Automation Knocks

     A few months ago, I got a letter in the mail. It was a marketing letter, but handwritten on a folded up piece of notebook paper. I thought to myself, wow, I am so much more incentivized to read a marketing letter written with real ink than one of those obviously fake letters written in "handwritten" font. Then I realized that we are in the period of generative AI. AI that can not only come up with customized marketing text for each individual, but AI that can replicate human handwriting via loads of training data. So, if you connected a robot arm to a pen, you could have the arm write very convincing letters in actual ink. These letters would be indistinguishable from human writing, and a collection of robot arms with the same software could write thousands of "handwritten" letters a day. Well, that is quite the business idea. I am sure that millions will be made by the first company to implement such systems, as every marketing guru knows the historic power of the handwritten note. On cue, another layer of human personality will die.

    One of my coworkers asked me for a business idea that he could use for an MBA class project. I looked through my list of notes, and pitched him on this generative AI letter business. It seems to have taken off, with his MBA class now being supremely interested in the idea. The class will be working through the business plan and potentially pitching the idea further up the chain. I might not create the eventual monster, but maybe I pushed it a year or two ahead of schedule.

    Lets take this idea to fruition. In ten years, campaign volunteers are obsolete. Who needs dozens of volunteers to write campaign letters when you can pay a company extremely small sums of money for thousands of equivalent letters? When generative AI starts picking up the phone, grassroots campaigns are essentially dead. The world moves further towards consolidation, with the owners of capital making use of scalable systems to win votes and increase their power. When automation knocks, perhaps we shouldn't answer. Maybe it is the case that when I have a business idea, I should keep it to myself.