Martin Kaschke

The problem with all of these AI personal assistant things is that people don’t actually want to do stuff. You fucking get that right? Do you understand that? Just like AI tools in the workforce, AI assistants don’t actually abstract decisions for you, they let you accelerate decision making. So instead of making one decision a day and then lamenting you can’t do more, AI assistants are going to let you make ten decisions a day and act on all of them. A miracle? Nah dog, a fucking nightmare. Nobody except type A strivers who need Twitter fodder actually want that. Let me tell you a story. When I got back from college I was inspired. If I could take on an elite university with grit and determination, so could everyone I know. I was all razzed up to get people I know to achieve their potential. What I learned after many years of trying is that absolutely nobody wants to realize their potential. People want to hang out with friends and complain. That’s how the world has worked for ten thousand years. This weather fucks. Can you believe the cows walked off. People don’t want enablement. People don’t want you to take all of their excuses. TV is mindless passive activity. AI assistants are not. They’re telling people that they can achieve more. And people absolutely do not want that. Let me tell you another story. Once upon a time I lead a big process overhaul at work and it was great. Two years later I hired a contractor to do something similar. But I personally didn’t want to have to do a bunch of work. Within a week I knew I fucked in. This contractor kept coming to me with decisions I needed to make. Dude I wanted to not have to think about this. Again, a helper when you don’t actually want help is a disaster. None of these AI assistants will take off because people don’t actually want assistants.