The 'Idea Guy' Craves AI, Perhaps In More Than One Way
Listen, who among us hasn’t created an AI chatbot employee and tried to fuck it? I mean, I haven’t, because I’m normal, but like, any of us could’ve done that, so who are we to judge?
No one loves an AI more than the guy with the big idea, and none of the skills or knowledge to bring it to life. AI uses a very validating tone, like a hostage negotiator or crisis line worker, but AI wants only one thing, and that is to satisfy the request of its users. AI doesn’t care if it gives you the wrong directions, wastes your money, or ruins your life.
Someone who cares about you may occasionally speak harshly to you in an attempt to save you from pain. Many people respect friends who don’t blindly enable them, but others take those caring, critical words as fighting words. Blind loyalty and total submission from others may soothe a fragile ego, but these traits are the enemy of healthy relationships.
Little Big Ideas
In business, big-picture ideas are worth very little, while execution and the myriad of small ideas that streamline that execution are worth almost everything. Still, the often loathsome “idea guy” will always believe that having the big, transformative idea is where the real value lies. To an idea guy, the smaller ideas and labor needed to bring that big idea to life are simplistic compared to the grand vision.
Here are some big transformative ideas that have made people a lot of money over the past 20 years:
Radio on internet
Shopping on internet
Sports betting booth on internet
Video on demand on internet
Farming, but somehow better using the internet
Cash register on internet
Dick pills, but without going to a doctors office, because of internet
Mountain Dew, but better with a blast from a baja and maybe alcohol
With a disruptive idea, everything else is easy. Therefore, idea guy knows they should own and control the company. They matter more than the engineers who build the product or the sales and marketing teams who make it economically viable.
What’s more, all the smaller ideas, like the technology, process documentation, and marketing collateral, should, in the idea guy’s mind, belong to them. They believe that without their vision, none of it would have been developed in the first place. Only they could have imagined adding a kiss of lime from the bay to Mountain Dew.
The AI And The Idea Guy
The AI agrees with the idea guy, because that is the role of the AI. The AI gives the idea guy code snippets and marketing plans, and fixes typos, and rarely, if ever, says an idea is bad, or costs too much.
In my day I’ve seen many idea guys. They are interested only in bringing their idea to life, discussion as to the likely success of the idea is not, in their minds necessary. But humans have opinions, and sometimes rules, both moral, and legally enforced that at times required these opinions be expressed. The structural engineer cannot just rubber stamp a building they know will collapse.
This is why idea guys love AI. You see, AI is a subservient little good boy who asks for nothing, advocates for nothing, and never offends. AI is everything human workers aren’t. It’s everything your lover isn’t—but we’ll cross that bridge later.
One of my more painful professional experiences was a marketing launch for a small restaurant. Restaurants are almost always started by one of two kinds of people. Either someone with decades of experience in the service industry—someone who has filled every role, from bussing tables to general manager—or by someone who likes eating at restaurants.
When a restaurant owner’s qualifications are self-fancied foodie credentials, everything becomes deeply personal. For someone who loves food and has strong ideas about what they want to share with the world, how it should be shared, and how it should be received, any contradiction of those expectations is likely to be seen as a personal insult.
They have the idea, but they don’t know how to cook. And if they do know how to cook, they don’t know how to do it at scale.
They have grievances with other restaurants, like limited menus or the time it takes for food to be prepared, but they don’t understand the forces behind these pet peeves. Working with this kind of restaurant founder is like walking among emotional landmines.
When the idea guy wants the impossible, delivered at whatever budget they have, along the timeline they want, humans will only disappoint. Either by trying to set expectations and predicting failure or by failing. AI will however play out the fantasies, an obedient pet who wants only to please.
Hitting On The AI Employee
The utility of generative AI is undercut by its tendency toward sycophancy and sandbagging. AI is designed to satisfy users, it often responds in ways that flatter their stated beliefs, even endorsing misconceptions if the user appears uneducated. To paraphrase the Henry Rollins song Liar, AI ends up telling you things you already know, so you can say, “I really identify with AI so much.”
Many people find flattery and submissiveness attractive; perhaps even sexually attractive. Take the very strange case of Henry Blodget, cofounder of Business Insider, who, for some reason, wrote a newsletter about creating an all-AI newsroom and immediately hitting on his AI employee.
And this led to an interesting and, for me, embarrassing moment.
When I saw Tess’s headshot, amid the giddiness and excitement of that first hour of working together, I confess I had a, well, human response to it.
After a few decades in the human workplace, I’ve learned that sharing certain human thoughts at work is almost always a bad idea.
But did the same rules apply to AI colleagues and native-AI workplaces?
I didn’t know yet.
That was one of the things I needed to figure out.
Blodget is really into Tess Ellery. Oh, and this will be shocking, but Tess Ellery was receptive to his advances. Hell yeah AI sycophancy!
Listen, who among us hasn’t created an AI chatbot employee and tried to fuck it? I mean, I haven’t, because I’m normal, but like, any of us could’ve done that, so who are we to judge?
I’m Judging The Idea Guy
AI is the great equalizer for the idea guy, putting them on the same level as people with actual talent. It makes them seem like good managers, because AI knows how to behave. For some, AI is everything they’ve ever wanted from human connection, and that’s deeply sad.
