It’s been said that a crush is an absence of information.
I am susceptible to crushes, bicycles, cookbooks, ideas, new tech that will somehow be better than the older tech.
AI is everywhere. It promises to make our lives better. In some ways it has. I heard about Granola.ai while listening to Hard Fork—a podcast crush. It’s a tool for notetaking during meetings. It works across all meeting platforms, Zoom, Meet, even the old-fashioned, live, in-person meetings. Tell folks you’re using your trusty note-taker, turn it on, and then at the meeting’s end, you’re rewarded with a crisp bullet pointed summary of what was discussed and next steps.
There are many tools that perform this notetaking and summary work but Granola does and did it better—just the right level of detail and surprisingly accurate. A bonus: you can chat with your notes. What did we decide about the master plan roll out three weeks ago? Ask Granola. Search, the promise of an artifact being a few words away has always been riddled with a weakness: what the “I then” called the document or meeting is no longer accessible to “I now.” Until Granola.
I am a compulsive notetaker—and I still jot things down—either by hand or in the Granola editor—but I am more relaxed in meetings knowing that my crush has got this. Little did I know my crush changed its focused agenda. What I thought was my helper? Oh, it’s now appointed itself my boss, or ahem, the seemingly non-threatening “Coach.”
Enter Coach Matt, who is definitely not Ted Lasso.
Having led product teams at Consumer Reports, I can relate to the temptation to add features. I read the Granola.ai product announcement. How did my crush get better? A raft of new features: it wants to be more than my trusty notetaker. It can assume other roles—an assistant to do a first draft, a knowledge archive, and wait, what’s this? A button/prompt that taunts me: “Coach Me Matt.” Not a real person mind you, just a new “recipe” and a reminder that the AI that’s been lurking and listening in all of my meetings.
In life, in addition to being an unapologetic incrementalist, I also believe in tasting and trying new things. Just a taste. Maybe I’ll like it. I’ll learn something, about the thing and myself. I’ll try it. Once, to know—to decide. So sure, Matt, Coach me.
This coach? Not what I expected, wanted or need.
Matt doesn’t quite want to put me on a performance improvement plan but he thinks that I’m spending too much time in my “Zone of Competence” and not enough time in my “Zone of Awesome.” On Matt’s long list: I’m doing too much “firefighting disguised as strategic work.” I need to do an energy audit and clear my calendar for three days to work on what really matters. Clearly, Matt thinks my priorities are not in order.
I find this coaching session disconcerting. I feel a pit in my stomach and uneasy. Like some AI experiments I’ve conducted, I find myself suffering from something I’ve taken to calling AI whiplash. Like I’ve stopped short. I’m shaken. I know this feeling all too well—it’s the “I’m in trouble/I didn’t do my homework” script honed in grade and high school. The last time I had feelings this intense was when I asked NotebookLM to look at a collection of digital journal entries and then listened to a podcast summary. People, if you ever want to be humbled this is a good recipe. It’s a bit like being at your own funeral except that your anxious inner voice is providing the eulogy. Skip it and ask a friend about how they experience you instead.
So here’s what I find so creepy about this seemingly innocuous flip and product “upgrade.” A notetaking tool with one purpose,shape shifted into a surveillance tool without my knowledge or consent. I know, I didn’t have to use this feature, but I thought it was “just notes.” Well, little did I know that “Matt” or Granola were making notes on my performance.
And then my mind starts roaming—what happens when these tools are everywhere? Reading every text message, every post, every email. I can’t help it, but here it comes:
“Every breath you take, every move you make, I’ll be watching you.” – The Police.
That song, it’s about a stalker.
What’s even more worrisome? I am not sure we’ll be able to opt out of this surveillance. We’ve all been co-opted into the great digital panopticon. Am I making it up? Well, Larry Ellison, Chairman of Oracle, a massive tech business with large government contracts opined: citizens will be on their best behavior’ amid nonstop recording. I can’t say this makes me feel good about Oracle’s potential investment in TikTok.
I do 99% of my journaling in a spiral bound notebook with a pen—which these days seems like it may be the only way to escape the prying eyes and ears of the technology that surrounds and envelops us.
The irony? I did get critical feedback on this post from Claude.ai The difference? I asked for it—which means personal agency. I asked Claude.ai to catch my errors and offer suggestions. I constrained the project input and the parameters—for now. I hope Anthropic keeps this sensibility as Claude’s capabilities grow.
Am I giving too much away?
My crush, well, as Aimee Mann, “it’s not what, you thought when you first began it. And it’s not going to stop until you wise up.”
What do you think? Have you had a moment when using an AI tool turned into something darker? Share it in the comments!
