And is this AI in the room with us right now?

early adopter swag

HK: randa….you’ve got something to tell the good folks in the nmjc brain trust….

RS: yeah guys i work at substack now! my job is to identify cool people who should have substacks. a small request because as a reader of nmjc i respect your taste: i would love to hear about your favorite people on instagram/tiktok/twitter. if you know anybody who should have a Staq, plz respond directly to this email to suggest them.

HK: hell yea here’s a free one: glen greenwald should have a substack! 

RS: totally… speaking of free speech, we spent this week testing out a new tool that captures your conversations and then summarizes them with AI. as a techno-optimist newsletter, we thought i’d be funny to do a little review of the app.

my friend daniel* first showed me his app Spacebar when we were in the car on the way to a wedding. i really liked it – it’s kind of uncanny to have your conversation immediately summarized. it feels much more magical than a transcript.

when we used the app in our editorial meeting it came up with a pretty good jingle for us:

So come on in, join the good hang

Where friends become fam, and ideas bang

Harry, I am curious what your impressions are after using it a couple more times with Dave.

*daniel did NOT pay us to do this

HK: Let me first address the TO allegations. I wouldn’t describe myself as a techno-optimist (unless I’m at fuckin knockdown center 🚨🚨🚨¹). No but fr I do think that as a rule, most of the tools built ostensibly to connect us actually leave us feeling more frayed. Yadda yadda we’re here though and we have to make do.

But yes my interest was piqued when you told me about Spacebar, and this really isn’t spon con. We get enough money from You Know Who. Plus we’re influential in a more nuanced Psy-op kind of way.

I think what intrigued me about Spacebar is its role as a more passive piece of tech.

I’ve been coming across these totally insane “AI” apps like Rizz AI and Tappz.aps that claim to allow you to leverage AI to talk to girls.

Less hornily, there are numerous chatGPT-style AI tools that claim to help you write better emails, better code, organize your day etc… These tools require active engagement, and promise more efficient outcomes. Don’t care! The goal of my life isn’t to get better at doing stupid boring things, its to hang out and chill and find god in the space between people.

Spacebar’s role is that of a passive listener (which is admittedly disconcerting in a certain sense) but I still prefer this kind of passive tech to the in-your-face augmentation of early AI promises.

Far more importantly, though, is that Spacebar is a little Zany. Right now the main use case I have for it is a pretty involved party trick. 

When I think about these moments of zaniness in AI, I’m reminded of a great interview PJ Vogt did with Miguel Piedrafita for his brief crypto podcast Crypto Island. PJ asked Miguel, why he likes designing in web 3.0 vs web 2.0, and Miguel gave maybe the first relatable answer to the question of why the fuck anyone is doing any of this cutting-edge tech stuff. He says, (condensed for brevity):

I feel like one of the really, really cool things about Web3 is that it's like pretty unexplored territory, like you can kind of just like join two ideas together…walk three steps in any direction, and you end up in completely unexplored territory. It's kind of like a ongoing exploration.

As much as I am skeptical of these emerging technologies and the totally blood-sucking speculative and grift-ridden markets around them, this idea resonates with me, and it resonates with what I believe ACTUALLY brings people together about the internet. 

So much of the memetic internet humor I love comes out of these same kinds of technological advances. Web 2 made it very easy to rapidly share images. Advances in photo editing made rapid crazy photoshops possible etc etc..

So…I’m tentatively pro this type of innovation, so long as they don’t try to make money. Is Daniel down to just not have this bad boy be profitable? 

JK……..unless….

But what was your take on Spacebar? 

RS: ok maybe we’re not techno optimists in the Thiel-ian sense of the word, but we ARE optimistic about some tech. i have always liked using new tools, i think because it’s another extension of human self-expression and you never know what people will end up using it for. sometimes it goes bad and people use it for bad stuff (for example, spike ball could have been cool but now it’s used to create horrible vibes in public spaces).

for my personality test heads - it’s like, enneagram 4s and 5s (the artists and nerds) would make cool stuff with AI. enneagram 3s (the achievers) could not be trusted…

anyway about a year ago i was walking down the beach with my dad in san diego. we were talking about crypto and i was like yeah i don’t really understand what it really does and my dad was like … HTML was initially invented for physicists and then it made the whole internet. that’s when crypto clicked for me: sure, crypto is low-value to me right now, but what if it’s just like HTML? we really don’t know what’s gonna happen.

anyway - regarding spacebar, last night i was hanging out with some people and the topic of fighting with your significant other came up. i immediately lit up – spacebar would be PERFECT for this. the issue is that when a fight erupts, you probably wouldn’t have the wherewithal to trigger a recording. it could be a cool art project to record and summarize all your fights with AI. and it might also be useful.

i think you’re also making the distinction between function and art - we used spacebar in a way that feels like art for arts sake. but it’s easy to see how it could be used for meeting notes or something more “useful.” and if something is too useful then it can become a real business?

HK: Yeah to your point about leveraging this tech for art….it’s a hard sell for me but one that feels more emotional than logical.

I love, abstractly, the idea of the constantly shifting tools that people use to extract and reflect humanity through art. At the same time though, when I see someone doing that with AI, being like “yo check this midjourney drawing of a Goku if he were Zelensky” I’m like…this totally sucks ass. 

But maybe early adopters just have low swag? I’ve always thought of myself as more of a early-mid-funnel guy.

RS: i think what you’re getting at is “the medium is the message” and maybe midjourney is a wack medium. but there are other AI “mediums” (e.g.. spacebar) that feel interesting.

i don’t think early adopters have low swag (bc i consider myself an early adopter and i think i’m medium swag) but i think early adopters have open mindedness and vision. sometimes the first version of something isn’t the swaggiest version of it.

i think early adopters of the nmjc newsletter for example are high swag. they might be like, wtf is this, but they are open minded and see the vision…

1. real ones know its f knockdown though….