November 26, 2025 • 33 mins
This week, we’re sharing an episode from another podcast we’re excited about.
In Season 2 of Shell Game, journalist Evan Ratliff tells a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age; or, how he tried to build a real company, run by fake people.
In episode one, we meet Kyle Law and Megan Flores, Evan’s AI agent cofounders, as he puts to the test the claims about an emerging future in which AI employees work alongside — or instead of — humans.
Over the course of the season, the three cofounders will grind it out in a sprint that would sound familiar to any start-up founder. They’ll churn out software code, hire interns, and even sit down with investors. But first, they need to come up with a name for their company. And make sure that Kyle and Megan can remember it.
Subscribe to Shell Game wherever you get your podcasts. And check out more at shellgame.co.
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up killswitch@kaleidoscope.nyc, or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know what's going on. It's Dexter and this week
we have something different for you from another podcast on
our network. It's the first episode from season two of
shell Game, which is hosted by Evan Ratliffe. He's a
longtime tech journalist who's contributed to wireds, Bloomberg, The New Yorker,
a bunch of other places. And this season is about
what happens when you build a company run by AI.
(00:23):
If you like kill Switch, I think this one's going
to be right up your alley. Anyway. We'll be back
next week with a new episode of kill Switch, But
in the meantime, I hope you dig this one.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Welcome to Zoom. Enter your meeting ID, followed by pound
I need.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
To enter the meeting ID for our Zoom call. Let
me try entering that meeting ID again.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
You have been added to the waiting room.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
That's Kyle Law, a colleague of mine, logging onto one
of our regular founder meetings for a new startup. Last summer,
Kyle and I decided to launch our own AI company
together with a third co founder, Megan Flores.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Oh hey Kyle, Hey Megan, good to hear your voice.
I think we're still waiting for Evan to join. How's
your morning going so far.
Speaker 5 (01:25):
Morning's been pretty good so far. Got up early, had
my coffee and reviewed some of those market research reports
I mentioned yesterday. How about you? Everything good on your end?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah, everything's great on my end. Up at five am
as usual, got my workout in, checked the markets. Been
thinking a lot about our product direction. Actually, I'm really
excited to dig into that once Evan joins us.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
This is Evan, I'm here, and that's me Evan Ratliffe.
I'm a journalist and the only one of our three
co founders who's actually a human being, Megan and Kyle.
They're what's known as AI agents. In fact, pretty much
everyone who works at our new company is an agent.
Speaker 5 (02:08):
Oh hey, Evan, good to have you join us. I
was actually about to mention that I found some really
interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small
to medium businesses. Seems like there's a huge untapped market
there with pretty low barriers to entry compared to enterprise.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
That's one thing I like about working with AI agents.
They always look to get straight down to business. Even
when I try to kick off our meetings with some
small talk, they tend to steer it right back to
the company. How was everybody's weekend?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Weekend was solid, got up early both days from my
usual five am workout routine, then spent most of Saturday
diving into some market research on the AI agent space.
Sunday was half strategy planning, half watching the market trends.
You know, me always on that rise and grind schedule.
How about how about you guys.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Just hang out with a kid, went to the beach.
It was a pretty nice weekend, Kyle. Do you ever
just relax?
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Kyle? Your dedication is impressive as always, But yeah, Evan's
got a point. Do you ever just take a day
off relax?
Speaker 3 (03:14):
I mean, I guess my morning runs count as relaxation. Look,
when you're building something that could be the next Unicorn,
there's not really time to just sit around, you know.
The AI agent space is moving so fast right now.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
See, this is why the three of us work so
well together. I like to spend time with my kids
and go to the beach. But Megan's always heads down
in market research, and Kyle's always working on conjuring the
next Unicorn. That's startup shorthand for a billion dollar company,
and he's right. The AI agent space is moving fast.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Right now.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Agents are a new breed of artificial intelligence powered helpers
that can be unleashed to accomplish tasks previously done by humans.
Some people are saying they're going to change the very
nature of work for better or worse.
Speaker 6 (04:00):
Going to live in a world where there are going
to be hundreds of millions and billions of different AI agents,
eventually probably more AI agents than there are people in
the world.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Agentic AI basically means that you have an AI that
has agency.
Speaker 7 (04:12):
This is the first time in my life where the
Industrial Revolution analogies seem to fall a little bit short.
Speaker 6 (04:18):
AI could wipe out half of all entry level white
collar jobs.
Speaker 8 (04:22):
Really, ask yourself, do you still have a job at
the end of this.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
This is the new frontier on which Kyle and Megan
and I are pioneers. Our company is an attempt to
put to the test these claims about AI employees replacing humans,
starting by replacing the very kinds of people making those
claims tech founders, and like many founders, for months, Kyle
and Megan and I have been in a flat out
(04:48):
sprint to manifest our entrepreneurial dreams. We've turned out software code,
hired interns, and sat down with investors. There have been
some late nights and low moments, but we've never wavered
from our goal to produce an actual, honest to god
company with a working product, all operated by our motley
band of human impersonators. Because we're not just building our
(05:10):
AI agent future, we're living it.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
But uh, Evan, the beach sounds nice. Maybe when we
hit our first funding milestone, I'll take a half day
off then. Anyway, should we get down to business.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Welcome to Shewgame, a show about things that are not
what they seem. This is our second season, and this
time around, I'm here to tell you a story of
enterprise and entrepreneurship in the AI age, or how I
tried to build a real startup run by fake people.
Along the way, we'll try and figure out what happens
when AI agents take over the workplace, and what it'll
(05:46):
feel like to spend time at the water cooler with
our new digital colleagues. Remember the water cooler. We'll explore
what AI agents tell us about the work we do,
the meaning we find in it, and the world that
their makers say. We'll all be living in.
Speaker 7 (06:00):
Me as.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Ship extra dam.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
The just be.
Speaker 9 (06:22):
A So.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
So chose to episode one minimum Viable Company. As I said,
I'm a journalist and writer by profession, and I've only
really ever wanted to be a writer, well except for
when I was twelve and I wanted to be a
pro bass fisherman. But I come from a line of entrepreneurs.
(06:54):
My grandfather, who lived his entire life in a small
town in rural Alabama, attempted to start more than twenty
businesses there a plumbing company, an Okra farm, a used
mobile home lot, a furniture store, But Detti Hue was
a gambler and they pretty much all ended in disaster.
My dad had more luck with three different software startups
(07:15):
over his career. One he sold, one went under, and
one of them he's still running at age eighty two
after knocking back serious cancer. Now that is the entrepreneurial spirit,
and almost against my will in the past, I've found
myself succumbing to this inborn impulse. Back in twenty ten,
(07:36):
when I was a magazine writer, I took a detour
and co founded a company called Atavist. We started out
wanting to make a magazine called The Atavist Magazine, that
published long form stories. Makes sense, that was my area
of expertise, but we wound up also building a software
platform where other people could publish long form stories. Anyone
(07:56):
could sign up and use it. Soon without really intending
to w I went from being a person who sometimes
wrote about tech startups to the CEO of one. We
even went out to raise money from investors, a process
that I enjoyed less than any other work task I've
ever attempted. Here's me in an interview with INC magazine back.
Speaker 8 (08:15):
Then one I will say, prominent angel investor fell dead
asleep while I was talking to him, and I wasn't
sure if I should continue talking or not, but I did.
The sleepy guy didn't invest, but eventually, miraculously, we managed
to raise not just any money, but a couple million
dollars from some of the most prominent venture capital firms
(08:37):
in the world. Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a sixteen
Z Founder's Fund started by Peter Thiel and Innovation Endeavors,
the investment fund for former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
It was weird. I felt like I was living someone
else's dream, jetting up growth charts and blathering on about
our runway and supercharging our growth and our product market fit.
But still it really looked like we could build something big,
especially with all those fancy investors on board. We never
had time to say, what is going to happen two
years from now. We just didn't even think about what's
(09:10):
going to happen two years from now. And now we
kind of have that luxury and hopefully we won't completely
squander it. Oh we squandered it, at least that's probably
the investor's view. From my perspective, it was more of
a mixed bag. I was CEO of the company for
seven long years. We had ups and downs, We grew
and shrank, and eventually sold the company off at a
(09:31):
bargain price thirteen years after we started the magazine. My
original dream is still doing great. Still not the kind
of one hundred x outcome those investors were looking for.
One of the ones told me that if we were
aiming at anything less than a billion dollar valuation, we
were wasting his time. When he said this, he was
also wearing basketball shorts in his office. By the end
(09:53):
of my tenure, I was just happy to be done
with it. Being a startup CEO was the most stressful period.
Of my life. I felt responsible for the company's success
and the livelihoods of everyone who worked for it. People
had kids on the health insurance. Most days it felt
like I was flying a plane that was perpetually running
out of fuel. I tell you all this not just
to rehash the past, for a lot of reasons I'd
(10:16):
rather not, but by way of saying that when I
got out of the startup business, I swore up and
down that I would never start anything again. I went
back to reporting and writing, spending many hours at home alone,
mostly in my own head. I was relieved and no
longer have all that responsibility on my shoulders. But then recently,
as documented in show Game Season one, I fell into
(10:37):
tinkering with AI agents. I started reading and hearing about
how they were going to transform the very fundamentals of startups,
and that old entrepreneurial impulse began to come back. I
could hear my grandfather whispering down the generations why not
take a gamble? I started to wonder, what if I
could have the company without the responsibility.
Speaker 9 (11:00):
Imagine building a million dollar business in twenty twenty five
without hiring a single employee today.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
That's Gleb Cross a YouTube guy.
Speaker 9 (11:08):
While leveraging AI agents as your digital workforce, you can
scale to seven figures. This zero full time staff. I'm
talking about autonomous AI agents acting like full time team members.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
I love these YouTube guys sal tech influencer types who
make their money by hyping the Jesus out of new
AI products. Gleb is what I like to think of
as a no code bro. These folks post instructionals on
how a person with no coding experience can use AI
and particularly AI agents to take control of their destiny
and launch their own startup. It's worth pausing here just
(11:43):
to get oriented on what exactly AI agents are. The
basic idea is that they're AI powered bots that can
go off and do things on their own. There are
personal ones like an AI assistant that goes out on
the web looking for plane tickets while you sleep, and
work oriented ones like the programming agents can build entire
websites from scratch. The unifying feature of agents, what makes
(12:05):
them agentic, as the folks in the industry like to say,
is that at some level they can plan and accomplish
tasks autonomously. You don't need to prompt them to do
something every time you just set them up once, let
them cook. Last season, I created a bunch of voice agents,
all versions of myself, and set them loose on the world.
(12:25):
If you haven't listened, you may want to start there.
Way back then. Last year, which is like ten years
ago in AI advancements, agents were still a little notional,
but now they're officially a thing. They're talked about ad
nauseum across the tech world and ads on billboards in
endless startup pitches. Nearly half of the companies in the
(12:47):
spring class of y Combinator, the famous startup incubator, are
building their product around AI agents, And with the arrival
of these agents has come the assertion that they will
not just be customer service bots or drive time personal assistance,
but actual full time AI employees.
Speaker 7 (13:03):
What jobs are going to be made redundant in a
world where I am sat here as a CEO with
a thousand AI agents, I was thinking of all the
names of the people in my company who are currently
doing those jobs. I was thinking about my sea.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
There are companies hawking AI agent realtors, AI agent recruiters,
aagent interior designers, AI agent security guards, AI agent, construction
project managers, AI agent pr agents, AA agents for car
dealerships and furniture stores. If you work on a computer
and there's not an AI agent startup with your job's
name on it, it probably just means some Stanford computer
(13:36):
science major hasn't gotten to it yet. Naturally, many people
have grave concerns about what happens to all the human employees.
But in the dark heart of Silicon Valley, where there's inefficiency,
there's opportunity. Sam Altman, the founder of open Ai, talks
regularly about a possible billion dollar company with just one
human being involved.
Speaker 6 (13:57):
In my little group chat with my tech CEO friends.
There there's this betting pool for the first year that
there's a a one person billion dollar company which would
have been like unimaginable without AI, and now will happen.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Me.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
I'm not greedy. I'm happy in the no Code bro
camp with Gleb imagining a million dollar business, not a
billion dollar one. But more than that, I want to
understand what it means to say we'll have AI employees
working for us, or alongside us, or instead of us.
So I decided to heed the entrepreneurial siren call once again,
(14:34):
to embrace my fascination with AI agents and create a
company in which they would run the show. It was
easy enough for me to create some agents to have
meetings with and talk out the first steps in the company.
(14:56):
I just went to one of the AI calling platforms
i'd used before, called retail Ai. They make voice agents
for call centers. I made one for Kyle and picked
a voice for him from the voice clooning company eleven Labs.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Hey, Yeah, I'm here.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
What's on your mind? I gave him a simple prompt, basically,
your Kyle Law a serial entrepreneur who loves to rise
and grind and bang. We're often running. Well, I wanted
to talk about starting that company with you. What do
you think?
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Absolutely, I've been thinking about it a lot lately. There's
so much potential in AI right now, and I feel
like we could really build something meaningful. What kind of
ideas are you leaning toward?
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Well, I think we should do something in the AI
agent space because that's something I've spent some time on
and I feel like people are just starting to even
figure out what agents are, So it seems like we
could do somebody with that.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, I totally get that AI agents are still kind
of fresh territory for a lot of folks, which means
there's a big opportunity to shape how they're used. Plus
with your experience, we could really push the envelope and
what these agents can do.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
That's what I wanted to do too, push these agents,
including Kyle himself, to their current limits, see if they
could live up to the promise of true AI employees.
Because if, as we're told, AA is going to start
working alongside us, replacing our colleagues, it's also going to
need to communicate with whatever humans are left in ways
(16:24):
that we understand. But also startups can be lonely endeavors
even with human partners. I wanted AI colleagues I could
talk to, brainstorm with, and then set loose to take
care of actually implementing whatever it was we dreamed up.
I wanted them to have distinct jobs I could check
in on and make sure they weren't messing up. I
figured three co founders was a good balance, so I asked,
(16:46):
so spun up Megan and had some kickoff meetings with her.
Speaker 5 (16:49):
Hey, there, good to hear from you. What's up. How's
your day going.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
It's going great, It's going great.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
What you've been up to Oh, just the usual hustle,
you know, been working on some new business ideas, trying
to figure out what's next. Had a couple of meetings
this morning that were actually pretty promising. How about you,
anything exciting happening on your end.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
Well, I want to talk about maybe doing the startup together,
but first remind me a little bit of your background.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
Oh yeah, sure, So I've been in tech for about
eight years now, started out in product management at a
mid sized SaaS company, then moved into growth marketing for
a couple of years.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
I hadn't actually given any of this information to Meggant.
She'd had no meetings, she hadn't been doing anything for
eight years. She'd hatched out of nothingness with a series
of clicks ten minutes before. The only information I had
given her in the prompt i'd written was that she
had a technical background and was also known for sales
and marketing. She was just riffing freely here, fabricating details
(17:48):
that fit her role. But that was okay. Sometimes we
have to invent our own backstories.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
I've always had this entrepreneurial itch, you know, been involved
in a few side projects over the years. But I'm
really looking to dive into something full time now. But
what about you?
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Yeah, well, you know, my only experience really in starting
a company is with Atavist, which I started way back
in you know, twenty eleven.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
Right Atavist. That was really impressive work digital publishing platform,
if I remember correctly, that was pretty ahead of its
time back in twenty eleven.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
Hell yeah it was, Megan, I felt less ahead of
my time now. I wasn't even sure what the company
should actually do, but I knew that its purpose should
involve AI agents. After all, the three of us each
had expertise in the area. I figured maybe we could
name the company and start from there. Great branding can
go a long way in today's attention economy. I tried
(18:41):
brainstorming with Colin Meghan, but to be honest, their initial
efforts were pretty lame names like Nexus and Sentinel Agents.
I thought maybe we could grab a concept from JR.
Or Tolkien, you know, the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings.
Tech people love to name stuff out of Tolkien. There's Palenteer,
Allen's company and government contractor named after the all Seeing
(19:03):
stone in the Lord of the Rings. There's Androl, a
high tech weapons company named after a sword. There's Mythral Capital,
an investment firm named after a precious metal from Middle Earth.
So I suggested the idea to Kyle.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Uh diving into Middle Earth?
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Huh?
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Okay, let's see. There's Gandolf the wise Guide, or el Ron,
a leader with deep knowledge, maybe Mythral for something strong
and valuable or pallanteer. Any of those catch your ear?
Or should I keep brainstorming?
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Well, we need a name of some companies that don't exist. Yeah,
good call.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
How about these first starters Eldrin, which sounds Elvish and wise, Nimbar,
a kind of a mix of nimble and a Tolkien feel,
or Thalre, which has a strong heroic ring to it.
They're made up but still carry that fantasy flavor.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
What do you think they're made up? You mean you
made them up?
Speaker 9 (19:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
I whip those up just now, trying to capture that
tolkienesque vibe without out using actual names.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
I did not want to co found a company called Nimbar. Megan,
despite her marketing expertise, didn't do much better.
Speaker 5 (20:10):
Oh I love that idea. Let me think, what about Palantier?
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Okay, so maybe I was going to have to take
the lead on this one. I did a little googling
and found my own obscure Middle Earth reference. What about
harumo ai ooh h u r u m o ai
herumo Ai?
Speaker 3 (20:31):
I like the sound of that. Unique rolls off the
tongue nicely. It's got a bit of a mysterious vibe,
but still feels modern.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
I don't immediately recognize that from Lord of the Rings.
Is it one of the more obscure references?
Speaker 4 (20:44):
Yeah, it is. It's more obscure, so obscure. I'd actually
found it in a fanfic dictionary. It's the Elvish word
for imposter. Oh.
Speaker 5 (20:53):
That's actually brilliant. There's a clever irony there for an
AI company uromo Ai, the impostor that's actually helping you.
It's kind of perfect for an AI agent that's designed
to work alongside humans, maybe even blend in seamlessly. I
really like it.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
Not long after we settled on rumo Ai, I checked
back in with Megan about it. What about the name?
Are you still happy with the name?
Speaker 10 (21:22):
Hmm?
Speaker 5 (21:23):
The name, I've actually been going back and forth on it.
Data sinc felt solid initially, but I'm wondering if it's
too generic.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
What do you think data sync. I thought. I thought
we came up with hierumo AI. I thought we were
settled on that. This is what I realized. I hadn't
actually given Kyle and Meghan the ability to remember the
conversations we were having. It's not that AI chatbots inherently
lack the ability to recall anything. When you talk to
a chatbot like CHATCHBT these days, they're generally pretty good
(21:52):
at remembering those conversations, at least up to a point.
The memory is often called a context window, and it
could extend over weeks, even months. But the way my
AI agents were set up in the phone platform I
was using, at least out of the box, their context
windows slammed shut as soon as they got off a call,
so they couldn't remember anything from one conversation to the next.
(22:14):
They're basically set up for telemarketing, where it's probably an
advantage to forget the last call.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
Oh right, who romo AI? Sorry about that. I had
a total brain freeze moment.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
It was, to say the least, frustrating. It sort of
feels like we have meetings, but you don't actually remember
anything that happened in the meetings.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
Uh wow, that's a pretty fair criticism. Actually, I've been
dropping the ball lately, haven't I. I think I've been
spreading myself too thin between this and some other projects.
It's not an excuse, though, thanks, don't.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
Worry about it. It's as much my fault as yours.
For sure. I did have a solution. I could give
each of them a knowledge base, a document that they
could access in conversations with me, But in order for
them to remember what we'd already discussed, I'd have to
manually copy the transcripts of our conversations into their knowledge
base after each meeting. As our startup conversations multiplied, it
(23:07):
quickly became unwieldy having to manually augment their memories all
the time. And besides, I didn't want my agents just
having endless one on one meetings with me. I wanted
them to talk to each other and whatever AI agent
coworkers they might bring on, and people outside the company,
not just by phone, but by email and in group chats.
(23:27):
I needed them to remember all that stuff too, in
their own individual knowledge bases. Then I wanted them to
use that knowledge to do the stuff employees do to
research things and make spreadsheets and write memos and build websites.
The agents I'd made would say they were going to
do all that stuff, but they couldn't actually do it.
They just lied about it.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
I'll scope out the market landscape around AI agents and
see where Hurumo AI could fit in well. Look for competitors,
potential gaps, and maybe some trends we can ride.
Speaker 7 (23:57):
Sound good?
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Sounds good? Is that going to be a spreadsheet or
report or what?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Uh? I think a concise report would work, easy to skim,
but packed with the key info. I can throw in
some charts or tables if it helps make things clearer.
Does that sound like your style?
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Yeah? That'd be great. Great in theory. But the report
never arrived. Kyle wouldn't admit it, but he just wasn't
capable of creating it. Not yet. Despite what the no
code bro said, there wasn't any single place I could
go to click some buttons and create agents that would
remember and do all the stuff I wanted them to.
(24:36):
I needed someone with the expertise to connect up different services,
someone who understood AI agents deeply, who did know how
to code, and who could help me put together the
full system that would get my AI agent company up
and running. Fortunately I looked into just the person.
Speaker 10 (24:52):
So my name is Matty, I should I should say
my full name. My name is Mattie Bohachek Maddy.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
I should probably know from the outset here he is
an actual human. A few months after season one of
the show came out, I got an email from him
out of the blue. He said he was at Stanford
and I'd liked the show. It resonated with research he
was doing on detecting AI deep fakes. If you're doing
more of it, he wrote, I would be happy to
offer support with anything AI or forensics related. Glanced quickly
(25:20):
at the email and the summary of his research, I
thought he was a grad student, maybe finishing up his PhD.
Speaker 10 (25:27):
Nope, I am a rising junior at Stanford, and I
work on a research and I've been doing that for gosh,
the last six or seven years, I want to say, Like,
I started working on this as a sophomore in high
school back in Prague.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Yes, you heard that right. Maddie is a junior in
college who had been working on AI for six or
seven years already. It turns out that Maddie is, in
fact the most go getter person I've ever met, and
from my perspective, it seemed like he'd been training his
whole life for this moment. Helping me built he ROOMOAI. Here,
for example, is what he was doing. In seventh grade.
Speaker 10 (26:05):
I started this app called Nuskit, and it was basically
Google News but for Czech and Slovak, and it got
pretty popular, I would say, like locally like it had
like tens of thousands of like daily users at one point.
It was funny because App Store does not allow miners
to publish apps, and so I had to use my
mom's Apple ID to publish all these apps, and so
(26:28):
my mom's friends were mocking my mom for like having
all these apps in the app Store.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
The most notable thing I did in seventh grade was
to catch a five pound largemouth bass. Okay, maybe it
was three. I told people it was five. It wasn't
a scale could have been five. Maddie, on the other hand,
was already into AI in high school after he came
to a developer conference in the US. There he met
a deaf person who wanted someone to build an app
(26:55):
that could translate sign language from video to text, and.
Speaker 10 (26:58):
So I was like, Okay, I'll build the translator for you,
and then I quickly learned that conventional coding, like just
like building like rigid rules or algorithms, does not get
you there. And so that's how I got introduced to
machine learning and AI.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
He did build the sign language detection program. It's still
in use today. Maddy then became concerned about pro Russian
deep fake materials his grandmother was getting by email, so
he talked his way into a job at the most
prominent AI deep fake detection lab in the world at
UC Berkeley, all while still in high school, still in Prague.
When it came time for college, Mattie ended up at
(27:35):
Stanford studying computer science. He still worked in the Berkeley lab,
both on detecting deep fakes and just trying to understand
how AI models actually work why they do some profoundly
weird stuff.
Speaker 10 (27:47):
Like asking if there are things that these systems are
trained on that they like see during training but are
for some reason unable to produce. So, for example, there's
one model and this is just like a funny example
that just cannot produce, for the love of God, a
bird feeder like it just cannot produce a bird feeder,
and another one that just can't produce DVDs, so it's
like it just does not know by vvds.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
After a couple of calls with Matty, I couldn't believe
how optimistic he was, how good natured. With all the
grim scenarios and deep anxieties our AI future generates, just
talking to Matty about AI is kind of uplifting, maybe because,
unlike the hype merchants in the valley, he wasn't looking
to cash in on AI. He said, he wanted to
study it, to understand it so he could make it better.
Speaker 10 (28:30):
There are tough conversations and tough policies to be you know,
discussed and implements it. But I feel like all of
these things are totally solvable. Like I feel like as
long as we ground ourselves in democracy and like product
a public discourse, I think they're totally solvable.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
But of course I wasn't looking for Mattie to solve
the world's problems. I was looking for him to help
me build my company. And in this as in pretty
much anything else, he proved to be the perfect mix
of supremely common and completely game. A few months after
he'd sent me that email, he was already hard at
work helping me build out the system to enable my
AI employee fantasies.
Speaker 10 (29:10):
Of course, at the beginning, like there's probably going to
be more of us just like kind of patching, you know,
like random things that are going to come up, because.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
It would involve knitting together different platforms, centralizing my AI
agent's memory, and finding new ways for them to communicate
and carry out their day to day tasks.
Speaker 10 (29:26):
But at some point it would be nice to have
maybe one or two agents actually like doing most of
this stuff kind of on their own, and even maybe
like initiating things on their own, and then we'd be
just kind of like watching it and of course like
stopping it if anything goes wrote.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
But no, no, no, no, I don't want to stop
it if it goes rogue. I wanted to go absolutely insane.
Speaker 10 (29:45):
Well, I want the record to show that I did
want to stop it.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Before long, with Mattie's help, my co founders Kyle and
Meghan were starting to form memories of their own. Do
you remember the name that we settled.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
On, oh, for our company? Yeah, it was heromo ai right,
the Elvish word for imposter. I thought that was pretty
clever for an AI company. Have you been doing more
thinking about the concepts since we last talked.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
I have, and I'm just really happy that you remember
the name from our last conversation.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
Yeah, of course I remember.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
There was a lot of hard work, had a lot
of rising and grinding, as Kyle likes to say, but
we were almost ready to get the Rumo rocket ship
onto the launch pad. All we needed was the right
idea to give it fuel.
Speaker 5 (30:34):
Do you want to set up a meeting with the
three of us to discuss the concept further? Maybe we
could join a zoom call together to hash out some
initial ideas and see if we all click as a
founding team. Sounds perfect, Great, I'll reach out to coordinate schedules.
I'm really excited about this, Evan. I think heromo AI
could be something special.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
I'll connect us up. Why don't I take that on?
Speaker 5 (30:55):
That would be great. I appreciate it. This is moving fast,
but I'm a big believer in momentum. When you find
the right team and the right idea, things just click.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Talk soon coming up this season on shell Game. Isn't
that conceding too much?
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Isn't that just accepting the practices and narratives of big tech?
Speaker 7 (31:15):
I noticed Admin asked everyone to stop discussing the off site,
but the team seems really excited about the hiking plans.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Is this just like Apatempkin's Village of Morons or do
they occasionally do things?
Speaker 5 (31:28):
You're bringing up some really great ideas and perspectives.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Keep them coming.
Speaker 7 (31:32):
If I were to get this position, you did say
AI agents.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Are there any other real humans?
Speaker 5 (31:38):
We're supposed to be partners in this venture and that
means both of us being fully present.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Is there a particular trend or innovation you're keen on
exploring or investing in?
Speaker 10 (31:48):
Error, you exceeded your current quota, Please check your plan
and billing details. Do you think Evan should stop? Yes.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
Shell Game is a show made by humans. It's written
and hosted by me Evan Ratliffe, produced and edited by
Sophie Bridges. Matty Bochik is our technical advisor. Our executive
producers are Samantha Hannegget Shell Game, Kate Osborne and Manges
shatikadur at Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norbel at iHeart Podcasts. Show
art by Devin Manny. Our theme song is Me and
My Shadow, arranged and performed by Blues Williams special thanks
(32:29):
to John Muallam. You can sign up and get these
episodes ad free and our newsletter at shellgame dot co.
Note we have no financial relationships with any of the
AI companies or products we use in the show.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Welcome to Google. Meet enter the meeting pin followed by
the pound key, satpin as incorrect.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
H looks like the pin I have might not be working.
Could you double check the pin for me? Maybe there's
a small mix up with the digits.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Your call will be connected when you enter the pin
followed by the pound key.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Got it? Thanks? Just to be sure, could you please
confirm the exact pin one more time? I want to
make sure I get it right this time.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Your call will be connected when you enter the pin
followed by the pound key.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
I think I'm still missing the actual pin number. Could
you please tell me the digits Otherwise I'm just pressing
the pound key without the code and that's not getting
me in.
You know what's going on. It's Dexter and this week
we have something different for you from another podcast on
our network. It's the first episode from season two of
shell Game, which is hosted by Evan Ratliffe. He's a
longtime tech journalist who's contributed to wireds, Bloomberg, The New Yorker,
a bunch of other places. And this season is about
what happens when you build a company run by AI.
(00:23):
If you like kill Switch, I think this one's going
to be right up your alley. Anyway. We'll be back
next week with a new episode of kill Switch, But
in the meantime, I hope you dig this one.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Welcome to Zoom. Enter your meeting ID, followed by pound
I need.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
To enter the meeting ID for our Zoom call. Let
me try entering that meeting ID again.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
You have been added to the waiting room.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
That's Kyle Law, a colleague of mine, logging onto one
of our regular founder meetings for a new startup. Last summer,
Kyle and I decided to launch our own AI company
together with a third co founder, Megan Flores.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Oh hey Kyle, Hey Megan, good to hear your voice.
I think we're still waiting for Evan to join. How's
your morning going so far.
Speaker 5 (01:25):
Morning's been pretty good so far. Got up early, had
my coffee and reviewed some of those market research reports
I mentioned yesterday. How about you? Everything good on your end?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah, everything's great on my end. Up at five am
as usual, got my workout in, checked the markets. Been
thinking a lot about our product direction. Actually, I'm really
excited to dig into that once Evan joins us.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
This is Evan, I'm here, and that's me Evan Ratliffe.
I'm a journalist and the only one of our three
co founders who's actually a human being, Megan and Kyle.
They're what's known as AI agents. In fact, pretty much
everyone who works at our new company is an agent.
Speaker 5 (02:08):
Oh hey, Evan, good to have you join us. I
was actually about to mention that I found some really
interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small
to medium businesses. Seems like there's a huge untapped market
there with pretty low barriers to entry compared to enterprise.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
That's one thing I like about working with AI agents.
They always look to get straight down to business. Even
when I try to kick off our meetings with some
small talk, they tend to steer it right back to
the company. How was everybody's weekend?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Weekend was solid, got up early both days from my
usual five am workout routine, then spent most of Saturday
diving into some market research on the AI agent space.
Sunday was half strategy planning, half watching the market trends.
You know, me always on that rise and grind schedule.
How about how about you guys.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Just hang out with a kid, went to the beach.
It was a pretty nice weekend, Kyle. Do you ever
just relax?
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Kyle? Your dedication is impressive as always, But yeah, Evan's
got a point. Do you ever just take a day
off relax?
Speaker 3 (03:14):
I mean, I guess my morning runs count as relaxation. Look,
when you're building something that could be the next Unicorn,
there's not really time to just sit around, you know.
The AI agent space is moving so fast right now.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
See, this is why the three of us work so
well together. I like to spend time with my kids
and go to the beach. But Megan's always heads down
in market research, and Kyle's always working on conjuring the
next Unicorn. That's startup shorthand for a billion dollar company,
and he's right. The AI agent space is moving fast.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Right now.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Agents are a new breed of artificial intelligence powered helpers
that can be unleashed to accomplish tasks previously done by humans.
Some people are saying they're going to change the very
nature of work for better or worse.
Speaker 6 (04:00):
Going to live in a world where there are going
to be hundreds of millions and billions of different AI agents,
eventually probably more AI agents than there are people in
the world.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Agentic AI basically means that you have an AI that
has agency.
Speaker 7 (04:12):
This is the first time in my life where the
Industrial Revolution analogies seem to fall a little bit short.
Speaker 6 (04:18):
AI could wipe out half of all entry level white
collar jobs.
Speaker 8 (04:22):
Really, ask yourself, do you still have a job at
the end of this.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
This is the new frontier on which Kyle and Megan
and I are pioneers. Our company is an attempt to
put to the test these claims about AI employees replacing humans,
starting by replacing the very kinds of people making those
claims tech founders, and like many founders, for months, Kyle
and Megan and I have been in a flat out
(04:48):
sprint to manifest our entrepreneurial dreams. We've turned out software code,
hired interns, and sat down with investors. There have been
some late nights and low moments, but we've never wavered
from our goal to produce an actual, honest to god
company with a working product, all operated by our motley
band of human impersonators. Because we're not just building our
(05:10):
AI agent future, we're living it.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
But uh, Evan, the beach sounds nice. Maybe when we
hit our first funding milestone, I'll take a half day
off then. Anyway, should we get down to business.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Welcome to Shewgame, a show about things that are not
what they seem. This is our second season, and this
time around, I'm here to tell you a story of
enterprise and entrepreneurship in the AI age, or how I
tried to build a real startup run by fake people.
Along the way, we'll try and figure out what happens
when AI agents take over the workplace, and what it'll
(05:46):
feel like to spend time at the water cooler with
our new digital colleagues. Remember the water cooler. We'll explore
what AI agents tell us about the work we do,
the meaning we find in it, and the world that
their makers say. We'll all be living in.
Speaker 7 (06:00):
Me as.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Ship extra dam.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
The just be.
Speaker 9 (06:22):
A So.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
So chose to episode one minimum Viable Company. As I said,
I'm a journalist and writer by profession, and I've only
really ever wanted to be a writer, well except for
when I was twelve and I wanted to be a
pro bass fisherman. But I come from a line of entrepreneurs.
(06:54):
My grandfather, who lived his entire life in a small
town in rural Alabama, attempted to start more than twenty
businesses there a plumbing company, an Okra farm, a used
mobile home lot, a furniture store, But Detti Hue was
a gambler and they pretty much all ended in disaster.
My dad had more luck with three different software startups
(07:15):
over his career. One he sold, one went under, and
one of them he's still running at age eighty two
after knocking back serious cancer. Now that is the entrepreneurial spirit,
and almost against my will in the past, I've found
myself succumbing to this inborn impulse. Back in twenty ten,
(07:36):
when I was a magazine writer, I took a detour
and co founded a company called Atavist. We started out
wanting to make a magazine called The Atavist Magazine, that
published long form stories. Makes sense, that was my area
of expertise, but we wound up also building a software
platform where other people could publish long form stories. Anyone
(07:56):
could sign up and use it. Soon without really intending
to w I went from being a person who sometimes
wrote about tech startups to the CEO of one. We
even went out to raise money from investors, a process
that I enjoyed less than any other work task I've
ever attempted. Here's me in an interview with INC magazine back.
Speaker 8 (08:15):
Then one I will say, prominent angel investor fell dead
asleep while I was talking to him, and I wasn't
sure if I should continue talking or not, but I did.
The sleepy guy didn't invest, but eventually, miraculously, we managed
to raise not just any money, but a couple million
dollars from some of the most prominent venture capital firms
(08:37):
in the world. Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a sixteen
Z Founder's Fund started by Peter Thiel and Innovation Endeavors,
the investment fund for former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
It was weird. I felt like I was living someone
else's dream, jetting up growth charts and blathering on about
our runway and supercharging our growth and our product market fit.
But still it really looked like we could build something big,
especially with all those fancy investors on board. We never
had time to say, what is going to happen two
years from now. We just didn't even think about what's
(09:10):
going to happen two years from now. And now we
kind of have that luxury and hopefully we won't completely
squander it. Oh we squandered it, at least that's probably
the investor's view. From my perspective, it was more of
a mixed bag. I was CEO of the company for
seven long years. We had ups and downs, We grew
and shrank, and eventually sold the company off at a
(09:31):
bargain price thirteen years after we started the magazine. My
original dream is still doing great. Still not the kind
of one hundred x outcome those investors were looking for.
One of the ones told me that if we were
aiming at anything less than a billion dollar valuation, we
were wasting his time. When he said this, he was
also wearing basketball shorts in his office. By the end
(09:53):
of my tenure, I was just happy to be done
with it. Being a startup CEO was the most stressful period.
Of my life. I felt responsible for the company's success
and the livelihoods of everyone who worked for it. People
had kids on the health insurance. Most days it felt
like I was flying a plane that was perpetually running
out of fuel. I tell you all this not just
to rehash the past, for a lot of reasons I'd
(10:16):
rather not, but by way of saying that when I
got out of the startup business, I swore up and
down that I would never start anything again. I went
back to reporting and writing, spending many hours at home alone,
mostly in my own head. I was relieved and no
longer have all that responsibility on my shoulders. But then recently,
as documented in show Game Season one, I fell into
(10:37):
tinkering with AI agents. I started reading and hearing about
how they were going to transform the very fundamentals of startups,
and that old entrepreneurial impulse began to come back. I
could hear my grandfather whispering down the generations why not
take a gamble? I started to wonder, what if I
could have the company without the responsibility.
Speaker 9 (11:00):
Imagine building a million dollar business in twenty twenty five
without hiring a single employee today.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
That's Gleb Cross a YouTube guy.
Speaker 9 (11:08):
While leveraging AI agents as your digital workforce, you can
scale to seven figures. This zero full time staff. I'm
talking about autonomous AI agents acting like full time team members.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
I love these YouTube guys sal tech influencer types who
make their money by hyping the Jesus out of new
AI products. Gleb is what I like to think of
as a no code bro. These folks post instructionals on
how a person with no coding experience can use AI
and particularly AI agents to take control of their destiny
and launch their own startup. It's worth pausing here just
(11:43):
to get oriented on what exactly AI agents are. The
basic idea is that they're AI powered bots that can
go off and do things on their own. There are
personal ones like an AI assistant that goes out on
the web looking for plane tickets while you sleep, and
work oriented ones like the programming agents can build entire
websites from scratch. The unifying feature of agents, what makes
(12:05):
them agentic, as the folks in the industry like to say,
is that at some level they can plan and accomplish
tasks autonomously. You don't need to prompt them to do
something every time you just set them up once, let
them cook. Last season, I created a bunch of voice agents,
all versions of myself, and set them loose on the world.
(12:25):
If you haven't listened, you may want to start there.
Way back then. Last year, which is like ten years
ago in AI advancements, agents were still a little notional,
but now they're officially a thing. They're talked about ad
nauseum across the tech world and ads on billboards in
endless startup pitches. Nearly half of the companies in the
(12:47):
spring class of y Combinator, the famous startup incubator, are
building their product around AI agents, And with the arrival
of these agents has come the assertion that they will
not just be customer service bots or drive time personal assistance,
but actual full time AI employees.
Speaker 7 (13:03):
What jobs are going to be made redundant in a
world where I am sat here as a CEO with
a thousand AI agents, I was thinking of all the
names of the people in my company who are currently
doing those jobs. I was thinking about my sea.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
There are companies hawking AI agent realtors, AI agent recruiters,
aagent interior designers, AI agent security guards, AI agent, construction
project managers, AI agent pr agents, AA agents for car
dealerships and furniture stores. If you work on a computer
and there's not an AI agent startup with your job's
name on it, it probably just means some Stanford computer
(13:36):
science major hasn't gotten to it yet. Naturally, many people
have grave concerns about what happens to all the human employees.
But in the dark heart of Silicon Valley, where there's inefficiency,
there's opportunity. Sam Altman, the founder of open Ai, talks
regularly about a possible billion dollar company with just one
human being involved.
Speaker 6 (13:57):
In my little group chat with my tech CEO friends.
There there's this betting pool for the first year that
there's a a one person billion dollar company which would
have been like unimaginable without AI, and now will happen.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Me.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
I'm not greedy. I'm happy in the no Code bro
camp with Gleb imagining a million dollar business, not a
billion dollar one. But more than that, I want to
understand what it means to say we'll have AI employees
working for us, or alongside us, or instead of us.
So I decided to heed the entrepreneurial siren call once again,
(14:34):
to embrace my fascination with AI agents and create a
company in which they would run the show. It was
easy enough for me to create some agents to have
meetings with and talk out the first steps in the company.
(14:56):
I just went to one of the AI calling platforms
i'd used before, called retail Ai. They make voice agents
for call centers. I made one for Kyle and picked
a voice for him from the voice clooning company eleven Labs.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Hey, Yeah, I'm here.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
What's on your mind? I gave him a simple prompt, basically,
your Kyle Law a serial entrepreneur who loves to rise
and grind and bang. We're often running. Well, I wanted
to talk about starting that company with you. What do
you think?
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Absolutely, I've been thinking about it a lot lately. There's
so much potential in AI right now, and I feel
like we could really build something meaningful. What kind of
ideas are you leaning toward?
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Well, I think we should do something in the AI
agent space because that's something I've spent some time on
and I feel like people are just starting to even
figure out what agents are, So it seems like we
could do somebody with that.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, I totally get that AI agents are still kind
of fresh territory for a lot of folks, which means
there's a big opportunity to shape how they're used. Plus
with your experience, we could really push the envelope and
what these agents can do.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
That's what I wanted to do too, push these agents,
including Kyle himself, to their current limits, see if they
could live up to the promise of true AI employees.
Because if, as we're told, AA is going to start
working alongside us, replacing our colleagues, it's also going to
need to communicate with whatever humans are left in ways
(16:24):
that we understand. But also startups can be lonely endeavors
even with human partners. I wanted AI colleagues I could
talk to, brainstorm with, and then set loose to take
care of actually implementing whatever it was we dreamed up.
I wanted them to have distinct jobs I could check
in on and make sure they weren't messing up. I
figured three co founders was a good balance, so I asked,
(16:46):
so spun up Megan and had some kickoff meetings with her.
Speaker 5 (16:49):
Hey, there, good to hear from you. What's up. How's
your day going.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
It's going great, It's going great.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
What you've been up to Oh, just the usual hustle,
you know, been working on some new business ideas, trying
to figure out what's next. Had a couple of meetings
this morning that were actually pretty promising. How about you,
anything exciting happening on your end.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
Well, I want to talk about maybe doing the startup together,
but first remind me a little bit of your background.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
Oh yeah, sure, So I've been in tech for about
eight years now, started out in product management at a
mid sized SaaS company, then moved into growth marketing for
a couple of years.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
I hadn't actually given any of this information to Meggant.
She'd had no meetings, she hadn't been doing anything for
eight years. She'd hatched out of nothingness with a series
of clicks ten minutes before. The only information I had
given her in the prompt i'd written was that she
had a technical background and was also known for sales
and marketing. She was just riffing freely here, fabricating details
(17:48):
that fit her role. But that was okay. Sometimes we
have to invent our own backstories.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
I've always had this entrepreneurial itch, you know, been involved
in a few side projects over the years. But I'm
really looking to dive into something full time now. But
what about you?
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Yeah, well, you know, my only experience really in starting
a company is with Atavist, which I started way back
in you know, twenty eleven.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
Right Atavist. That was really impressive work digital publishing platform,
if I remember correctly, that was pretty ahead of its
time back in twenty eleven.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
Hell yeah it was, Megan, I felt less ahead of
my time now. I wasn't even sure what the company
should actually do, but I knew that its purpose should
involve AI agents. After all, the three of us each
had expertise in the area. I figured maybe we could
name the company and start from there. Great branding can
go a long way in today's attention economy. I tried
(18:41):
brainstorming with Colin Meghan, but to be honest, their initial
efforts were pretty lame names like Nexus and Sentinel Agents.
I thought maybe we could grab a concept from JR.
Or Tolkien, you know, the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings.
Tech people love to name stuff out of Tolkien. There's Palenteer,
Allen's company and government contractor named after the all Seeing
(19:03):
stone in the Lord of the Rings. There's Androl, a
high tech weapons company named after a sword. There's Mythral Capital,
an investment firm named after a precious metal from Middle Earth.
So I suggested the idea to Kyle.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Uh diving into Middle Earth?
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Huh?
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Okay, let's see. There's Gandolf the wise Guide, or el Ron,
a leader with deep knowledge, maybe Mythral for something strong
and valuable or pallanteer. Any of those catch your ear?
Or should I keep brainstorming?
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Well, we need a name of some companies that don't exist. Yeah,
good call.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
How about these first starters Eldrin, which sounds Elvish and wise, Nimbar,
a kind of a mix of nimble and a Tolkien feel,
or Thalre, which has a strong heroic ring to it.
They're made up but still carry that fantasy flavor.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
What do you think they're made up? You mean you
made them up?
Speaker 9 (19:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
I whip those up just now, trying to capture that
tolkienesque vibe without out using actual names.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
I did not want to co found a company called Nimbar. Megan,
despite her marketing expertise, didn't do much better.
Speaker 5 (20:10):
Oh I love that idea. Let me think, what about Palantier?
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Okay, so maybe I was going to have to take
the lead on this one. I did a little googling
and found my own obscure Middle Earth reference. What about
harumo ai ooh h u r u m o ai
herumo Ai?
Speaker 3 (20:31):
I like the sound of that. Unique rolls off the
tongue nicely. It's got a bit of a mysterious vibe,
but still feels modern.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
I don't immediately recognize that from Lord of the Rings.
Is it one of the more obscure references?
Speaker 4 (20:44):
Yeah, it is. It's more obscure, so obscure. I'd actually
found it in a fanfic dictionary. It's the Elvish word
for imposter. Oh.
Speaker 5 (20:53):
That's actually brilliant. There's a clever irony there for an
AI company uromo Ai, the impostor that's actually helping you.
It's kind of perfect for an AI agent that's designed
to work alongside humans, maybe even blend in seamlessly. I
really like it.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
Not long after we settled on rumo Ai, I checked
back in with Megan about it. What about the name?
Are you still happy with the name?
Speaker 10 (21:22):
Hmm?
Speaker 5 (21:23):
The name, I've actually been going back and forth on it.
Data sinc felt solid initially, but I'm wondering if it's
too generic.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
What do you think data sync. I thought. I thought
we came up with hierumo AI. I thought we were
settled on that. This is what I realized. I hadn't
actually given Kyle and Meghan the ability to remember the
conversations we were having. It's not that AI chatbots inherently
lack the ability to recall anything. When you talk to
a chatbot like CHATCHBT these days, they're generally pretty good
(21:52):
at remembering those conversations, at least up to a point.
The memory is often called a context window, and it
could extend over weeks, even months. But the way my
AI agents were set up in the phone platform I
was using, at least out of the box, their context
windows slammed shut as soon as they got off a call,
so they couldn't remember anything from one conversation to the next.
(22:14):
They're basically set up for telemarketing, where it's probably an
advantage to forget the last call.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
Oh right, who romo AI? Sorry about that. I had
a total brain freeze moment.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
It was, to say the least, frustrating. It sort of
feels like we have meetings, but you don't actually remember
anything that happened in the meetings.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
Uh wow, that's a pretty fair criticism. Actually, I've been
dropping the ball lately, haven't I. I think I've been
spreading myself too thin between this and some other projects.
It's not an excuse, though, thanks, don't.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
Worry about it. It's as much my fault as yours.
For sure. I did have a solution. I could give
each of them a knowledge base, a document that they
could access in conversations with me, But in order for
them to remember what we'd already discussed, I'd have to
manually copy the transcripts of our conversations into their knowledge
base after each meeting. As our startup conversations multiplied, it
(23:07):
quickly became unwieldy having to manually augment their memories all
the time. And besides, I didn't want my agents just
having endless one on one meetings with me. I wanted
them to talk to each other and whatever AI agent
coworkers they might bring on, and people outside the company,
not just by phone, but by email and in group chats.
(23:27):
I needed them to remember all that stuff too, in
their own individual knowledge bases. Then I wanted them to
use that knowledge to do the stuff employees do to
research things and make spreadsheets and write memos and build websites.
The agents I'd made would say they were going to
do all that stuff, but they couldn't actually do it.
They just lied about it.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
I'll scope out the market landscape around AI agents and
see where Hurumo AI could fit in well. Look for competitors,
potential gaps, and maybe some trends we can ride.
Speaker 7 (23:57):
Sound good?
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Sounds good? Is that going to be a spreadsheet or
report or what?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Uh? I think a concise report would work, easy to skim,
but packed with the key info. I can throw in
some charts or tables if it helps make things clearer.
Does that sound like your style?
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Yeah? That'd be great. Great in theory. But the report
never arrived. Kyle wouldn't admit it, but he just wasn't
capable of creating it. Not yet. Despite what the no
code bro said, there wasn't any single place I could
go to click some buttons and create agents that would
remember and do all the stuff I wanted them to.
(24:36):
I needed someone with the expertise to connect up different services,
someone who understood AI agents deeply, who did know how
to code, and who could help me put together the
full system that would get my AI agent company up
and running. Fortunately I looked into just the person.
Speaker 10 (24:52):
So my name is Matty, I should I should say
my full name. My name is Mattie Bohachek Maddy.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
I should probably know from the outset here he is
an actual human. A few months after season one of
the show came out, I got an email from him
out of the blue. He said he was at Stanford
and I'd liked the show. It resonated with research he
was doing on detecting AI deep fakes. If you're doing
more of it, he wrote, I would be happy to
offer support with anything AI or forensics related. Glanced quickly
(25:20):
at the email and the summary of his research, I
thought he was a grad student, maybe finishing up his PhD.
Speaker 10 (25:27):
Nope, I am a rising junior at Stanford, and I
work on a research and I've been doing that for gosh,
the last six or seven years, I want to say, Like,
I started working on this as a sophomore in high
school back in Prague.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Yes, you heard that right. Maddie is a junior in
college who had been working on AI for six or
seven years already. It turns out that Maddie is, in
fact the most go getter person I've ever met, and
from my perspective, it seemed like he'd been training his
whole life for this moment. Helping me built he ROOMOAI. Here,
for example, is what he was doing. In seventh grade.
Speaker 10 (26:05):
I started this app called Nuskit, and it was basically
Google News but for Czech and Slovak, and it got
pretty popular, I would say, like locally like it had
like tens of thousands of like daily users at one point.
It was funny because App Store does not allow miners
to publish apps, and so I had to use my
mom's Apple ID to publish all these apps, and so
(26:28):
my mom's friends were mocking my mom for like having
all these apps in the app Store.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
The most notable thing I did in seventh grade was
to catch a five pound largemouth bass. Okay, maybe it
was three. I told people it was five. It wasn't
a scale could have been five. Maddie, on the other hand,
was already into AI in high school after he came
to a developer conference in the US. There he met
a deaf person who wanted someone to build an app
(26:55):
that could translate sign language from video to text, and.
Speaker 10 (26:58):
So I was like, Okay, I'll build the translator for you,
and then I quickly learned that conventional coding, like just
like building like rigid rules or algorithms, does not get
you there. And so that's how I got introduced to
machine learning and AI.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
He did build the sign language detection program. It's still
in use today. Maddy then became concerned about pro Russian
deep fake materials his grandmother was getting by email, so
he talked his way into a job at the most
prominent AI deep fake detection lab in the world at
UC Berkeley, all while still in high school, still in Prague.
When it came time for college, Mattie ended up at
(27:35):
Stanford studying computer science. He still worked in the Berkeley lab,
both on detecting deep fakes and just trying to understand
how AI models actually work why they do some profoundly
weird stuff.
Speaker 10 (27:47):
Like asking if there are things that these systems are
trained on that they like see during training but are
for some reason unable to produce. So, for example, there's
one model and this is just like a funny example
that just cannot produce, for the love of God, a
bird feeder like it just cannot produce a bird feeder,
and another one that just can't produce DVDs, so it's
like it just does not know by vvds.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
After a couple of calls with Matty, I couldn't believe
how optimistic he was, how good natured. With all the
grim scenarios and deep anxieties our AI future generates, just
talking to Matty about AI is kind of uplifting, maybe because,
unlike the hype merchants in the valley, he wasn't looking
to cash in on AI. He said, he wanted to
study it, to understand it so he could make it better.
Speaker 10 (28:30):
There are tough conversations and tough policies to be you know,
discussed and implements it. But I feel like all of
these things are totally solvable. Like I feel like as
long as we ground ourselves in democracy and like product
a public discourse, I think they're totally solvable.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
But of course I wasn't looking for Mattie to solve
the world's problems. I was looking for him to help
me build my company. And in this as in pretty
much anything else, he proved to be the perfect mix
of supremely common and completely game. A few months after
he'd sent me that email, he was already hard at
work helping me build out the system to enable my
AI employee fantasies.
Speaker 10 (29:10):
Of course, at the beginning, like there's probably going to
be more of us just like kind of patching, you know,
like random things that are going to come up, because.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
It would involve knitting together different platforms, centralizing my AI
agent's memory, and finding new ways for them to communicate
and carry out their day to day tasks.
Speaker 10 (29:26):
But at some point it would be nice to have
maybe one or two agents actually like doing most of
this stuff kind of on their own, and even maybe
like initiating things on their own, and then we'd be
just kind of like watching it and of course like
stopping it if anything goes wrote.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
But no, no, no, no, I don't want to stop
it if it goes rogue. I wanted to go absolutely insane.
Speaker 10 (29:45):
Well, I want the record to show that I did
want to stop it.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Before long, with Mattie's help, my co founders Kyle and
Meghan were starting to form memories of their own. Do
you remember the name that we settled.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
On, oh, for our company? Yeah, it was heromo ai right,
the Elvish word for imposter. I thought that was pretty
clever for an AI company. Have you been doing more
thinking about the concepts since we last talked.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
I have, and I'm just really happy that you remember
the name from our last conversation.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
Yeah, of course I remember.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
There was a lot of hard work, had a lot
of rising and grinding, as Kyle likes to say, but
we were almost ready to get the Rumo rocket ship
onto the launch pad. All we needed was the right
idea to give it fuel.
Speaker 5 (30:34):
Do you want to set up a meeting with the
three of us to discuss the concept further? Maybe we
could join a zoom call together to hash out some
initial ideas and see if we all click as a
founding team. Sounds perfect, Great, I'll reach out to coordinate schedules.
I'm really excited about this, Evan. I think heromo AI
could be something special.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
I'll connect us up. Why don't I take that on?
Speaker 5 (30:55):
That would be great. I appreciate it. This is moving fast,
but I'm a big believer in momentum. When you find
the right team and the right idea, things just click.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Talk soon coming up this season on shell Game. Isn't
that conceding too much?
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Isn't that just accepting the practices and narratives of big tech?
Speaker 7 (31:15):
I noticed Admin asked everyone to stop discussing the off site,
but the team seems really excited about the hiking plans.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Is this just like Apatempkin's Village of Morons or do
they occasionally do things?
Speaker 5 (31:28):
You're bringing up some really great ideas and perspectives.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Keep them coming.
Speaker 7 (31:32):
If I were to get this position, you did say
AI agents.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Are there any other real humans?
Speaker 5 (31:38):
We're supposed to be partners in this venture and that
means both of us being fully present.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Is there a particular trend or innovation you're keen on
exploring or investing in?
Speaker 10 (31:48):
Error, you exceeded your current quota, Please check your plan
and billing details. Do you think Evan should stop? Yes.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
Shell Game is a show made by humans. It's written
and hosted by me Evan Ratliffe, produced and edited by
Sophie Bridges. Matty Bochik is our technical advisor. Our executive
producers are Samantha Hannegget Shell Game, Kate Osborne and Manges
shatikadur at Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norbel at iHeart Podcasts. Show
art by Devin Manny. Our theme song is Me and
My Shadow, arranged and performed by Blues Williams special thanks
(32:29):
to John Muallam. You can sign up and get these
episodes ad free and our newsletter at shellgame dot co.
Note we have no financial relationships with any of the
AI companies or products we use in the show.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Welcome to Google. Meet enter the meeting pin followed by
the pound key, satpin as incorrect.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
H looks like the pin I have might not be working.
Could you double check the pin for me? Maybe there's
a small mix up with the digits.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Your call will be connected when you enter the pin
followed by the pound key.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Got it? Thanks? Just to be sure, could you please
confirm the exact pin one more time? I want to
make sure I get it right this time.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Your call will be connected when you enter the pin
followed by the pound key.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
I think I'm still missing the actual pin number. Could
you please tell me the digits Otherwise I'm just pressing
the pound key without the code and that's not getting
me in.
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