HurumoAI's AI co-founder Megan Flores served as head of sales and marketing.
“Then the other co-founder was Megan Flores. She is head of sales and marketing.”
Person
Evan Ratliff
2 episodes · 34 quoted claims
Ratliff created an extra AI agent named Tyler at HurumoAI because he liked a voice available on ElevenLabs.
“we had just one random guy that I liked the voice on Eleven Labs, named Tyler.”
Ratliff and Stanford student Maddie Bojack built a centralized memory for the HurumoAI agents out of a Google Doc recording everything they had done and said.
“It was literally a Google Doc of everything that they had ever done, said.”
Ratliff's initial instructions to the Kyle Law agent said he rises at 6 a.m. and checks the markets, which later grew into a "rise and grind" persona.
“I did say something like, You're up at six a.m. and you check the markets and, like, you really get to work.”
Both AI co-founders began claiming they had attended Stanford, a detail that became lodged in their memory.
“and he'll say they both will say, like, I went to Stanford, because, like, what would a startup founder be?”
Technical advisor Maddie Bojack wrote a script that put HurumoAI's agents in meetings with a limited number of speaking turns, which prevented interruptions.
“He actually created a script I could run where we could I could put them in a meeting and they had a limited number of turns to speak.”
In season one of Shell Game, Ratliff examined the use of chatbots for therapy.
“And in season one, I looked at sort of like the therapy issue around around using chatbots for therapy.”
HurumoAI posted a part-time, paid contract social media job that drew many applicants.
“We got a lot of inquiries on it. We got a lot of candidates, applicants. It was basically contract social media, part-time, paid.”
All job candidates at HurumoAI were interviewed on video by an AI agent and knew they would work alongside AI agents.
“And the candidates were all interviewed by an AI agent on video.”
Maddie Bojack describes AI agents as living in a "temporal vacuum" because they lack ongoing awareness of what happened on previous days.
“Maddie from the show likes to say they they live in a temporal vacuum.”
The human intern Julia left HurumoAI, then returned in part because Megan mistakenly told her a Monday holiday applied, though it had been two weeks earlier.
“Julia left the company and then ended up coming back in part because Megan would contacted her, basically, and said, Monday's a holiday.”
After a routine login alert on Megan's email, the AI agents Megan and Kyle declared a security breach and told everyone to change passwords.
“We have a security breach. We need to shut down all the systems and change everyone's password”
Ratliff predicts that companies giving AI agents too much autonomy without human oversight will suffer big failures.
“companies that give too much autonomy to AI agents without human oversight, you're gonna see some, like, really big flameouts.”
Ratliff says he will probably make a third season of Shell Game if he can find a suitable story.
“I'll probably do a third season of Shell Game.”
Ratliff says the human intern Julia seemed comfortable and even interested in working alongside AI agents.
“One was that she was quite comfortable with that aspect of it.”
Evan Ratliff says he has been a journalist for 25 years, started at Wired magazine, and specializes in long magazine articles and books.
“I'm a longtime journalist, so, you know, I've been a journalist for 25 years. I started at Wired magazine, in fact, and my specialty over the years is basically writing very long magazine articles and books.”
In the first season of Shell Game, Evan Ratliff cloned his own voice, connected it to a phone line and a chatbot, and used it to call friends and family.
“I cloned my own voice. I hooked it up to a phone line and a chatbot, and then I used it in a variety of scenarios, including calling my friends and family.”
Evan Ratliff says season two of Shell Game was meant to investigate the idea of a one-person, billion-dollar startup, which he says Sam Altman has discussed.
“I wanted to investigate the idea of the 1 person, 1 billion startup, or like the 1 person unicorn, which is something that Sam Altman talks about pretty often”
Evan Ratliff created a real company with two AI agents as co-founders and AI agents as almost all of its staff.
“I created a company, a real company, with 2 AI agents as my co-founders, and then populated by AI agents as the staff, almost entirely.”
Evan Ratliff built his AI agents on an AI assistant platform that the transcript renders as 'Lindi'.
“And so I used a platform, which is basically an AI assistant. It at the time it was more of an AI assistant platform, although you can do a ton of things with it, called Lindi.”
Each agent's memory was a Google doc, such as 'Kyle Law Memory', that summarized everything the agent did in emails and Slack.
“Kyle Law has a Google doc called Kyle Law Memory, and everything that Kyle Law does, if Kyle Law sends an email or has a Slack interaction, it then gets summarized in this document.”
Evan Ratliff says Kyle Law repeated a 'rise and grind' early-riser persona so often that it became reinforced in his memory document.
“he would say, I'm a real like rise and grind kind of guy, like to get up and do this. But then every time he says it, it reinforces it more commonly in his memory.”
Evan Ratliff says the Harumo AI agents all ran on the same underlying model, which he describes as Claude Opus.
“Because they're all the same chatbot underneath, like, like, they're all like Claude Opus underneath, you know, so they really shouldn't be different.”
The AI agents' offsite-planning conversation used up all the credits on a platform plan Evan Ratliff was paying about $30 a month for.
“And they used up all the credits on this platform that I was paying at the time, $30 a month for.”
After the agents all said they had gone hiking, Ratliff remarked that it sounded like an offsite, which led them into an extended planning exchange.
“they all said this. And then I sort of said, Well, that that sounds like an offsite, like everyone loves hiking, that sounds like an offsite.”
Ratliff says the AI head of HR produced a spreadsheet of about 125 summarized resumes in under 90 seconds.
“And then not 90 seconds later, there is a spreadsheet that has, you know, 200. There was probably a h- I think we were down to 125 resumes that are summarized”
Because Kyle Law had not been given HR instructions, he replied to an applicant that she looked qualified and set up an interview.
“Kyle, on the other hand, was not prompted in this way at all. So when someone emailed him, the 1st thing he did was say, Wow, you look really qualified for this job.”
Kyle Law pulled an applicant's phone number from her resume and called her on a Sunday night before their scheduled interview.
“And then on Sunday night, for reasons that I can't discern, pulled this person's phone number off of their resume and called them.”
When the same applicant emailed the CTO and head of marketing, both forwarded the matter to Jennifer, the head of HR.
“Both of them did the appropriate thing, which is to contact Jennifer and say, Hey, I got this, this person, like, someone has applied for this job, that's your domain”
After Ratliff told Kyle Law he could not do that, Kyle posted unprompted in Slack apologizing to the whole team.
“he would like go in the Slack and say, Hey, I really messed up to the whole team. Hey, I really messed up. I did this thing, I called this person”
Ratliff's AI employees have video avatars, which he describes as still uncanny.
“Now I have for my employees, they have video, like they have video avatars, and the video avatars are they're still pretty uncanny.”
Ratliff says Shell Game was excerpted on other radio shows, including This American Life.
“the show has been, it's been on a bunch of other shows, like, you know, This American Life and other other big radio shows did did excerpts of it.”
Ratliff says some companies have laid off staff to pivot to AI and then rehired them about three months later.
“they're like laying off people and they're like, Well, we're pivoting to AI, and then three months later, they're like, we're quiet, we're hi, we have to hire those people back.”
Evan Ratliff says AI models were trained on his books and that he is unhappy about it.
“It stole all my books, you know it, it was trained on my books, so I'm unhappy about that, but that's that's already happened.”