AI Revisited - part 2 – REWORK

Our approach is always to be as straightforward as possible, as non nonsense as possible. So like slathering AI on everything, everywhere, all the time is not going to be our approach. >> Welcome to Rework, a podcast by 37 Signals about the better way to work and run your business. I'm your host, Kimberly Rhodess, joined this week by Jason Frerieded, CEO of 37 Signals. Now, we talked a couple weeks with David about AI and this new energy around it, specifically how our programmers are using it internally. This week, I thought we would talk with Jason about his thoughts on AI and from a product perspective, where our thoughts are. So, Jason, before we talk about our products, let's maybe talk about just AI in general. Are you using this on a day-to-day basis? And what what kind of use are you getting out of it so far? >> Yeah, I you know, I use it for all sorts of different things. um on the personal side, plenty of stuff. Business side, what I've been using it most for lately is um actually as sort of an editor. >> Uh so I do a lot of writing. So I'm currently writing, for example, a new basecamp.com home screen homepage. >> And um I wrote this this piece is sort of a letter form, which is kind of how I approach these things. And um I wanted to make sure that I was speaking really plainly and clearly. and I and I thought I was, but I also wanted to really match it up with a lot of the language that our customers use very specifically. So, um, we have this page on our site, basecamp.com/cuss, which has about I think it's close to a thousand, uh, customer testimonials. >> Wow. >> And, um, I asked I was use I use both Claude and Op and Chad GPT. kind of use them almost in competition with each other to kind of hone in on something because they each have their own style and I don't like their house styles necessarily, but they can kind of somehow help me get somewhere that I'm comfortable with in a in a way that I like. Um, so what I did was I pointed them both at the customer testimonial page and just said like internalize the language our customers are using, how they describe things, what they call things. Because for me, I might call a feature to-dos, and most people might call it tasks. Now, I know it is to-dos. The tool in Base Camp's called to-dos, but maybe people are calling it tasks, and maybe we should call it tasks, but I want to make sure that what I wrote will land with more people and just land in their own mental model of what they're thinking about and how they're thinking about the product. So, I asked it to internalize all the language and then read my letter and then make some suggestions for ways to tweak the language. Not to tweak the the letter or the tone, but make sure that I'm more aligned with how our real world customers speak about these things and call these things and name these things. So, for example, I was using things like um stay on top of things. Um make sure you know what's going on. And and I like those phrases, but our customers just say like organized. Like they they just say like I like that I'm organized. Basec camp keeps me organized. I'm so much more organized. And so I don't always take the suggestions from AI, but I think it's a really good way to gut check and go this phrase, this word, is this lined up with what people are thinking in their head. >> Yeah. >> So I'm not asking it to write the thing. I don't like that. But I am asking it to see things that I can't see and hold a lot of context in its head that I can't hold and go, you know what, these four words would probably land better if they were these four words. And maybe I'll use all four, maybe I'll use three, whatever it is. Um, I also tend to sometimes write in a way where I have like one sentence too much in a paragraph. Just like one too many sentences. And so I'll often say like turn this into three instead of four, but don't just concatenate them, you know, like really what what needs to go here. And so that's the kind of stuff I've been using it for primarily. That said, I also have been um digging into we're doing base camp 5 right now. So, I've been digging into some feature some features in the product and getting in there and having it tweak some things for me and change some things for me and quickly prototype some things for me. So, I can see if this idea I have in my head is even worth pursuing. Um, and uh it can throw some things together pretty quickly that are really really handy that I could have done but it would take a long time and I don't want to sink that kind of time in to find out if something's worth doing in the first place. >> Okay. When you say prototype something, what what do you what do you mean? Like are you having it build something for you like that you can physically see? >> Yeah. So, I'll give you an example. Um, we now have this feature in the product, but in Base Camp 5, there's a there's a sidebar with your pings in it. Currently, or in Base Camp 4, there's a menu where you pull it down. You can see pings are like direct messages. So, you can pull the menu down and see. Now, we have it in the sidebar. If you want to open the sidebar, you can chat with people and not leave lose your place. What we do is we have these currently we have little heads that show up, little avatars that show up when someone pings you and if you don't have the bar open, their head shows up with a little orange dot saying, "Hey, there's something new from Kimberly or something like that." That's what that suggests. And if you hit P on your keyboard, it opens it up and you can start chatting. But I found myself um and that's great, by the way. It's great, but once I've clicked your your avatar and I chat with you and I close the sidebar, like your face is gone. And so if I want to get back to you, it's like an extra step or two to get back to that chat. And I found that myself I found like I'm often talking to the same handful of people over the course of five hours or something like that. So it'd be nice to have like this menu build up of people I've talked to recently. We didn't have this in the product though. We just had the new pings and I'd asked someone to build this but they hadn't gotten around to it yet because they were busy with something else. So I just built it. I mean I didn't do the building really. Um, Claude did the building, but I asked it to like quickly prototype this idea. So, heads would stick around after I chat with somebody. Now, in the real product, I think we have like a six-hour time frame in which a head sticks around. If you don't talk to that person again, it clears out. That way, you're not like having the sidebar full of people you're not talking to. But, it's sort of an kind of an active calling of people. And I was able to quickly make this work for me. It probably wasn't like robust enough to like ship in the product, but like it it I got it together in a way where it was working. >> Yeah. So you could see it. >> Yeah. I could mock it up myself, but that's just looking at two states. I want to actually use it that way and see it work. And and so like that's something that I would have had to ask someone else to do and I was able to do that myself. So I'm doing more of that. Um, and that's been really really incredibly handy and like uh a breakthrough revelation kind of thing like wow and and for me it's it's not so much like um I can do things I couldn't do before because there's certain things I could do before that I just chose not to do. Um so it's mostly like this is a huge speed up of time and I don't need to bother somebody else. And I've recognized how important this is because we've written this up in the past like uh I think it's called like the owner's word weighs a ton or something like that was this old post I wrote up about how when you own the place like I do and David does and if we ask someone to do something there's just more weight attached to that request regardless of whether or not like we're like don't worry about it don't worry about it somehow there's still more weight attached to that so people tend to sort of drop what they're doing to help. Yeah, of course. >> I really don't want that most of the time, but it just comes with the territory. So, it's nice to not have to ask anybody and then not pull people off of things that even if I said don't worry about it, somehow they'd maybe get to it just because they felt obligated in some way that I don't want to put on them, but they still do. Um, and so I just find that I'm able to bother people less and just get some stuff in my head quicker and decide if it's even worth pursuing or not. Okay, here's uh unique I don't know unique to our use case situation that I came across with >> chat GPT specifically recently we were doing a live base camp let me show you how this works but there was data that we didn't necessarily want to show because Chase was actually doing this and so he did like mockups of actual documents he's like make me a PDF with this fake customer data fake email addresses fake phone numbers so that we could show like this this is how it actually looks, but it's not our account where you're seeing these private things. And something as simple as that is like, okay, that just saved me from making it up and it did it in seconds. >> I did the same thing recently. I should have mentioned this example, too. I'm glad you brought that up. Um, >> so I'm running base camp locally, you know, as we're developing it. So, I have my own local database and I can screw around with it without messing up the real thing, right? And so one of the things I'll often do is I was working on um the UI on campfire, our chat tool in Base Camp. I was working on the UI. I was curious like there's a lot of stuff in there. I'd like to just get rid of it and move some stuff around and whatever. But the sample data we typically have our seed data which is like like our our default account that we use when we run things locally. >> Sure. Like our demo type account. >> Yeah. It it didn't have like a lot of chat history in it. And so I wanted to see a lot of different scenarios with file attachments and different people having conversations longer and shorter over many days and and all sorts of different things going on, right? And we didn't just didn't have that in the standard seed data in in our our basic data. Now historically I would have asked maybe Marissa to put together like a huge and she's done this and I think you worked with her on this too, right? this like incredible sample project stuff >> which we have in the production version but in the local version we didn't have this and there was a scenario I just wanted to sort of paint the scenario but to make it happen was very complicated because it's you have to like log in as multiple people to chat with fake multiple people it's been through it you probably know >> so so I just I asked Claude I'm like okay um just t in this one campfire in this one project give me like three weeks of conversation ations between five different users, including like file attachments and long conversations and short conversations and emojis and boosts and stuff like just as much stuff as you can that would feel like a real conversation over three weeks about five or six different topics, whatever. Something like that. And I just said that and it populated the database and it's like it's all done. I hit reload and it was pretty good. I mean, very much better than nothing, >> right? not as good as what you and Marissa would have put together, but like I got it in 3 seconds or whatever. It was it was pretty instant. At that point though, I realized like it was very repetitive and like too many one-word responses. I'm like, h this doesn't work. Like let's undo that and then like do it more like a every response should be at least, you know, 12 words and maybe a couple that are really short and whatever, thumbs ups and whatever. Anyway, after like a minute or two of screwing around, I just had a full campfire chat with fake real people. Yeah. >> With fake real conversations that help me simply be able to design some ideas >> and see it in a bunch of different scenarios. And like that alone is so hugely helpful. It's like what Chase was doing. But with chat, it's especially hard because you have to come at it from multiple users, right? right? >> You don't want to just chat with yourself that doesn't look like a real chat. So, the fact that I was able to like spin up fake data like that, fake real data was so incredibly helpful. And then you could also just be like, "Okay, I'm done. Undo it all." And it just like gets rid of it all. So, it's it's a sort of temporary fast worker to do some things just to get a sense and then you can back out. You could also leave it there if you want or just back out and do something else. um hugely helpful for me, especially as a designer wanting to see things in a certain way. It's it's hard to design when you don't have the the the baseline data to design for. >> Yeah. And it sounds like when I was talking to David about this, it sounded like he more recently, not had come around to AI, but as things have evolved more, he's been like, "Okay, now I'm on board in a way that I wasn't several months ago." Are you in that same boat where you're more on board more recently or have you always been pro- AI in your everyday use? >> I would say, and I won't speak for David on this, um I think where he was coming from was a bit of skepticism initially with code quality and the whole thing. >> Yeah, agreed. >> And so then I think he was impressed by the fact that it had evolved because back three, four months ago, it wasn't as good as it is today, right? even just like the end of last year. >> Yeah. So, I don't think I was skeptical >> because I hadn't done a lot of these things that I'm doing now. So, I think I'm I'm more I'm hopped on board, let's just say. I mean, I was using AI personally for all sorts of like just replacing Google stuff, right? You know, mostly. >> And then at work, I was doing it I was using it for some writing stuff. But um now getting into product development um I'm just impressed by how quickly I can do certain things that I would have had to ask someone for before or like really get up to speed to do again. >> Yeah. >> Um so I'm not as I wasn't as skeptical and now I'm sold. I'm just like sold now. >> Um >> and and that's just maybe you know part of it part of it I'm think you know Claude could have done this six months ago too. I just wasn't really like digging into it in that way. But I think I've just I'm I'm I'm riding the wave right now. A lot of people of course are talking about it and showing off what it can do. I'm like, well, I should kind of get in there and figure this stuff out. And um it's been it's been very very helpful. I'm sure there's a million ways. If someone was sitting next to me here who really knew all the things you could do and all the ways you could do it, I'm sure I could learn a lot more. But for now, the things I'm able to do, I'm really appreciative that I can do those things. I'm using it in the ways that I find it to be valuable for me. and um I'm not like searching for use cases like I've I've got the things it's doing for me right now. >> Okay. So, now let's talk a little bit about our products. Of course, we're not going to reveal any spoilers, but tell me a little bit. >> That would be more fun, wouldn't it? >> I mean, it would, but I figured you didn't want to. >> I don't really have any spoilers at the moment. >> Tell me what you're thinking in terms of AI and our products. Is that something that as we're launching Base Camp 5, you're digging into? Is it a not now? and then also our other products not just base camp but hey and fizzy kind of where are you thinking like the next step for AI is for us? >> Yeah, I mean we explored it quite a bit in Fizzy. Um and I think there's of course an endless amount of things you can do and and maybe we should do at some point. Things we explored it for in Fizzy weren't entirely useful at the moment. That said, I I can imagine for example, duplicate detection like this bug looks like these three bugs. Is this the same thing? Things like that I think would be handy. >> Yeah, >> we had some um we had some summary stuff like summarizing a week of worth of work and what's been going on and we just found those to be like adequate but like not interesting to read. And I think that that ultimately kind of pushed us back away from it for a minute. Like we can generate summaries, we can generate reviews of work, we could gen but like if no one really wants to read them, uh it didn't feel right. So we kind of backed away from that. Um anyway, that was a few months ago. Um David and I and and Brian actually just caught up yesterday about AI in Base Camp uh five and we're exploring some different avenues for for inclusion of AI in the product. It's also very very interesting time because and this is sort of David's argument which I buy. I also have other arguments um that I'm trying to push forward um that um a lot of people have spent a lot of energy building a lot of custom AI stuff into their existing products. Basically every one of our the alternatives in the market competitors alternatives whatever other people in our sphere basically all have AI product or features in their products at some level and they talk about them very proudly on their sites. it's very obvious that it's like, you know, pervasive now. Um, and we don't talk about it and we don't have anything. Um, and that's been an intentional decision so far. And David's point of view and and I again I agree with it and I also disagree with it in other ways, but I really agree fundamentally with it is that things have actually changed so much in the past month like with OpenClaw for example and uh 24/7 running agents. things are just perpetually running for you. And the ability for agents just to log in as normal people that people are going to end up bringing their own agents um to our products >> and just have them be normal users. Like just sign up with have your agents sign up for an account and then you can grant it access and you can bring all the knowledge it has. It can learn everything about your product in no time at all. We've seen this already. We already have agents in Base Camp in our base camp account. Like we've invited our own. And so you can see that there's a lot of custom work you can do to try to do those things. Or maybe you can wait a little bit longer and the the game's going to change where OpenAI, Anthropic, Grock, Gemini, all these things will be offering these always on agents just like OpenClaw is. OpenClaw is like very technical, extremely technical right now. you got to set up your own server or use a virtual server and it's it's very complicated but but it's it's a it's it's a it's a view into what things are going to be very very soon. So what we can do is make the product simpler, clearer. Um we are working on some other stuff, some CLIs, command line interface for Base Camp that would make it easier for for agents so they don't have to use a browser. We're doing a bunch of that stuff too, but currently we're thinking that people are going to be bringing a lot of their own stuff into Base Camp. Um, however, there's also stuff in Base Camp that we can be doing with AI that we're going to be looking into doing for Base Camp 5 when we've already begun to think about these things. Um, so I can't reveal anything more than that. But I do think there's going to be this hybrid world of some native AI features within a product and then people are going to bring their own agents that are connected to all sorts of other things also um, and that are going to know them really, really, really well and they're going to bring those into the product as well, just as if they were co-workers. Um, you'll see, you've probably seen Jeremy's use doing this and David's doing this and a few other people are doing this and it's it's incredibly impressive and it's interesting because we didn't have to build anything >> to to to make this happen. And that's I think ultimately where the the puck is going. That said, again, there are, I think, specialized things that we should be thinking about and things that are just more straightforward than having to think about signing up for something somewhere else and then bringing it in versus just having a few things available to people. So, we're we're um it's very exciting. It's very much we're very much like on the edge of following what's going on here and uh and trying to determine what the best path forward is. And I'm actually very glad that we have not spent um the past year building things that might be undone in a matter of weeks by um a better way to do things. So, you know, there's a point though you can't wait for someone else to invent the future that you want. >> Yeah. >> Uh because you might have to wait 18 months and it might be too long. So, like it's it's figuring out the right timing for these things. is ch always challenging. It's very hard to call the top or the bottom of any market or any situation. At some point though, you got to just go, "Oh, this is very interesting. This is going to change. What else can we do though in the meantime?" That still is very helpful. >> Yeah. I mean, it's it feels like you should always be early on the early side of things, but this is one situation where like if you were early, you're redoing basically what you've already done. And with the small team, it's like we don't have time to do that. >> Yeah. It's hard. I mean, look, we also have a small team, you know, we have 62 people in the company. um you know a third of the company might might be people who engineers and designers really you know ultimately and like AI is help very helpful in you know allowing us to develop faster and with more fewer people in the whole thing but ultimately we don't have a company of a thousand people of which a 100 can go explore some of this stuff so we still have to make decisions there's a lot of trade-offs to make about what's worth focusing on and we currently think that the core features of our product base camp for example um that are ours that work the way we want them to work is a better place to invest most of our energy. We'll still be investing some energy into AI and also being open, you know, have open arms and open doors for people to bring their own AI into base camp. Um, and make it easier for those AIs or for those agents to be able to access data in Base Camp. So, we're making that a lot easier. So, I think I think we're going in absolutely the right direction here. And again, I'm glad we didn't spend, you know, uh, 10,000 engineer hours over the past year and a half or whatever it would be. I don't know how long many hours it would be. Um, building stuff that's like kind of going to be obsolete pretty soon. >> Yeah. It's interesting because I see some of the customer feedback. People write in or comment on our YouTube videos that people are very polarized by this topic. I've said it before, but there's people who are like, "When is base camp getting AI? Like you guys are late." And there's people who are like, "Don't touch my base camp. It's like the only piece of software I have that hasn't been sucked in with shitty AI. So, it is one of those like hard to balance between, you know, those different opinions and doing what's right for the product >> for sure. And we we want to make both those sides happy and I think we can. Um I absolutely think we can. Um our approach is always to be as straightforward as possible. Um as as no nonsense as possible. So like slathering AI on everything everywhere all the time is not going to be our approach. Um and I think that and I've used tools that are are like that now where everything is like AI first and I just I I think people actually it's a bit of a um a novelty at the moment and I think people are are wear it's wearing thin in some ways. Um and you just have to be careful not to sort of ruin things because not everybody wants that all all the time. It should be available for sure. Um, and others are very into it, very gung-ho about it, want it everywhere. So, the good news is they'll be able to bring theirs and have it wherever they want and do whatever they want. Meanwhile, for those who don't want to go down that road or aren't sophisticated enough or aren't interested enough in doing that, um, we have to provide some assistance for them as well and give them some leverage that they didn't have before and show them that this stuff is very powerful and very useful, but also not in your way. So it's it's a delicate balance and this is but this is the same delicate balance we've been balancing on since the beginning of base camp. Everybody wants more stuff. This is the nature of software. Everyone wants more stuff and everyone has their two or three requests and they can't understand why you haven't done them yet. And then you're like well >> there's 85,000 people asking for two or three things and some of those things overlap and many of them don't. And it's our job. And then you also you people will also say like I love base camp because it's so straightforward and simple and thank god because everything else is a mess and you're like part big reason for that is because we've we've held back doing certain things that everyone's been asking us to do and it's always a delicate balance. So it's no different. This is just this is no different. Expectations are no different. They're just about different things. So, it's always the thing we've been we've been really good at, I think, which is understanding the limits, making things very accessible for a huge swatch of swath of people and not getting ahead of ourselves and making things complicated to benefit a handful of people who really want the most and and the many and instead just kind of figure out like what's the right um collection of things that makes the most sense for the most people that's easy and approachable and understandable for nearly everybody. And also there's some more power around the corner if you really know how to get at it. You can do that. Like a good example of this is um in Basec Camp base camp well let's call Basec Camp 3 actually all the way back to two kind of had a handful of tools that were you know you could add to-dos and messages and files and documents and schedule stuff basically in a project. And that was the same up until, I don't know, uh, a couple years ago, we added this feature to allow you to add multiple tools to a project. So, you could have multiple to-do sections. You could always have multiple to-do lists, but now I have two to-do sections or multiple message boards, >> two separate chat tools, >> right? And so, this is an example of like it's still simple for everybody. Like there's a there's a tool like a collection of simple, straightforward tools that make sense everybody. But those who want to reach around the corner and pick out a few more things off the shelf and put it on their project, they can. But it never gets in somebody's way if they don't want to think about the fact that they can do that. That's always the try the line we're trying to tow here. And so I think the same thing will be true with AI. Okay, a little off subject, but I've read a lot or heard recently about >> the whole tech surge of people being laid off because AI is going to take over all these jobs and we don't need programmers and we don't need all of these different positions. I kind of wanted to get your take on that. One of the things I think of in particular that drives me crazy with companies, their use of AI is support and offloading that support to AI robots where you can't talk to a real person. I want to kind of get your take on the company's philosophy when it comes to the roles that we have here and AI, how those might be supplemented or not. >> Yeah. Um I mean my long-standing opinion about most companies is they tend to have too many people. I think companies tend to be too big, teams are too large. Um and um we've intentionally kept our company as small as we possibly can. like since we existed. We've got a little bit bigger than we are today, but you know, we're about 60 people. That feels like really good. And a lot of the people in our industry have teams of hundreds or thousands of people in their company. And I I've just never really understood that. Fair enough. Whatever. So, in general, I think that um companies will often look for reasons to let people go that may or may not be true. At some point, they lay you when when their numbers aren't right. and Wall Street, if they're public, Wall Street's demanding this or demanding that. It's easy to lay people off. Um, and you can say we're laying people off because AI is going to make us more efficient or more productive. And that might be true, but it also just might be an excuse to lay people off. So, I don't know. I don't know. >> Sure. >> Um, no, there's no question that it should make people more productive. Um, but I think people should have probably been a lot more productive to begin with. I don't think you need a team of 12 people working on something that's relatively small, you know. So, it's all like one and the same for me there. Um, I agree with you that like in some cases AI based customer service is actually quite good if you have a very simple straightforward question. It's also incredibly frustrating when you have something a little bit more nuanced and you just have this boiling urge like I just want to talk to somebody. >> Yeah. who will understand where I'm coming from, who's not as intelligent as AI technically, but totally gets what I'm talking about because they just they're human and they get it right now. There's also terrible human customer service out there as well. >> True. >> And that's because people aren't trained well and companies typically see it as a cost center, so they try to find the lowest common denominator of I. So, it's not that humans are better or worse at this. It's like you want highly trained, highly trained, long-term humans who know a product inside and out are extraordinarily good and that's what we offer. We do offer some AI help in some places. Uh you hit the little question mark and you can ask a question and stuff, but it's also incredibly you just email supportcamp.com and you're getting a human, >> right? So we always want to I I mean look always is one like if we're around in 245 years and we're all dead and that like might be different in the short term near term here. I think humans are hugely important. I think we have a massive advantage because we have incredibly good humans on our support team. Many of which have been here for many many many years. Some of which have been here for 15 years >> on support. like this is a career job here, not just a temporary job, which it is in most places kind of a temp job. And we've developed incredibly good people who have a huge depth of knowledge about how our products work and they really, really care. And I think it's a massive competitive advantage for us, and I would not want to give that up. That said, there's also times you just want to get a quick answer. So, we should have both and make both available, but it shouldn't feel like you must go through the AI and then get pissed off enough to get a human. That's what you never I don't ever want to have us do that. And that's what those are the experiences I never want to have with other people's companies. And by the way, it's no different than like old school support where like phone trees, you know, like you're like, "Oh my god, like press three and then the recording is so slow." You're like, >> and you just like slam the zero button or whatever and try to like break through it, you know? I don't want anyone to ever feel that like that with us. >> Yeah. I the reason I brought it up is I recently had this terrible experience with an airline trying to get a question answered and talking to their AI bot trying to get a real person. Like, okay, you're not answering my question, so I need to get to a real person. >> And literally being in a circle of, "No, I'm the bot and I can help you." "Well, you're not helping me." "No, I'm the bot. I can help you." I'm like, "Oh my gosh, infuriating." Well, there's this sort of know-it-all complex, and you would imagine like >> um I mean AI technically does know more than any human at this point essentially. But it's different. It's still different because people relate. It's not just about knowledge. Mhm. Mhm. >> It's about relating to somebody and and venting, frankly, to a human who understands that you're pissed and can like uh feel that and understand how to respond in a way that's still just human to human. Like humans want to talk to humans, especially when they're pissed. >> Yeah, >> they just do. I mean, you could also yell at an AI and like let it all out, not worry about insulting anybody either. But I don't think that's what people actually want. I think when people really get a little bit frustrated and sometimes when they're writing support they are. >> Yeah, >> they are. And it might be because they had a bad day, it's not that there's the product is terrible. They may have had a bad day or who knows what happened, right? They have a deadline coming up and they can't find this thing they knew was there and like people are frustrated for all sorts of reasons. You want someone on the other side who can meet that, absorb it, understand it, and know how to work with you on it. Now, it's not that AI can't be trained to do that. And I'm sure there's some very sophisticated models that can do that, but that's a technologist point of view. >> If I'm a human, there's a point, and it's not a very deep point, where I want to talk to somebody. I just still do. Maybe in 20 years I don't. >> Today, I do. I believe that's true. I talk to our customers. I know it's true. Um, and we want to make sure that we're never skimping on that. >> Yeah. Well, that seems like a perfect place to wrap it up. We will look forward to seeing what comes in the way of AI as we launch new products. This is a production of Rework. You can find show notes and transcripts on our website at 37signals.com/mpodcast. Full video episodes are on YouTube. And if you have a question for Jason or David about a better way to work and run your business, leave us a voice recording. You can do that at 37s signals.com/mpodcast or send us an email to rework@37signals.com.

Following up on an earlier conversation about AI, this episode shifts to the product side of the discussion. Host Kimberly Rhodes chats with 37signals CEO and co-founder Jason Fried about his daily AI use, what it's helped him do more efficiently, customer expectations, and how he's thinking about AI's role in future product updates. *Key Takeaways* 00:00 – Episode preview 00:23 – Putting AI tools to work 07:37 – Using AI to reclaim time, not replace thinking 13:46 – Where 37signals sees thoughtful implementation fitting in 19:21 – Why rushing adoption can backfire 20:42 – The ongoing debate from the customer perspective 24:35 – Why workforce changes aren’t always tied to automation 28:57 – Human interaction still matters *Links and Resources* "The owner's word weighs a ton" by Jason Fried on Signal v. Noise – https://medium.com/signal-v-noise/the-owners-word-weighs-a-ton-2772f0934a93 Fizzy is a modern spin on kanban. Try it for free at https://www.fizzy.do Record or upload a video question for Jason and David — https://www.37signals.com/podcastquestion Get a free Basecamp account at https://www.basecamp.com Books by 37signals – https://37signals.com/books 30-day free trial of HEY – https://www.hey.com/ Once. com – https://once.com/ Campfire – https://once.com/campfire HEY – https://www.hey.com/ The REWORK podcast – https://37signals.com/podcast/ Get some REWORK podcast merch – https://37signals.com/podcast/shop *Let's be social!* Twitter/X: https://x.com/37signals Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/37signalshq/ Rework is a production of 37signals. You can find show notes and transcripts on our website https://www.37signals.com/ Leave us a video question at www.37signals.com/podcastquestion or send an email to rework@37signals.com, and we might answer it on a future episode.