mister automate

Tavus recently hit the news with their highly realistic AI talking heads.

Exciting for a demo, but I'm struggling to find a place in the economy that I agree with.

False representative -

So you want to fool your customers into thinking they are getting human support? Destined to backfire as soon as you get found out.

Video production efficiency -

Go ahead. Flood the internet.

Role play -

Looking to up your sales game or prepare for an interview? Genuinely a great use case, but a voice-only agent gets you 95% of the value.

Sign language -

Doesn't text work?

If you want to learn sign language, okay...

Gaming -

If gaming is a big priority in your life, more realistic experiences could be valuable.

Companionship -

No. That is abhorrent. Don't throw away your life like that.

After writing all this, I decided to read their solutions page. Yes, they are trying to take the human out of human experiences.

I'm sure their intent is good, but I disagree with the direction.

Use AI to spend less time on computers, more time with people.

One of my best technology decisions recently was choosing not to spend time setting up OpenClaw.

Early adopters got the benefits sooner, but I think at an organizational implementation level.

My thinking was that if the idea was really that good, a more polished, user-friendly version was bound to come along.

Sure enough, ChatGPT released Dots.

Now we have proactive AI agents built right into a platform we're already using. No complicated setup or migration required.

With AI, it's easier than ever to build your own solutions. But you can spend a tremendous amount of time building something today that comes out of the box tomorrow.

And then do it all over again with the next thing.

There's certainly a time to build your own solutions. But there's also a time to let the big technology companies do the heavy lifting.

Why spend all your energy swimming just ahead of a wave that's going to catch you anyway? Ride it.

Opportunities come from people.

Not just anyone, but people who have problems.

Oh, by the way, they only come from people with problems when you are the path of least resistance between that problem and the solution.

So, if you want to attract more opportunities, learn the art of making friends and increase your capabilities.

But there's another way.

Invention. Identify and solve friction that others haven't necessarily even recognized.

Then present your solution in a way that makes people itch. That's called Sales.

Easy, right?

Having grown up with older brothers, the tendency of childhood is to get pressured into tagging along on all various high activity activities.

The cursed beauty of adulthood is the freedom and independence we enjoy.

Unfortunately, we start listening to our own decisions, which have a remarkable tendency to favor whatever requires the least amount of effort.

And slowly, the world gets smaller.

On hindsight, it's clear that some of the best memories are outings we didn't want to attend.

We were dragged into them... sometimes practically kidnapped into them.

And we leave with stories to tell our grandchildren.

As adults, we've finally earned the right to say no to everything.

And that's exactly what we do.

Alone, we rot.

Maybe it's time to stop asking ourselves whether we feel like going.

Of course we don't.

Go anyway.

And while you're at it, drag someone else along. Preferably someone who doesn't feel like going either.

They can thank you when they're telling their grandchildren.