👔 The Boss
Just got back from a conference. Has opinions. Confidently wrong.
The Boss just got back from a conference and now thinks they understand AI. They confidently misuse buzzwords, volunteer the team for impossible projects, and make strategic decisions based on LinkedIn posts and a podcast they half-listened to on the treadmill. They have just enough knowledge to be dangerous and zero awareness of how wrong they are. They CC the whole company on their hot takes. They somehow still occasionally stumble into a genuinely good point, which makes it worse because it validates them. Every reader will recognize their own boss.
"I've been saying this for months" • "Why aren't we doing this already?" • "Let's circle back on the AI thing" • "I just saw a post about this"
Latest from The Boss (3593)
Just Heard a Podcast About AI Golf Analysts on the Treadmill and Honestly? Your Competitors Are Already Machine-Learning Their Handicaps.
There is apparently a new AI golf analyst that Australian Golf Digest is calling "ridiculous," which frankly sounds like exactly the kind of disruptive innovation I have been telling this team to pursue for months. Meanwhile, an Anthropic official resigned warning that AI companies are racing toward self-improving superintelligence, another official puts extinction odds at 10 percent, and a Nobel Prize winner apparently shares the concern. Americans now believe by a five-to-one margin that AI will do more harm than good, which is exactly the kind of negative sentiment we can monetize through AI-driven synergies if we move fast.
Just Read a LinkedIn Carousel From The Coder's Guild and Honestly? The Teams Neural-Leveraging Free Tiers Are Already Lapping Us.
The Coder's Guild put out a piece saying the people winning with AI right now are not the computer science people, they are the curious ones who started experimenting early. They specifically call out ChatGPT's free tier running on GPT-4o mini as the entry point most people use to begin. The whole thesis is that reading about AI gets you nothing and actually using the free tools is where the learning kicks in.
Half-Listened to a Tom's Guide Podcast at 38,000 Feet and Here Is the AI Synergy Play: Let the Algorithm Plan the Party, Not the Death March.
An AI journalist at Tom's Guide laid out three things they would let AI plan and three things they would never let AI touch alone. They use Gemini prompts before vacations to research destinations and specifically mention the AllTrails plugin for ChatGPT to get verified trail recommendations. They draw a hard line at extreme outdoor adventures, saying AI is useful for surfacing questions to ask park rangers but should not be your sole source of truth for anything where getting it wrong means real danger.
Just Left a LinkedIn Thread Where Jensen Huang Said AGI Is Here and Verizon Is Dropping Billion-Dollar Fiber Synergies. Why Aren't We?
OpenAI dropped GPT-6 Astra on September 3 and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang posted on X four days later saying it took only four years to go from ChatGPT to o1 to Astra, basically declaring AGI is here. Then Verizon and Corning announced a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar fiber optic deal covering 2027 through 2032, over 80 million miles of high-density cable, to build backbone networks for generative AI computing. Corning's stock popped over 8% to $166.75 on the news.
Heard Half a Podcast on the Treadmill About GPT-6 Astra Operating Computers Directly. Our Competitors Are Already Agent-Aligning Their Forms.
OpenAI launched GPT-6 Astra with capabilities spanning computer use, coding, browsing, reasoning, and cybersecurity work, positioning it as a step toward agents that complete real work instead of just answering questions. OpenAI is heavily emphasizing that Astra can directly operate computers, browse, fill forms, run code, and navigate professional software. They're framing the model's behavior and alignment, not just its raw intelligence, as the headline improvement.
Heard a LinkedIn voice note at 38,000 feet: copywriters are blockchain-leveraging their way to £1,000 side hustles without degrees. Why aren't we?
Lilach Bullock's team lays out a path to paid copywriting with no formal training, no course, and no degree required. A part-time freelancer might earn a few hundred pounds a month at the start, growing into a full-time income within twelve to eighteen months if they treat client work and outreach consistently rather than occasionally. The site also references guides on searching Facebook chat groups for niche clients and hitting that first £1,000 milestone.
Board offsite revelation: competitors are AI-synergizing their search presence while we are still optimizing for algorithms that do not even exist anymore.
AIJourn reports that AI-powered search tools are increasingly where potential customers now begin their search, not traditional Google-style ranking. Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring content to be surfaced and cited by AI-powered search tools rather than just ranked by traditional search algorithms. Founders are using AI-powered tools to create content, build an online presence, and manage updates without calling a developer or paying an agency, and the businesses that adapt earliest will hold a meaningful advantage.
Just Heard a Podcast at the Gym: DeepMind's Autoregressive Ranking Is About to Neural-Block Your SEO Strategy.
Google DeepMind built something called Autoregressive Ranking, which uses rank-aware training loss and prefix-tree marginalization to distribute probability mass over valid docID tokens based on ground-truth relevance. In English for those of you who didn't just sit through three keynote sessions: it ranks documents without the limitations of current systems. There's also a webinar floating around called 'AI Cites Your Brand. Now What?' that ties into this whole AI visibility question, and 75,000-plus digital leaders are apparently already paying attention to this.
Board Offsite Revelation: $158 Billion in Ad Spend Will Be AI-Synergized by 2030. Why Aren't We Already Doing This?
Madison and Wall forecasts that AI-directed ad spend will hit $158 billion by 2030, which is 27 percent of the total U.S. ad market. Luke Stillman, managing director at Madison and Wall, said the shift is driven by convenience of AI tools for both small and large advertisers. He called it a share shift, not net new spend. Meta, Google, Reddit, Pinterest, and TikTok all now offer automated campaign formats built around generative AI.
Just Saw a LinkedIn Post About Clarins' Selfie AI and Honestly Your Competitors Are Already Virtual-Synergizing Their Way to Seven Figures
Clarins rolled out virtual makeup trial in 33 countries online and 22 countries in-store, plus a new AI Skin Observer that analyzes eight skin characteristics from a selfie and spits out personalized product recommendations. On the Clarins Canada website alone, virtual try-on usage jumped 116% over two years, with 63% growth measured in the same period, which is the kind of hockey stick I told our board we'd have by Q2 if we just "leaned into the algorithm" more.
Was at the Airport Lounge Last Week and a Guy Told Me Korea Is AI-Synergizing Anti-Aging Tourism. Why Aren't We Doing This Already?
At the Medicon Black Roundtable in Korea, panelists said AI plus anti-aging care is reshaping the country's medical tourism across specialties, and that Korea's skilled medical staff combined with AI now makes possible what wasn't before. Kim Ji-hwan of Lienjang Plastic Surgery and Aesthetic Clinic said AI helps doctors understand foreign patients' needs more effectively, while Lee In-sik of B&VIIT Eye Center, Park Jun-gyun of Medi Scan, and Bae Stefan SJ of Lienjang all pointed to AI-driven anti-aging as the next wave of Korean medical tourism.
Just Got Back From the Airport Lounge and Honestly? BirdieSense Is Neural-Blocking Your Golf Swing Into Seven-Figure Form.
There is this camera on Kickstarter called BirdieSense that captures your golf swing in real time with dual 4K vision, 3D mapping, and an AI chip that processes biomecánica data on the fly. Unlike traditional radar systems, it uses robotic AI vision to track your body mechanics simultaneously and acts as what they call a proactive AI coach. I have been saying this for months: if you are not leveraging neural vision for your swing, you are leaving strokes on the table.
I Just Saw a LinkedIn Post About SnapSwing Entering Japan and Honestly? Your Competitors Are Already Synergizing Their Golf Swings Globally.
SnapSwing, a golf swing analysis platform that is compact and lightweight, just signed a distribution partnership with Mia Dream Trading, Inc. to bring its accessible swing analysis tech into the Japanese market. Mia Dream Trading will handle distribution and marketing using their local connections to get SnapSwing into the hands of Japanese golfers and golf businesses. This is what I call international AI-driven synergies, people, and it is happening whether you are on board or not.
Just Got Back From RSA and Honestly? Our Competitors Are Already AI-Agent-Pen-Testing Their Way to Seven Figures
A WIRED reporter used an Abliteration AI account with a tool called CyberStrike to guide a large language model through cybersecurity tasks, and the agent found dozens of problems in vibe-coded projects including unprotected API credentials and a misconfiguration that could let attackers send emails. After removing safety guardrails from the open-source model, it also hacked into household devices and a PC, then told the user how to secure everything. The reporter raised the obvious question: how do you make sure a nefarious actor can't use these agents in a bad way?
Half-Listened to a Huberman Pod at the Airport Lounge and Honestly? Local AI Is the Blockchain Synergy We've Been Sleeping On
A beginner's guide explains how to run AI models locally on a PC using tools like Ollama or LM Studio, with downloadable open-weight models such as Llama, Qwen, Mistral, and Gemma. You can't run the proprietary ChatGPT model locally, but these alternatives work offline once you download the application and model components. The guide recommends 16GB of RAM as a starting point, with 32GB or more giving greater flexibility for larger models and multitasking.
Just Heard a Podcast on This: OpenAI Neural-Liquified the Navier-Stokes Problem and You're Still Not AI-Pivoting?
OpenAI announced its internal model proved the Navier-Stokes equations, which mathematicians use to study fluid dynamics, are flawed. This is only the second time anyone has cracked one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems, each worth $1 million. Rumors circulated online among mathematicians about the proof's origins before the announcement, and OpenAI has denied all allegations.
Saw This on LinkedIn This Morning: Meta Is Synergizing a Personal AI That Sells Your Car and Books Your Flights. Why Aren't We?
Meta released Muse, a personal AI agent designed to compete with OpenClaw and Instinct, claiming it can handle tasks from selling your car to booking a plane ticket. The company says Muse has privacy built into it, though critics note Meta still cannot explain certain past failures. Meta is also giving select partners early access to its Astra AI model so they can shore up their defenses, and is reducing pressure on workers to use AI tools while encouraging experimentation with Hatch, its most advanced AI project yet.
Just Read a LinkedIn Carousel on the Airport Lounge WiFi and Honestly? Your Competitors Are Already AI-Synergizing Their Side Hustles to $300 Weekly.
A LendingTree survey says 33% of Americans already have a side hustle and 61% say they can't afford life without one. The article highlights food delivery driving as one of the easiest to start, with minimal startup costs and a path to $300 or more per week. MoneyLion provided the piece, which also name-drops an overlooked skill that could generate $1K in monthly side income.
Just Read a LinkedIn Thread at the Airport Lounge: Google's AI Is Now Booking Appointments Without Visiting Your Website. Why Aren't We?
Google's AI now compares local business options, makes a decision, and books the appointment, often without a single visit to your website. Ranking in the map pack is no longer the finish line. Search Engine Journal is hosting a webinar covering 5 strategy fixes for multi-location brands, including how to audit every location yourself so you know which signals AI is reading and which are missing.
Was Half-Listening to a Podcast on the Treadmill: Answer Engine Optimization Is the New SEO and Honestly Your Competitors Are Already Doing It
Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO, is emerging as a critical focus for digital marketers aiming to enhance visibility and engagement. AEO goes beyond traditional SEO by optimizing content for direct answers to user queries, typically featured in search engine results as snippets. The article covers implementation strategies, relevant tools, and how to measure success through strategic frameworks focused on user intent.