Training Data Why Businesses Are Rejecting the AI They’ve Asked For: Agency CEO Elias Torres
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Sep 23, 2025 
Elias Torres, a serial entrepreneur and engineer, co-founded Drift and now leads Agency, focusing on AI-driven customer experiences. He discusses the mismatch between businesses demanding perfect AI and their rejection of imperfect results. Drawing from his experiences at HubSpot and Drift, he highlights the need for human-independent automation in customer service. Elias also emphasizes the limits of current AI models while expressing optimism for their potential to enhance human decision-making and streamline customer interactions.
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Expectation Mismatch With AI
- Businesses demand AI but reject imperfect outputs due to expectation mismatch.
- People expect pre-AI perfect lookups and struggle with AI's probabilistic, broader answers.
Elias Lets AI Handle His Email
- Elias lets Agency read and reply to his email, sometimes cringing but sending anyway.
- He contrasts that with users who spend 20 minutes editing AI drafts and kill scale by inserting humans.
Prioritize Scale Over Perfection
- Choose which customer interactions truly need human perfection and which can be automated.
- Send something to many prospects rather than perfecting a few delayed messages to scale outcomes.