What's up, Toby? We made it to another Friday.
Yes, sir. Good to see you. Sweet. You've got
this week's topic. I kicked it over to you. I
was giving a listen before we jumped on to last
week's when I was kind of trash talking AI because
it doesn't clean the house and do my dishes.
And I started thinking, what was the name of
the Jetsons robot who seemed to Do all the menial
tasks. Right? He didn't tell George how to fly
the plane or what stupid thing to say at the
office. He had that taken care of. Yeah. But,
you know, she was doing things around the house
that frankly I would be okay letting go of. Like,
just everything's magically dusted. Everything's
cleaned up. Dinner is cooked. Dishes are washed.
So... What occurred to me was I had to look it
up. Hey, I'm singing the song in my head, you
know my boy Elroy and I didn't get the rest of
the symbol Rosie was running. Okay So apparently
I won Rosie Rosie the robot Yeah, and it occurs
to me that the direction we're going with AI
isn't about mundane tasks Because of how we're
coming at this artificial intelligence, it's
very much driven on information, not activity.
And so it makes me wonder, you know, does AI
carry the natural conclusion where the process
dead? The reason why processes aren't working
in a consistent, recurring way? Is it humans
that are becoming process dead in this new AI
world? What do you think about variability? That's
an interesting one. Because that's actually,
that's really interesting. Because The the systems
are gonna be able to churn through a lot of data
Right, right, and I think you know we may or
may not have talked about this before but like
that churning of data and the the production
of data Like where it's just massive right? We're
like I've got buddies sending me pictures of
my friends that are obviously fake because we're
in the football stadium with With a fryer you're
like that's not real It looks real, it's not
real. But what's... They don't allow that even
at Boise State. No, they don't allow that. It's
against the rules. But what's interesting about
that is that is we do, unless we take a stand,
we will be the... We will be on the receiving
hand of a lot of garbage. Yeah, right like but
you know, like it it kind of reminds from a data
standpoint, you know, I I have the the dubious
honor of going bankruptcy in the past a good
dude having a bankruptcy in my past and You know,
they talk about bankruptcy. They're like, well,
how does it happen? It happened. It happens slowly
at all at once right and so I feel like that
could be exactly how this AI thing is gonna hit
us is It's going to hit just slowly and then
all at once. And I was talking to someone earlier
today where my email has gotten so ridiculously
annoying with all of the inputs from the note
takers. Everyone's got a note taker in a meeting,
as they should. That is a good technology to
use. And I don't want it in my email. And I should
go, from a process standpoint, I should go and
create a rule that gets rid of it. But I just
haven't yet. But to your point, that is really
interesting, and I do think it's funny that you
started with the Jetsons, because it's possible
that some of the people don't even know who the
Jetsons are, you know, because... The beauty
about that Chris is that I've just given them,
like, a weekend's worth of binge. Oh, yeah. I'm
gonna tell you how many seasons it went off in
the 60s. Hanna -Barbera, man. Hanna -Barbera
was the bomb. Okay, so, little diatribe here.
Did you on Sunday or Saturdays, did you get up
at six in the morning too, just to watch the
cartoons? Because that was the newest freshest
thing that you could watch. And you weren't up
at the right time. It was a one time deal. You
missed it. If all your buddies were talking about,
you know, Thunder Cats or Justice League on Monday
at school in grade school, then you missed the
boat, brother. Yeah. Yeah, there's something
magical and I think if I think about this AI
conversation and carried over to manufacturing,
I remember working at a print shop just on an
ad hoc basis. This was a family friend that had
this print shop periodically. They'd say, we
need a whole bunch of folks to just swarm on
us for Saturday to stuff envelopes. Oh, yeah.
to cut down sheets or to steeple things. You
know, some of those tasks, it's a surge, and
in a small community, you just reach out through
school groups or kid friends or a search group.
That's how they tackled scale, not through advanced
pneumatic systems mechanics, but like putting
a whole bunch of humans on it. And if we miss
-stabled it, That was totally tolerable. If we
folded it but it still got in the envelope, it
still went out the door as a flyer, so that was
okay. Contrast that manufacturing process with
clean rooms at a Micron or an Intel. 90 % of
the energy expended in there is all automated
equipment. And some 10 % or less is two or three
humans getting tinkering. And so in a world where
humans can actually produce microchips by hand,
which is not impossible, but if that were theoretically
true, I can't imagine how many humans it would
take to do all that soldering and all of that
laser cutting. But the ratios were wildly flipped.
And so I do think that... AI in a manufacturing
context, manufacturing of knowledge work. It's
quite likely that you may come to that similar
ratio where 90 % of the real energy expenditure
is being done by systems and something less than
10 % is done by humans. Yeah, that's an interesting
call out because I do think that like AI is not
cheap electronically. It is not cheap at all
and to your point, it does write better emails
than I do. There's that. You can be as smart
or as witty or as blatant as you want to be,
and AI will meet that standard. Yeah, let's go
back to the Jetsons, right? So you have Rosie,
right? Rosie's doing the dishes and vacuuming.
If I remember correctly, those were the two things
that were key. That's what I remember. Why would
AI not go in that direction? Well, it's tried
to go in that direction since we were kids, like
literally since the Jetsons. Right. We wanted
that. I mean, Jetsons in the early 60s was the
promise of... flying cars and levitating back
pal and this kind of a outer space -like magical
world. And today we have robotics that don't
necessarily carry a lot of intelligence, but
the mobility, I'm sure you've seen the same clips
where these robots are doing parkour, whether
it's a dog or a humanoid. It's incredible what
mechanically do, but it hasn't been used with
any kind of AI capability or choice making. And
so when we can take that kind of, that, that
programmatic discovery and exploration and embed
it into some kind of robotic feature, that's
a, that's a brave new world. And I don't, maybe
we get Rosie, maybe we get the iRobot demons.
Will Smith was baffling, you know? Terminator.
I don't know where it lands. Yeah. It is interesting,
right? Because the, when, you know, I always
look at those and I'm like, oh yeah, that's great.
And the problem you have is you're dealing with
doing the dishes for three minutes. And so like,
what's interesting is even on the robotic side,
Like they can be very cool and very expensive,
but they also have to have utility and so unless
you've got a bunch of Expendable cash then it's
it's you know It just doesn't work one of them
one of the my favorite books that I've read over
probably the last three or four years was on
like how to How to do a family farm, which I
don't know why I got this book But I did but
I actually really enjoyed it because he talked
about certain things like you should This is
how you dig, and this is how you do posts. And
what I appreciated about it is he just was really
pragmatic. He's like, a lot of people want machinery
for machinery's sake, and they don't want it
for utility's sake. And so he was just talking
about, this is how you drive posts for a fence.
He's like, most farmers don't need it, but they
do like having that nice tractor, which in reality,
you can't really... No one could buy a tractor
unless you're actually in a farm. Was this the
Joel Salatin book? Yeah, yeah, it was pretty
good. I remember mentioning this once before,
and what I loved about it, I'm about halfway
through it, and I have it on Audible, and so
it jockeys against whatever the other contenders
are. But what I loved about it is the point you
just made. It's not just buying it for the shiny
joy of owning a... Freshly painted John Deere
or whatever your choice is. It's this thing you
get grows faster than a small army of guys can.
And that's the utility trade -off that I don't
see in technology often today. Oh, no. We get
hung up with logins, whereas a tractor is in
ignition, hit go, and drop the equipment into
the soil and start driving. And I think that
we've lost sight of the utility a lot of times
because we're enamored with the shiny new whiz
-bang gizmos, you know? Yeah, we are very much...
We as human beings very much want the fancy.
Even when it comes to AI, we want the fancy,
right? But what does the fancy get us? Do we
really know yet? We don't. I would say, like...
What's funny is a couple weeks ago we did a podcast
on abstraction and we did a podcast on AI. We
did some of those podcasts. What's interesting
is my algorithms have switched to more negatively
facing AI posts. And so what I don't know is
if that's me just talking and my phone's picking
it up. Or if it's literally me on LinkedIn, I
got a post that was viewed a lot. And it's like,
oh, okay, well, he likes this stuff, so let's
go feed him this stuff. And so it really makes
it hard to know what the reality is when LinkedIn's
objective is to get my eyeballs on the screen.
That's right. Yeah, I am their utility, right?
And so it's hard to know what's true when I'm
their utility and I'm not. They're paying me
for the service by way of either wanting me to
go and spend a lot of money on their little LinkedIn,
whatever thing that they have, or feed me ads.
And so it is this really interesting thing where
when it comes to AI, I'm not sure, I think everybody
has lots of opinions, but like, You know, it
would be very well, I'm gonna take a small little
circle here But like it would be very interesting
to go and talk to some Amish people About AI
like not not necessarily because like Amish people
are super smart and they're smooth super utilitarian
They're like it has to put whatever we do like
they're not anti technology, which is what most
people think they're they're they're anti Technology
that ruins community and so they tend to be really
they tend to be tech forward but not when it
comes to cell phones because it ruins their community
and they know that. And so I would, it would
be very interesting. That's what we should do.
We should go find someone from Pennsylvania that's
Amish and have an AI conversation because I think
they would ask a lot of questions that were just,
we don't even ask because we're so enamored with
how good it is at writing. Yeah. What's funny
Chris, you love that thought. And because AI
is all of the rage, we talk less about other
utility layer innovations that actually are moving
the ball in significant ways. If I were to pick
two very simple ones, the first is integration.
Oh, gosh. To be able to take late in system A
and just pipe it over to system B, it eliminates
the waste of time for me to print it. It's crazy.
So there's a time cost, and there's also an accuracy
cost. And at best, what I've done is replicate
the data. If it's 100 rows of 10 data elements
each, I'm going to miss something. Well, power
generation or batching, you know, to equally
perform the same task at scale, enormous. And
increasingly, as you and I talk a lot about outside
of podcasts, The automation scripts that we can
put in work management tools like Monday, which
is where we spend an enormous amount of our time
and expertise figuring out how to stretch and
flex that. That automation capability is spectacular.
Let me perform the task that matters, then let
the systems do all the follow on work that that
system activates. So, no, it's crazy. And what's
funny about it is people just think that that
stuff magically shows up. And it just does it.
Like, I have conversations daily with people
where you're like, we're going to push the technology
as much as we can, but you're going to have to,
there's trade -offs and you have to make decisions.
And people don't want to hear that when it comes
to like systems and tools because they just want
it to do the thing. And you're like sure we can
make it do the thing, but it's gonna make may
cost you a lot of money Because of the way that
because you want you want 99 percent when 75
percent would probably do This goes back to your
comment earlier about i'm gonna reframe it, but
it's How much is rosie the robot worth if all
she does is three minutes of dishes a day. Yeah
You know, and I think that's the heart of the
question. We can talk about electric technology
I really hope my wife doesn't listen to this
one You're like you said that different dishes
vacuuming you take six. You're like, yeah, I
know but I don't want to Everybody keep it on
the deal This is actually an extra dishwasher
and it didn't burn three minutes iron for your
holiday season No, no, but it's true. Let's say
it's five minutes of dish washing. How much would
you pay for that? if in fact you could automate
that or completely eliminate that task. And I
think that there's so many little things that
the task completion aside, frankly, doing dishes,
there's a little bit of a joy, kind of like mowing
a little bit of yard. I don't want to mow hours
of yard. I just want to mow a little patch of
yard and be able to say, that turned out beautiful.
And I can see a little bit. Yeah. And so there's
interesting things. I think that... in a professional
world, sometimes, and for me, my status report
is a common thing. I derive some joy in it because
I get to say, what did I do last time? What's
important enough to share with my state? But
then I can also, and this is a preparatory task,
it's twofold, and also then saying what's on
deck? What will I be doing and engaging in next
week? As an exercise, all the recordings in the
AI can probably produce that status report. If
I record all my calls and push most of my tasks
from the platform, it's all there. But what the
preparation of that status report does for me
that technology doesn't, is help me organize
my thinking and prioritize my message. So, yeah,
I've been thinking a lot about how as a knowledge
worker, can you be a craftsman? Yeah. Ooh, I
like that. How can you carve out time and just...
do work that you're proud of, work that's not,
you know, maybe it's rushed at times, or for
the most part, it's at the pace that it should
be. Like, I feel like, I feel like because we're,
you know, we're far away from, we're far away
from pushing our bodies to the limit on the daily,
because we're doing manual work, we are, we do,
we do replace that with just... rapid like rapid
movement that doesn't go anywhere instead of
like slowing down thinking waiting like thinking
waiting working getting enough time to do the
thing not taking on more than we can which I
think you know if you want to live a life that's
without process debt or limited process debt,
that's really the way to do it is just work like
a craftsman. Yeah. Chris, that's super interesting
because I really started thinking about things
that people choose for their utility or their
beauty. Right, yeah. Whether it's some form of
art or something that's very utilitarian like
a beautifully turned table leg or you know, chair,
there's a word for these things. But what's super
interesting is that often it's not about who
used the 800 -grit paper to finish it. It's about
where did that happen in the process? And then
how do you know when enough is enough? There's
exercising judgment and a great fun. Well, I
think in knowledge work, it's really hard because
oftentimes our product is never finished. Yeah.
And you can overfinish it and get laid, just
get blasted because you misspelled something
or you've got the wrong slide format and you're
like, oh my gosh, I'm just trying to transfer
information here. And we're getting stuck in
the fact that it's a light blue and not a dark
blue. You're like, come on, people. Full transparency,
I have done the, let's go and find a really good
PowerPoint slide that's really pretty, because
we confuse people more. I have done that one
at least once in my career. You don't have to
name names until statute of limitations is right.
There you go. There you go. But that's a fair
point. I love the challenge, and maybe that's
where we leave this episode, but it is, are we
behaving as the craftspeople we are? in our college
work day do they work yep yeah and you know great
one carve time out enjoy your life you had a
lot of you had a lot of work to do you might
as well enjoy it along the way 100 % all right
thanks sir all right buddy