💬 Issue #3: Remotely Alone

Robots in court, getting fired via notification bell, and a fancy trash cooker.

27 Jan

Welcome to F-R-I-D-A-Y. Alright, that was gratuitous. Let's get started:

Today's dishes:

  • A robot (nearly) went to jail.

  • Ding ding. Wait, what, I'm fired?

  • Nest co-founder has a pricey trash cylinder for you.

ROBOT LAWYER ALMOST GOES TO COURT, NEARLY GOES TO JAIL

On February 22nd we were just about to see the first AI-powered legal defense in action in a California courtroom but a judge said, "no way. And also maybe you're going to jail for trying."

Joshua Browder, CEO of DoNotPay and kind of an edgelord known for publicity stunts, was planning to unveil his combination of ChatGPT and Airpods to send a "regular person" in as a lawyer in traffic court to represent plaintiffs for less money.

The various state bar associations summarily had a meltdown, taking exception to the part where an unqualified person was equipped with an untested, bleeding-edge Large Language Model (LLM) and told to go play lawyer. LLMs like ChatGPT are notoriously bad at delivering fact-based results in fields like law, medicine, and engineering. Furthermore, most LLMs are trained on limited datasets without the breadth of experience required to be, you know, a real lawyer.

Access to affordable legal services is a serious gap in the market that someone needs to fill somehow -- but it looks like this ain't it. 🤖💼🙅‍♀️

THE LONELY AGONY OF REMOTE LAYOFFS

As we've previously reported over 67,000 tech and startup workers have been laid off in 2023 alone -- and we're not even through January.

The New York Times reports that many workers first found out they were laid off through a notification on their laptop or by finding their access to company systems cut off unceremoniously. The grim reality is a large number of these workers are working from home in remote settings, oftentimes solo in life too.

One study found that getting unexpectedly laid off can be more psychologically stressful than even a divorce.

This underlines the reality that remote work isn't automatically great. Working remotely without a strong, deliberate company culture can create a high degree of isolation and loneliness for workers. The incidental camaraderie of the in-person workplace and watercooler was often the glue that bound coworkers together, offered junior members a place in discussions, and allowed teams to share the burden of grief during stressful situations like mass layoffs.

The best remote company cultures acknowledge this isolation and work to combat it, like, you know, calling someone on the phone when you let them go.

NEST CO-FOUNDER'S NEXT INNOVATION: SEXY ~$400/YEAR TRASH COOKER

dall-e prompt: futuristic compost bin inside a very expensive home kitchen that mails your garbage to chickens, vaporwave, digital rendering

Let me level with you: After the first two issues of EiT, I said to myself, "Andy, let's find the good in people for EiT #3. Positivity. Togetherness.

Then a headline like, "Nest’s cofounder just designed the world’s fanciest bin for food scraps" drops and I'm back in the grumpy saddle all over again.

For just short of $400 a year former Nest guy will send you a smart garbage can that turns your food waste into dried food-waste-jerky-dust so you can mail it to chickens.

No really, go read that again. You put your compost dust into a prepaid box and mail it to a place where they'll turn it into chicken feed. (Note: The waste-to-feed pipeline isn't running yet and their website is couched in plenty of "coming soon" language on the chicken part.)

The chickens after someone throws away the wrong mushrooms.

This just has to be one of those concepts left over from the "money is free and plentiful so try every wild idea" era of last year. Only near-zero interest rates can cook up a concept like cooking your trash and then mailing it to chickens.

(Yeah, I know there's a step in there of turning the compost into pellets and all that, but let me have my dream of a bunch of chickens waiting for the Food Mail.)

WEB SNACKS

TWEET OF THE WEEK

Get that bread(board)

That's it and that's all.

See ya in a week,

— 💬 The EiT Crew at Status Hero