AI Agents for Companies

“AI changes everything,” say the people selling AI.

But many reasonable people are asking what specifically can be improved in our day-to-day work?

When I tell ChatGPT to write something, it is usually wordy, rambling, and obviously written by AI.

Is AI basically just hype?

I believe these tools will improve almost all knowledge work...and that change will happen through the work of creative developers solving interesting problems.

Today, Simple Machine is a collection of free tools to help people make good use of AI at work. I am creating these utilities as I refine Simple Machine’s internal AI agent system, which will eventually be available for use by companies.

For example...a machine could be something like “when a podcast feed gets updated, pull the audio, transcribe the text, summarize it, make show notes, build images for social media, and email a spreadsheet of tweet ideas.”

But that is going to take some time.

For now, a good place to start is with find similar websites, a tool which uses GPT to help find good examples of other websites for inspiration on copy, design, architecture, etc.

You are invited to follow along as more tools are released...

A few years ago I set a personal goal for myself – make a dollar from a product I sell on the internet.

It's been a lot harder than I expected.

I started off by making Fountain Cards, a product which could handwrite cards for businesses so they didn't need to actually handwrite the card themselves. After six months and several thousand dollars, I realized that I didn't want to help other people in that way. After all, the product was just a fancy, expensive way to make spam look less like spam. I put it in the bin.

Then I worked on a product called Money Habits which was supposed to help people budget. My personality has a strong "change the world" bent and I had some strong opinions about how to manage money. After six months and several thousand dollars, I realized that it is awkward to ask friends for their bank password. I put it on the backburner.

Now, my goal is the same but my approach is changing.

Instead of six months, I'm embracing both a much longer and much shorter time frame. I'm committing to work on Simple Machine exclusively in my freelance time for the next year. 2024 will be, Lord willing, devoted to building this. But also, I'm committing to produce real, working, practical products in days, not months.

I've spent thousands of hours agonizing over applications which will never, ever be used by another person, a fact which is both irritating and motivating.

It's time to be more focused and more nimble – I need to spend less time hunting for the perfect domain and more time making things and inviting other people to try them out.

If you have thoughts on how I can help you make more money, I would love to talk to you.

Lastly, I would be honored if you would share this site with someone who you think may enjoy it.

Thanks,
Stephen