AI Makes Bad Direction Cheaper (with Maury Postal)
Okay, Actually is a show about what’s really going on at work — and what we can do about it. New episodes come out every other Thursday and are always under 30 minutes.
AI can help us research, organize, generate, compare, and execute faster than ever. But it can also produce something polished enough that we don’t immediately notice it has solved a completely different problem from the one we actually had.
In Part Two of my conversation with my dear friend and former colleague Maury Postal, we talk about what happens when AI makes execution faster and cheaper without necessarily making the direction any better. We get into why “move fast and break things” is a questionable operating philosophy, how AI makes ideas more abundant but not necessarily more valuable, and why augmented intelligence may be a more useful framing than artificial intelligence.
This is a conversation about AI, but it’s also about judgment, accountability, creative distinctiveness, and the human conversations we can’t delegate.
This episode stands on its own, but you can also listen to Part One: Episode 10: The Brief Is the Work.
00:00 AI Editing Gone Wrong
02:19 Part Two Setup
03:10 Rigor Versus Speed
05:41 AI Makes Bad Direction Cheaper
09:11 Accountability Swim Lanes
11:50 Ideas Are Cheap; Judgment Isn’t
13:27 Algorithms, Sameness, and Slop
17:38 Process And Stepping Away
20:01 Three Four Questions Before You Begin
22:56 What Humans Still Need to Own
Four questions to ask before a project begins
Who will determine whether this work succeeds?
What does the work actually need to prove to that person?
How are we going to separate signal from noise?
What does a human being still need to own here?
About Maury
Maury Postal is EVP of Creative Strategy and Innovation Services for Grayling North America. He has more than 18 years of experience across creative strategy, storytelling, and digital innovation, helping organizations turn complex ideas into work that people can understand — and that can actually accomplish something.
He has worked with global brands including American Express, Audi, Ford, Genesis, P&G, Synchrony, and Japan Airlines. His work also includes AUTONOMY, a feature documentary made with Malcolm Gladwell that premiered at SXSW.
Connect with Maury
