Creepy, Not Nice
We ended last season with “nice, not creepy,” which seemed like a genuine, heartfelt way to leave things. But the world has changed since then, so it seems fitting to kick off this Season 6 (six?!) by making the opposite point.
See, after the conclusion of season 5 (and who thought this whatever it is could have lasted even that long), the u13 (now u14) girls were getting ready to go to their regional tournament. At the same time, our CEO Brent was challenging everyone at Permanent Equity to use AI more aggressively and me in particular.
“What do you do everyday?” he asked me during one of our walk & talks (because you have to get your steps in if you’re also going to be asking and answering pointed questions).
“I mean, if you reduce what I do down to first principles,” I responded, “I read, write, and make decisions.”
“AI can help with all of that,” he said. “So my challenge to you is before you do anything this next week, to ask AI to do it first.”
I took that challenge seriously, and I did it. And it’s changed how I approach my life and work.
Of course, I didn’t start by asking AI what Permanent Equity should invest in. That, I figured, was too high stakes stuff. Instead, I decided I’d ask AI about a lower stakes, but still highly inefficient market with information asymmetry where you can gain a significant advantage with just a little more insight: u13 girls soccer. Yes, at the risk of seeming creepy, I asked it to scout regionals for me.
And damned if it didn’t do a very in-depth job!
While it didn’t favor our team in our opening game, it consumed the opposing team’s Facebook page, X nee Twitter feed, players’ parents’ Instagram accounts, game logs, and more to advise me that the team we were facing had a strong central striker who scored all of their goals and that if our girls could shut her down, we stood a good chance of winning the match. Further, it knew her name, her number, and that she was right-footed by consuming so many photos, posts, and recaps.
I noted that, but was blown away by the fact that it could know all of that, so I took the information with me to the game with a grain of salt and figured I’d watch the other team’s warm-ups closely to decide if what AI was telling me was accurate. And sure enough it seemed to be so. There was one girl during warm-ups – head and shoulders above the others – rifling right-footed shots into the net.
So we coaches implemented a gameplan that neutralized that threat and ended up winning the match 2-0, frustrating the other team in the process. And using AI to gain a leg up in u13 soccer? I’ll admit, that just doesn’t seem creepy, it is creepy.
Now, we weren’t able to leverage our AI scouting edge enough to win the tournament, which while perhaps a positive for the real world, was a downer for the girls. But the broader lesson isn’t about soccer – it’s that AI, used well (creepily?), can generate advantages in all kinds of domains. So I hope you’ve started learning how to do that.
Welcome to Season 6.
– Tim
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