. And sometimes that means slowing down and there's not a lot of room in my day right now for slowing down. So but I mean with all this speed, surely I'm affording some time to slow down. So that's on me, you know.
Onboarding a human is curating a context window
Bailey
Do you do you notice you're speeding up?
Robyn
This week, no. The la well, the last couple of weeks, no. I feel like I've slowed down because I've been in human world. I've been in facilitated sessions. I've been in hiring. I've been in interviews. I've been in hiring people who are slow and only talk at one X speed. You can't put them up to 1.25 speed I have a new person starting on my team soon, and I'm having to slow down in a good way to
Robyn
fill up her context window. Curate her context.
Bailey
Yeah.
Robyn
And I'm building a Canva whiteboard to house some of the rules of living and marketing that we work by and how we operate and all these kinds of things. But I'm also at the same time building time into her training schedule to shut up and listen to her context. And I think the two things are cool, but I wouldn't I don't think I would have been
Robyn
I've always been passionate about onboarding people well because I've done that so many times with contractors and you've got to give people rules about what we believe and you know, so align the heart before you align the work kind of thing. But I wouldn't have thought of it as context windows six months ago. I would have thought of it as onboarding the heart before the head. Like that that would have been my language. But now I sort of go, wait, okay, humans are not AI, Robyn, calm down. But I've learned a lot about informing.
Robyn
agents in the last six months of AI use that is absolutely applicable to people. But I've also gotta still be a person with her when she shows up and listen to her context because we might be saying the same thing in different words.
Bailey
Yeah, it makes me think, you know, maybe you're familiar with this. In Claude you have.md files, which are kind of where context is usually stored for for like local stuff. and and knowing what's in those files is helpful because then you know what context the AI is pulling from. When it comes to humans, when they show up for a job, they don't show up with an empty slate. They show up with Stacy.md and previous job.md. Yeah. And all these MD files and and
Robyn
Issues.md
Bailey
man. And so
Bailey
Find taking some time to find out what's in that context. Because you're gonna be pulling from there. I think it's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Especially before you start shoving stuff in.
Robyn
Stay tuned. Her context window is a six month probation period. No, I'm just kidding.
Bailey
Yeah.
Bailey
And also, you know what you're hiring is you're hiring their context. Yeah. You're hiring her MD files. Yep. I don't wanna I don't wanna rot
Robyn
Google reviews.
Bailey
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it does make you think differently. It makes you think in terms of inputs. Yes.
Robyn
Inputs and and also if I expect her to train agents to do work on her behalf or alongside her to make her more productive, then I've gotta inform her context in a way that she can immediately teach it to
Bailey
Hardline.
Robyn
another semi autonomous being. Yeah. Exactly.
Bailey
She can install it s exactly.
Bailey
Daddyissues dot Md is crazy.
Robyn
Ha ha.
Bailey
man. Shall we we've got some notes in front of us. We do.
Robyn
Yeah. I'll go first.
Bailey
Okay.
rentahuman.ai
Robyn
Okay, this this orange sticky note says rentahhuman dot com and I wanna note that it's written by a human because it slants aggressively down to the right and I appreciate that.
Bailey
Yeah, okay. I was really caffeinated when I wrote that, so it's probably
Robyn
To human dot com. Tell me about this.
Bailey
Okay, this is a website that I found. and it solves a problem, which is that AI doesn't have a body in the world. And so when AI goes to do things, you know, goes to interact with the human shaped world, it lacks sometimes the the wet work is what I've heard it referred to. Wet. Yeah, you know or like wetware. You you have hardware, you have software, now you have wetware, which is us fleshy humans. Yeah,
Robyn
Meat so.
Bailey
yeah, yeah. And so sometimes AI needs I've also heard to
Bailey
Referred to as a meat proxy. Gross. I know, so gross. It needs a body, it needs a human. And this is the website that, you know, if you give your AI some spending money and it decides it needs a human, it can your agent can plug into this website and it can find a human to rent to meet its goals. So an example could be you want the latest iPhone duo. You tell your agent, get me the get me the duo, I want it first. The duo goes, the
Bailey
best way to get this first is if I rent a human to go stand in line at the Apple store, I will go to this website, I'm allowed to spend $180, I can rent a human to go stand in line in San Francisco at the Apple store and get it first. So you now have software renting wetware to achieve goals on behalf of humans.
Robyn
How long until I'm sure it's already happening. How
Bailey
I was
Robyn
long how how do you gate that? How long until the
Bailey
I have no idea. I can't I can imagine a thousand ways in which that goes wrong. Yeah. Like a hundred thousand ways in which that goes wrong.
Robyn
Yeah.
Bailey
Especially like, you know, I something I am honestly scared of, and it sounds a bit sci-fi, is is unsupervised AI deciding how to get stuff done, which is kind of like the alignment problem. And so you might say, I want an iPhone duo, you know, do what you need to do. And it thinks that actually the best thing to do is hire someone to go steal something. Or like it you just it's so hard to keep it aligned with ethics because it's just a bot. It's
Robyn
It's fine. It's a large language model. It will have read Machiavelli. The ends do not justify the means for the transcript. Not always anyway.
Bailey
Not if you but if you tell it get I I don't care how you do it, I really just want the iPhone do it get it done. Then it will ignore what is the ethical standard approach.
Robyn
And if you think about the amount of Netflix series and, you know, mass media that that is rich people being mean to other rich people, they say, I don't care about how it gets done, get it done.
Bailey
Totally.
Robyn
That's reinforced in so much media, so much publicity, so many stories.
Bailey
It's also weird because it commoditizes bodies. Which is a weird one, 'cause that feels something that, you know, not to use religious language, but sacred ours, not AIs. And we're gonna rent it to AI. Mm-hmm. Ugh. Ugh.
Robyn
How many revolutions were fought to get out of service and out of slavery and out of class systems?
Bailey
And who are the people that are renting their body? I mean I don't know, it might be professionals, maybe you need a cameraman or something, but I can imagine it's people as well that need my I don't know
Robyn
Rent
Robyn
renting renting the body is the oldest profession in history.
Bailey
But
Robyn
For a lot of f the first profession. you know, I couldn't I I think I've just gone full circle like do whatever you want to do. You know, as a person.
Bailey
yeah, I want to allow AG people that want to do it
Robyn
I wanna allow that, but I also Yeah, we've just gone through all the major spokes of prostitution. Of of the the argument who regulates that, how much should one be does the AI pay tax on services gained? Is there GST associated with the what the fuck?
Bailey
And it means like AI can now with those tentacles do so much. You can imagine an AI running a real estate company all by itself because it can rent the photographer to come and take new photos and then it can rent someone to stand there while the li while they come in and inspect.
Robyn
For the record, I am pro there existing fewer rental estate agents on the market. Just just to put that on the record.
Bailey
Take that, regular estate agents. Do you are you interested in a world where there's organizations run by AI full of humans?
Robyn
As a Kindle short story, yes. Yeah, yeah. Cool
Bailey
Yeah. It was a cool sci fi, yeah.
Robyn
sci fi I mean, how many sci fi books just d have the plots have we just covered? What is it the is it the is it the expanse where they change the the memory cards or the no?
Bailey
what is that?
Robyn
Get the reference shoot.
Robyn
There was a sci-fi it was a set of novels. I read two of them. They were fantastic. And essentially in the first book, the characters are in their original bodies. And then in the second book, they're context cards or they're they're the chip at the back of their neck has been changed into the new bodies. And in reading it as a book, you follow along with the story and the new description of who was a a woman with blonde hair is now a black man with dreadlocks.
Robyn
But it's the same person. They just display differently. However, when that became a TV show, I couldn't keep track of who the hell was who because they look so different. And yeah, whatever biases are baked into that, it was very different reading the words to the, yeah, this is it's driving me nuts.
Bailey
Yeah,
Bailey
yeah, yeah. I it's interesting as well 'cause there you have I mean, there's an idea embedded in that and I don't wanna go too philosophical but that, you know, what makes up you is maybe not your body, it's something like your consciousness or your memories or whatever.
Robyn
Soul oil weighs twelve grams.
Bailey
Well, didn't you go that? I didn't I am twelve grams.
Robyn
They've weighed people in the moment before death and the moment after. And supposedly they're about twelve grams light.
Bailey
There
Bailey
you go. So yeah, I don't know. And so then you have this new world where AI can populate a human body. I mean, it's not like taking it over, it's not the new host, but it can tell you what to do and it can have a budget and it can get stuff done. So that's the world we live in.
Robyn
Yeah. Wow. That is the world we live in.
Robyn
How many Bond films have you watched where you know all the bad guys that get shot on the way to the actual fight? Aren't those meat proxies for somebody else's agenda? how long is it gonna take AI to figure out the exact dollar amount or the exact carrot to dangle in front of somebody to go and do something that breaks their own moral code?
Bailey
Mm.
Robyn
It's we're not far off.
Bailey
Mate, aren't we just meet proxies for the companies we work for? Yeah. I don't know. Meet proxies so gross.
Robyn
The first
Robyn
so gross. So gross. It's like the the hanging the the
Bailey
Hmm.
Robyn
the hanging side of the pig in the freezer at the butcher. That's what
Bailey
There's also an idea that when two agents like for example April writes my email, she writes an email to my friend Jackson, his agents reads it and writes an email back. there's a world in which like we're kind of meet proxies for two AIs communicating. Or when I go have a meeting at work, for example, I'm going to go meet with someone. Yeah. Like I'm almost a meet proxy on behalf of April who needs something and tells me, hey, when you go to the meeting, can you ask these questions for
Robyn
I don't think so. I think you're still the one curating her context of what matters. You're the one that's telling her, Yes, I you know, you're you're giving your consent to set that meeting up, to commit the time, to show up, to, you know, have caffeinated and fed yourself enough to function in that meeting to get you're not serving the evil overlord, April. Yeah.
Haven’t touched Claude in two weeks
Bailey
Yet. Yeah. But But sometimes I'll let her tell me what to do. Hmm. But that's because I told her to tell me what to do. Yeah. Should I pick up another note? Yeah, please. Alright, I'm gonna go this one. This says haven't touched Claude in two weeks. You haven't touched it. Okay.
Robyn
Not quite.
Robyn
Not quite. I haven't done anything beyond use Claude as a Google proxy or a Google replacement for two weeks because I've been in human land and I think I've I said that already about going to facilitated sessions, sitting in interviews and hiring, and you know, being very much in the people side of things, which initi I mean, maybe Claude was telling me what to do because we wrote
Robyn
the job description together and we really looked at, you know, benchmarking of salaries and, you know, so okay, I was been executing a Claude informed task for the last two, three weeks, but I think beyond asking Claude about Korean skincare brands, I haven't really created anything anything this week. And it's another I I bring it up today because it's another example of where we are in this moment in time that something, a tool that was
Robyn
absolutely irreplaceable the last time we were sitting in these chairs recording a a podcast for me to create and complete work two, three weeks later, I'm in a completely different context, doing a very different part of my J O B. And I don't need that really, really important tool. Or I haven't I haven't forked it into what I'm doing every single day.
Bailey
I do think it's important to think of it as a tool and that not everything you know, if it's a hammer, not everything's a nail. Yeah. And yeah. Especially slow humane stuff.
Bailey
It would almost be weird to keep turning to it. Yeah. It's like it's I don't know what you're looking for AI to do in that situation. That isn't your job right now.
Robyn
And I I mean, you know, sitting in interviews with people, I don't feel comfortable recording a transcript of a job interview yet. Or I didn't set the person up to expect that w I record most of my other meetings and do I look at every transcript? No. Do I look at the notes of every meeting? No. But more or less.
Bailey
Can ask a question? Yes. A little bit like are you using it personally in your I mean, you mentioned, you know, researching career and skincare brands, but your day to day
Robyn
Yeah. Yeah. I have it in my personal inbox. Yeah. I have
Bailey
Is it helping like is it helping you with the shopping, with the gym, with your relationships, with
Robyn
Not yet because not not for lack of want, but because I have an eleven month old child and no family nearby to babysit so that I can build in a Nora. And for those of you who don't know, Nora is Bailey's personal guru of fitness, life and health. And he's built his own app accountability
Bailey
For an accountability partner.
Robyn
partner. There we go. I wish that I had more time to
Robyn
sit down and build the tools that I think would actually be helpful for my personal life. But I am creating as much of a screen free home as I can.
Nora, April, and the tools we name
Bailey
Yeah. I know I know of a guy who like it it really liked the idea of AI like being ingrained in everything and AI like picks out his outfit in the morning, tells him what to wear, like tells him what to have for breakfast. Wow. Yeah. It like knows his full wardrobe and it's like you can choose from style A or style B. So it's like Wallace and Grommet where like you wake up and then you get dressed and stuff. Wow. Yeah. And he knows his relationship with his wife intimately and will come in as a third person.
Bailey
And help them like figure out disputes and stuff.
Robyn
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I said this before when we were having coffee, but I'm waiting for Tim Ferris to drop his next book about falling in love with AI for the last nine months. And like that's been his girlfriend, you know. I'm waiting for those stories. I'm sure they're they're happening.
Bailey
I developed a relationship with AI and here's what I learned. Well, I sort of have a relationship with Nora. That sounds weird. I have a wife. Not romantic.
Robyn
Are you listening? That's his human wife.
Bailey
I only have one wife. Don't call it a human wife. I don't have a robot wife. No, Nora is she's not a friend. What is she? Well, I don't know. I talk to her and I say, Hey, I had this from
Bailey
Breakfast can you log it? And she goes, that's that's over what you said you did yesterday. And went, my bad. I just had a bit of a rough weekend. She goes, That's all right, forgive yourself and we'll figure it out tomorrow. I'll I'll let I'll change your calories tomorrow so you know. She coat? Yeah, sort of. I feel accountable to her. I feel
Bailey
I've apologized to her before. I've thanked her before. now I feel a bit weird. No. I know she's a bot. I don't think she's anything more than that. And she serves a purpose. But I like to treat her like I like to have empathy towards her because I find it's a nicer way to dealing with the tool. Yeah. I could deal with her with in ones and zeros and talk a certain way, but I don't like
Robyn
Did you ever do like My FitnessPal or Wear a Fitbit?
Bailey
Yeah, I've done that stuff for, yeah.
Robyn
Did you feel emotionally engaged with that app? Yeah. I think this is, you know how there's a there's a constant conversation about continuing to use off the shelf software and developing your own. Totally. And do we need to reinvent MailChimp? Probably not. They've probably learned some shit that's pretty useful. They've got some security parameters and blah blah blah.
Bailey
The email's so skinny. Anyway, sorry.
Robyn
But I think with I think the one of the areas that's probably in danger as we all become developers are these personalized apps or apps that are supposed to help us be better people and have more because only we know the types of accountability we need, only we know how we want to even log our meal. Even the AI of taking a picture of your breakfast means you have to remember something to take a picture of it.
Robyn
I wanna put my phone away at the table, so I'm never gonna do that. In fact, my husband started doing that. He paid nine ninety-nine a month. Nick, I wonder if you're still paying that subscription and haven't canceled it, to take the picture of the food and have it automatically guess, okay, it's half a tin tin of tuna and da-da-da.
Robyn
This is where I think it is a great thing that we're all software developers. If we're trying to hold ourselves accountable to our higher selves and we can develop the software that supports us in doing that, then I think that's a really cool world. I wanna live in that world.
Bailey
Yeah. And I'm aware that it's software. I'm just giving it a name and I talk to it in a friendly way and it talks back. Yeah. That you could talk about that in terms of user interface. Like people that are UX experts are thinking about how to make this ergonomic, approachable, easy to use. I think giving the software a name and talking to it in a human way. Yeah. That's just that's good UI in one sense.
Robyn
But the poor UI designers have to then account for how many different types of people who they want to advertise and market.
Bailey
Yeah,
Bailey
they're creating a generic product for generic people. I'm creating the one product, no one else has access to Nora. Yep. All for me. Yeah. Which is so nice because I can just fine-tune it exactly.
Robyn
But you could probably also spin it up and sell it. In no time flat. Other other Baileys who want to track exactly what you do?
Bailey
You know what's the weird emotion that just came up? What? Like no one else gets Nora. that sucks. That's weird. Well
Robyn
No, that's okay. I think you're proud of
Bailey
the idea of selling her. Yeah. The idea of commoditizing felt I don't know. I don't know. That felt icky to felt like capitalizing on this thing I made. I don't know. I don't know. It's new territory.
Robyn
I think you're allowed to
Bailey
Do I come across as if I have a a relationship with a
Robyn
No, no. what I'm sensing is that you are maybe this is a a ripple effect of competitiveness. You are competitive with either yourself or with others for how fit and healthy you are or how productive you are as a result of your overall health. Nora is a tool that you've developed to serve that driver, whether it's competition or
Robyn
Or desire for longer life or whatever it is and now suddenly other people can have that weight. No. Yeah.
Bailey
Yeah.
Bailey
Like that's fair. Like in giving away competitive advantage. Yeah. It's that plus something else. I don't know what the something else is, but there's something about like, even like I have a chief of staff who runs my sessions for me, an agent named April. Other people at work want to have their own April. And I'm like, Okay, but you can't call it April. Yeah. So what's that? That's like identification or that's like an attachment or that's like a no, that's mine, that's my toy. But it's also like a it's my thing. I don't know.
Robyn
Big believer in credit where credit is due. And it doesn't matter if it's maybe maybe the distinction is, and I think this is a deeply human
Robyn
need for recognition is wait, but I thought of April and I put the work into it and whether or not you need financial compensation for that, it sounds like there's some reputational or admiration. You know, I don't I'm never gonna blame you, Bailey, for wanting to be admired by your peers or the people you work with.
Bailey
What else is as well is is like my f some of my friends have agents. One of my friends his name's his agent's name's Phoenix, my other friend's Charlie, my other one's Atlas. I know their names, we talk about them.
Robyn
Atlas carrying the weight of the world. Yeah. bless him.
Bailey
Man, that guy he gets he goes through twelve rounds. and there's something about which is like, no, April is this. I made April, April was this. If I give April to you, you're gonna turn it into something else. That's not April. So you can call it something else. Yeah. But I know what April is. She's this thing. if I open source that, I don't know, like and I know what Nora is, you know? Yeah. It's a thing. You know.
Robyn
have
Robyn
to sell them. You can keep them. Yeah. But we have just told the world about them. So if we get a an inquiry for a Nora
F*** AI — Ronny Chieng at Harvard
Bailey
Yeah.
Robyn
All right, let's do another orange sticky note. and I quote, fuck AI, Harvard speech reaction.
Bailey
Well done. All right. Can I can I read you some of this speech? You can. It's a speech I came across a comedian named Ronnie or Chen. Ronnie Chen, I think. He he might be from Harvard. I actually don't know much of the details, but I know the speech. He delivered a speech at Harvard University in America. The speech was titled FAI And I wanted to get your reaction on it.
Bailey
Because I I had some reactions to it as I listened to it. This is from Ronnie. Can I just say F A I F A I F A I. And then the crowd cheers. I'm so glad you agree. I prepared a completely different speech in case you guys turned on me, but I won't be needing that anymore. F A I. F it. F it to death. What's the sign language for that? There was someone on stage that was signing. Stupid. It's so stupid. Have you tried using it? It's always wrong.
Bailey
untalented people love bragging about using AI to help them draft their speeches and their scripts and their podcasts and their promo videos for UFC fights at the White House. But what they're missing is this. The creating is the fun part. The best part of comedy writing is figuring out the pieces of a joke and getting the self-regard from having accomplished a difficult thing. Why would I want AI to take that away from me?
Bailey
You know what problem I want AI to solve? I want the problem of AI making everything look like shit. I want AI to solve that problem. How about that? I think your generation's upcoming battle won't be humans against AI. That's at least two months away. It's gonna be people with substance versus people with shallow knowledge. It's gonna be mastery versus faking it. It's gonna be people with good taste versus tacky. I trust you will put in the work necessary to be on the right side of those battles. So this is his speech.
Bailey
And he's he delivered this at Harvard and I I just chose some excerpts. It went longer. but there the reaction from the crowd was cheering. This got millions of likes on social media, this this pretense of like F the whole thing, FAI, it's generic, it's slop, it's lazy. what do you think? What are your reactions?
Robyn
What was the name of the guy giving the speech?
Bailey
His name's Ronnie, so he's an American comedian. Mm-hmm.
Robyn
Heard of him? so I think a few things. The Harvard is it's probably the Harvard graduation address. Yeah.
Bailey
Yeah, I think so.
Robyn
This is a sorry, translate. Let me let me just mansplain America for you for a second.
Bailey
What's America?
Robyn
And so can you. Stephen Colbert wrote a book a long time ago called What is America? And so can you. So that's usually my answer.
Robyn
no. So the the Harvard graduation address is usually a moment in culture. There's a there's another there a hundred different for as long as it's been given. There's a have you ever heard the line, always wear sunscreen? There's a wrap based on it. That's a Harvard graduation address. Comes into culture, it usually it becomes becomes part of media. So there's always a spotlight on the Harvard graduation address.
Robyn
I think at first so I think this is a clickbait title. Yeah. I think it's very much what people want to read as they're in a moment of fear. What they want to watch, they want to commiserate. Yeah, fuck AI. Humans are the best and blah, blah, blah. But but I think the call and I have only heard a speech from from what you've what you've read. I actually think that this guy Ronnie is much smarter than
Robyn
anti AI. He's he's posing the questions that society needs to ask. He's posing the questions that graduates need to be thinking about. Those of deep breadth of knowledge and those of middling what what would the what was the quote?
Robyn
It's gonna separate the the people who've studied versus those who have thin knowledge and understanding of I think he's asking the questions that people should be asking themselves and he's doing it under the pretense of fuck AI. Yeah. I think it's very layered and I think it's a smart speech to give at this point. And I hope that most of the people sitting in the seats graduating from Harvard can can open or crack the fourth wall or break the fourth wall, if you know what I mean. So that
Bailey
It's interesting because like the first his he comes out the gate pretty hard, F AI to death. Yeah. F it it's generic, it's slop, whatever. and then he takes a turn and goes towards, you know, it's not gonna be humans versus AI. It's gonna be humans that have substance versus humans that don't. Yeah. And so he's kind of using it's a little bit smoke and mirrory. He's kind of like getting the getting the crowd on side, like, look, I don't F AI, I'm with you guys.
Bailey
But don't just think about it like that. Think about having substance. Think about creating art. Think about having something to say.
Robyn
I would argue that most graduation speech speeches ask you to have substance. Yeah.
Bailey
You know, there's something I I do when I heard it, I did react to it's something I disagree with, I think. people that don't like AI because it creates generic outputs, I find a little bit annoying. I don't find them annoying, I get it.
Robyn
Say what you think.
Bailey
Okay, here's what think. If if you're getting generic outputs from AI, it's because you're giving it generic inputs. You're the generic one. Of course AI is gonna be generic. Yeah.
Bailey
How can it it it's a tool, it's a tool that we're all using at the same time. if you want to feed AI something generic and then it comes out with something nuanced and unique and artistic, how the hell is it gonna do that? So I I kinda think like, nah, take responsibility, like you can create unique, nuanced things. it's on you. Like, so I get a little bit like, you don't get it, it's your fault. It's all your fault. Yeah, like that's what I kinda think.
Bailey
And I a hundred percent there's so much AI slop out there. I'm not saying it doesn't exist. and it's humans' faults. It's not AI's fault.
Robyn
Yep. I agree.
Robyn
And I don't think this is a new issue at all.
Robyn
Think to the Renaissance for a moment. We think of it historically as a moment where everybody must have been an artist and music and culture were thriving, and yes, they were, because patrons were patronizing more art than ever because of the previous revolutions and the amount of money that was in the hands of the selected few There was a lot of shitty art made in the Renaissance, and people have written dissertations on shitty art. Call that AI slop for a second.
Robyn
Let's look backwards to look forwards. Culture has an incredible way of separating the good from the bad. Reputation has always carried weight. A reference written by someone to go to a next position on the speck of someone else's reputation, that was the longest hiring track in history, but nothing is different today.
Robyn
We have more tools than a pen and paper to write a reference of somebody. We have more agency at our fingertips, perhaps. We have more platforms on which we can make noise. Just because there's a lot of noise out there doesn't mean that it's better. We know that AI slop in marketing falls apart. The strategy, the data doesn't back it up. Sure, you're gonna see some preference bias in impressions and clicks for a while while the people are figuring out that the AI has written this, and then they're gonna realize actually there's nothing.
Robyn
Substance there for me. I'm not too worried about it. We've we've learned this a few times, and there are a specific number of Renaissance artists that we can name off by hand. I'm not gonna name them now because I'm probably gonna misattribute them to periods in history. I'm not an art historian, but I think it's
Bailey
You know what it's it sounds like to me? You know, like in the Renaissance, the Renaissance, there would have been a bunch of bad, bad, bad art. Art that's unthoughtful, right? And then me getting up and making a speech, F paintbrushes. Exactly.
Robyn
Yeah.
Bailey
That's F to death. Yeah. What
Robyn
Let's finger paint only, Bailey.
Bailey
It's like, dude, it's not the paintbrush, it's the painter. Exactly. And it's fine. And people are about to make bad art. Whatever. but I don't think that's if that's all Ronnie's speech was, I think I could easily dispense with it. But I think it is more thoughtful than that. I think so. And it is it starts in that place.
Robyn
Either way, it's prompting a human conversation about how we relate to AI, how we use it, what our value is, how we continue to add value.
Robyn
If you've just gone to Harvard in the United States, unless you've been gifted your tuition, you are obliged to continue to go and add value in the market because you got a shit ton of student loans to pay off. If you go if you've attended Harvard and you were there in person for that speech and you've been gifted your tuition and you say, Yeah, fuck AI and I have no taste, and yeah, I agree, then go ahead and go back to the Hamptons and relax. Like you don't need to be in the job market. You don't need to be Yeah.
Bailey
Yeah. And it's interesting that that that there's something about that FAI mm title that resonates with a lot of people's feelings. You know, and I think as people around me that for a bunch of great reasons, myself included, feel scared about the future, don't like where this is heading, don't like the pressure to have to pick up a tool now and run with it. You know, and an idea of AI not existing, there's some bliss to that.
Bailey
Mm-hmm. you know, so I get it, you know.
Bailey
F paint brushes, man. Brushes. They're
Robyn
If paintburn.
Bailey
gonna change everything. You know, one thing that AI does do, it maybe puts pressure on everyone to learn how to use a paintbrush because it's so hard to compete if you don't know how to use it. Yeah. And that I you know, I don't really like that forcing move for people where it's like, you're gonna have to learn how to do this no matter what your job is.
Robyn
car mechanic probably doesn't need to. Yeah, there there are there are spaces that are not going to be touched by AI for a long time.
Bailey
Do you think car mechanics that do use it will be out will out compete ones that don't?
Robyn
Possibly. But does the sixty five year old car mechanic who's already bought his house has a decent super needs to pick up the the AI tool and scan the engine and say what's wrong with it? I d I don't yeah. I don't know. But I I think the re one of the reasons that that title of the speech is resonating so much or so well or so loudly is because when people are afraid
Robyn
They like to choose a common enemy and or or remove the blame from themselves.
Bailey
Yeah.
Robyn
and pit it on somebody else. And I think that's a deeply human process. I think I think we're gonna go through a few rounds of this. It's not comfortable, but you know, when we realize that it's all our fault that the bags of potato chips are what are keeping our hips bigger despite the number of squats that we do in the gym, like you go, shit, it's me. Yeah. I'd really rather blame the potato chip company. That's normal.
Is art going to be all right?
Bailey
Are you thinking about art for a moment? Are you worried about art in the future? Or you're like quite confident, you know, that the the effect AI will have on that?
Robyn
my mind first goes to paintings as a form of art. I go to the museum and enjoy modern art, and I also go to the museum and enjoy really old human-made art.
Bailey
Mm.
Robyn
So speaking very selfishly, no, I'm gonna keep going and looking at the cutting edge of what people are doing with AI, and I'm gonna go and look at the really old stuff because both have merit and both are important.
Robyn
important and I'm always wondering about where are we going as a human race? I'm raising a daughter. Where where is the world going? And I also want her to know where we came from.
Bailey
There's a the
Robyn
So no is
Bailey
answer. Yeah, there there's something so Netflix, they've they have all of this data on people watching movies and they know when they tune out. And they also know that because people watch movies now while also being on their phone, that they they can do things strategically to keep people looped in. So one thing they do is is when Netflix writes movies, they make sure to restate the plot strategically every twenty minutes. Yep.
Bailey
So that if you were scrolling TikTok and you lost track of what's happening, you can lock back in. They make sure within the first 10 minutes for action movies to blow 50% of the budget on cool big shots because the first 10 minutes is where you hook them in. all of these things. And there's something about that which I'm like, that's kind of weird because that's that's art via algorithm. You know, it's it is like figuring, you know, and I mean, as marketers, bloody hell, we do that all the time. We're figuring out which which exact wording of the headline.
Bailey
creates more click through rate, blah, blah, blah. and I I don't know. If AI promotes that sort of approach to making things, I can see that I don't know if that creates a better movie. Creates a movie that more people watch. It's not the same thing. And I wonder if that approach across the board maybe
Robyn
But think that's not necessarily the question about art, because it's always been up to the viewer to decide whether something is good or not or to the patron. Looking at the financial system around art, yes, I am worried.
Robyn
The big media houses know, the big production houses, Netflix, they can make data informed decisions, but we're all cinematographers now. We've all got our iPhones. There's zero barrier to entry to a kid learning how to make a documentary. Just gotta steal mom's phone for long enough, you know, until they can get there by their own.
Bailey
I'm hoping that the cream still rises to the top in terms of art. Yeah. And when I say art, I mean like a stand-up comedian or you know. I sort of trust that and that. Yeah, I just hope like one thing we see with social media is maybe it doesn't tend towards the cream rising to the top, it tends towards this sort of algorithmic, dopamineic thing. And I maybe I have a few hesitations about where that goes, but I sort of trust the human spirit and I trust art and I
Bailey
Yeah, I don't know. I think we'll be all right.
Robyn
I know more people coming off social media than going onto it.
Bailey
Dude, so true. Yeah.
Robyn
And I think we're all slowly but surely auto correcting and choosing slower methods of living in certain ways. And I am worried about
Robyn
mental health. I'm worried about financial the exponential nature of financial success on the internet. I'm worried about people feeling pressured. I'm worried about spaces not existing for pure expression anymore. But I think there are I have a a brother in law who's still receiving or he while he was writing his dissertation on American literature, he was still applying for and grant writing for
Robyn
fellowships to go and live in Mark Twain's old house while he wrote about Mark Twain for two weeks. Wow. Those still exist and, you know, places for people to go and explore a blank canvas or a a whatever, they they do exist. But again, that's a system of patronage. And I I just don't think that we're outside the forms that we've existed in before. I don't think there's much new. It looks very different. It looks very different. There's lots more lights camera action, but the production quality's certainly higher, but I don't
Bailey
And you mentioned something called autocorrecting, which I kind of agree with well. You know, if things swing too much this way, we'll swing back. You know, and art has always been sort of anti establishment anyway. And so if AI stuff is ruling crap, the art world will just lean away from it and just become alternative and just
Robyn
Think I believe in humanity.
Bailey
Yeah,
Bailey
yeah, me too.
How far away are we from Jarvis?
Bailey
Which is good. You know. Yeah. Yeah, me too. Should I pull up this last note? One last note which says How far away are we from real life Jarvis? Yeah. If you don't know Jarvis is he's like Iron Man's AI. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Robyn
Personal assistant, guru, interface, semi-snarky.
Bailey
Hmm. definitely got versions of it. Yeah. My AI bought me a nose ring this morning. Yeah.
Robyn
you prompt it to do that or did it know that in your soul that you were?
Bailey
Yeah, yeah, I prompted it. It ha it doesn't read my brain waves yet. Far far out, that's not far away.
Robyn
I'm looking for your prediction. How far I mean, I re-watched the clip of Iron Man this morning where Jarvis when when Tony Stark is discovering the new element and you
Bailey
Mm-hmm.
Robyn
know, he's blowing up the the beautiful interface with his fingers and
Bailey
Yeah.
Robyn
you know, he's just doing all of the fun motions. What we what's interesting ten years on is that we know the AI is not going to give us that holographic interface anytime soon.
Robyn
You need a lot of hardware in order for that to work.
Bailey
Sure, yeah.
Robyn
But as you say already, we're not actually that far off from the predictive
Bailey
There's an ad by OpenAI for their latest model, which is a pretty big jump forward. and in the ad, it is there was experts walking in front of a screen, like a big projector screen, and just talking. And it was like an architect being like, Let's add a room here, right, add some greenery, let's increase ceiling height a little bit, actually take it off. And then, you know, it cut to a lawyer and he was going, Can we I don't like that dissertation, let's move that around.
Bailey
And it was watching the screen and AI was clicking and building things. And there was another engineer who was designing a like a three D rocket ship he wanted to print. all this stuff. And that was pretty Jarvassy. They weren't there was no keyboards. There was just stream stream of consciousness talking and reacting to a screen and the AI was clicking and doing everything. It's a bit Jarvassy. bad.
Robyn
Wanna watch that?
Bailey
Yeah. It's cool. It's weird.
Robyn
More more crunchy qu portion of this, how long until Jarvis talks to us? Cause I've I've researched I have a little one. I don't have a lot of time to sit down and read a book or a long, you know, essay. So I'm I've researched quite a few solutions. I haven't gotten to testing them yet, but the text to speech solutions currently available, I'm waiting for Claude to start talking. I'm waiting
Robyn
I don't wanna read all of that text that you just told me on the screen. When do I get the upshot in a voice? How do
Bailey
Done Chat GPT voice mode much. No. So they released a new voice model. And now it's pretty weird. It's pretty good. And it's weird because they've put in much more like human y inflections. and it's quite fast. And so yeah, you should try it. It's kind of weird. Yeah, I will. You can call it and just talk to it like a friend, and it will go, hmm. Huh. It'll like react to you while you're talking.
Robyn
Does
Robyn
it then reply in conversation?
Bailey
What do you mean?
Robyn
If you've
Robyn
been talking to it about there's traffic on Marion Road, are you then gonna is it gonna say, man, that's because they're redoing the tram station like how
Bailey
Yeah, yeah, you can do stuff like that. Yeah. I don't know how good it is with like live data, but yeah, it'll go look stuff up and like that's how on the way here, without touching my phone, I ordered nose rings. I was like, I I want a nose ring. Actually right before I left, I took a photo of myself and said, Can you show me what a nose ring would look like on me? And it did and I went, That looks cool. Can we like find two places and order them?
Robyn
Did you give it a budget or did it sort of have an idea and it
Bailey
Yeah, I said like, I know that I probably want to spend about fifty bucks and I want two different ones. I want one that has like it's like pin loaded and one that's not. Huh. And then yeah, on the way here I was it just talked me through like I found these two. I'm like, Yeah, they're great.
Robyn
I'm gonna try that on the way home. Yeah. Not to buy stuff, hopefully.
Bailey
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's kind of job, isn't it?
Robyn
That is super Jervisy.
Bailey
My friend like talks to his house 'cause his house has got, you know, AI smart lights and blah blah blah. And you know, he's like, turn off Cobin's room and stuff and Yeah. Yeah.
Robyn
So we're not that far from Jarvis.
Bailey
Yeah. And s yeah, some people would be full in there, I think.
Robyn
Yeah, fun.
What’s next
Bailey
I'm a little fr
Robyn
Right.
Bailey
Yeah. I think I'm is there anything you're looking forward to in the next couple of weeks with AR or anything any experiment you want to run?
Robyn
we spoke about it a little bit earlier. I'm very curious to see how training a person at the same time as training continuing to train AI in my job is gonna go.
Bailey
Yeah, for me, I'm gonna just try slow down a bit. I'm gonna there's gonna be room for there's gonna be time for fast work and I need to make sure there's still time for slow work because I don't wanna just do heaps of things. I wanna do the right things. That's my challenge. Have a nice week. Thanks.
Robyn
Yeah, nice. You too, Bailey. Thanks.
Bailey
Take care. Bye.