Why we're not super worried about AI Slop

It costs ~$100k to charter a Gulfstream G50 from London to NYC. Meanwhile, it takes a grand total of $0 to use Zoom. Perhaps $18.33 if you’re feeling fancy.

So why do dozens of executives take the jet every day?

Most of the arguments against AI slop are focussed on the face value of content / communication. The video generated by Sora is obviously shallow, or the ChatGPT generated Linkedin post is obviously generic. Fair enough.

But what we often underestimate are the subtle status signals that are encoded in every form of human communication.

Let’s take social media as an example: You see a picture of your friend in Patagonia, with Mount Fitz Roy in the backdrop.

Taken at face value, you see a person you’re interested in (i.e. friend) in front of some scenery you find beautiful (i.e. Mount Fitz Roy). Great.

But here are just a few of the things the picture signals:

• Said friend has the financial means and professional freedom to make the trip to Patagonia

• Said friend has the desire to do something in nature, signals resilience

• Said friend went to the most mainstream place in Patagonia - signals lack of alternative thought

• Said friend chose to showcase the most mainstream place in Patagonia - signals lack of social awareness aka the art of being subtle / cool

You get the point. Human communication is utilitarian of course, but it is encoded with WAY more than the literal content of the message.

Okay, so where does AI Slop fit into this equation? As certain forms of communication become cheaper, easier, and more democratized, we will move towards means of communication that are uniquely challenging / higher effort.

When sliced bread becomes a commodity, hand-made sourdough from your local bakery takes on renewed value.

We’re seeing something similar with AI, but we (especially all of us in tech!) forget that we’re still SO early, and large swathes of humanity still haven’t oriented themselves around thes new forms of content / communication.

So when someone posts AI-generated content today, it signals two slightly different things:

• For a person in tech - this person does not want to put any effort into their content and therefore is not worth taking seriously

• For a person outside tech - this person is on top of the latest AI tools / workflows, and therefore we should trust them to guide us with our trad biz (also known as cha-ching! in common parlance)

We’re super excited to see what new forms of signalling emerge as our old forms of communication become easier.

Obviously we’ve been thinking about this in the context of founder/mode. Are we unintentionally building an AI Slop machine?

I don’t think so (feel free to call bs on this of course)

Andrea and I believe AI is a great tool to capture, syntesize, and catalog thoughts as ideas/insights. It is also a great tool to convert those ideas into content that is a delight to read.

But AI does not replace the source of those ideas - founders. As the models get better, we want to make sure we’re adding a layer of value on top of them, and making sure your content signals the right things. We want to continue building towards this moving target.

Alright, back to building.

Yash & Andrea