The AI Assistant That Knows Your Life Before You Do: The End of the Beginning or the Beginning of the End?

12 snips

Sep 27, 2025

In a captivating discussion, Keith Teare, tech entrepreneur and publisher of 'That Was The Week,' dives into OpenAI's Pulse, a revolutionary AI assistant. He describes Pulse as a transformative tool that reshapes daily habits, but poses concerns about its impact on human capability. The conversation touches on privacy issues, scaling AI, and the rising competition among tech giants. Teare also critiques the monetization strategies within AI, arguing that consumer demand is driving massive infrastructure investments. Will Pulse become the AI ‘front door’ everyone uses?

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INSIGHT

Pulse Shifts Search To Proactive Assistance

OpenAI Pulse is a proactive personal agent that reads your email, calendar and interests to give a daily briefing and suggested tasks.
Keith Teare frames this as a consumer-led shift from reactive search to proactive assistance.

INSIGHT

The 'Idiocracy' Concern About Agentic AI

Critics warn that AI agents doing more for humans could produce an "idiocracy" effect where people atrophy cognitive skills.
Andrew Keen and Keith Teare discuss whether automation will truly make humans dumber or enable higher-level pursuits.

ADVICE

Limit What Assistants Can See

Check product privacy controls before enabling an assistant to access your private data and projects.
Use self-contained projects or opt-out options to limit what OpenAI can see, Keith says.

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“It’s happening. The question is whether it’s a dream or a nightmare. This week, OpenAI introduced Pulse, an AI assistant that knows what we want to do and think before we do. That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare welcomes Pulse as a “habit” that will “shape your day.” Unlike the techno-teleological Keith, however, I’m less enamored by Pulse. Do we really want a proactive AI assistant that not only controls what Keith calls the “front door” but every other door (and window) in our lives? Keith describes this as the “consumer install moment” - Sam Altman’s $10 trillion bet on ‘Abundant Intelligence.’ But what, exactly, is so abundant about this personalized machine intelligence that installs itself into our lives? Having a smart assistant determine our daily calendar might actually make us dumber. Such an “agentic” future is certainly no friend of human agency. Yeah, it’s happening. The end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?

* The “Front Door” Battle is On: OpenAI’s Pulse represents a strategic shift from reactive search to proactive assistance, with tech giants racing to control the primary interface through which we interact with information and make decisions.

* Privacy Becomes an Afterthought: While OpenAI claims privacy protections, most users don’t understand what data these AI assistants access. The $200/month price point currently limits exposure, but mass adoption will create unprecedented privacy challenges.

* The Infrastructure Gold Rush: Sam Altman’s 10-gigawatt power deals and NVIDIA’s GPU dominance reveal the massive energy and capital investment required to scale AI - with an $800 billion gap between current investment and projected revenue.

* “Consumer Pull” is Driving the Boom: Unlike previous tech bubbles, AI demand from actual users (not just hype) is outstripping supply, forcing companies to race to build data centers and power infrastructure to meet real usage.

* The “Idiocracy Trap” Question: As AI assistants take over more cognitive tasks - from scheduling to decision-making - we face a fundamental question about whether this technology will enhance human intelligence or create dependency that makes us collectively dumber.

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