On Saturday morning I was stuck getting a machine to work. For a change this was not a web thing, it was a real machine.
A few years ago, we bought a Champion Semi-Trash Water Pump but I had never used it. With the lack of snow, our front slough (a pond) is really low, but we do have a fair bit of water left in a ditch nearby, so I decided it was time to get the thing out and see if I could pump some water with it.
I have quite a few gas powered devices all that take some combo of priming, and ripping a pull card to get started. I read all the instructions on the side, checked all the switches 5 times, and the darn motor would not start. I was about ready to give up.
I resorted to looking up issues with this pump online, with 99% of the suggestions being what I had done. One search result pointed to JustAnswer.com which I see come up a lot on searches for fixing appliances and stuff. It always looks like a web forum thing where someone who states some expertise in pliumbing or electric wiring dispenses advice.
But of course now, you do not interact with humans anymore, its all Agentic AI (cue the operative heavens opening music, WAHHHHHHHH), and for some unknown reason I started chatting with “Pearl Chatbot, the Contractors Assistant.” In a much more slick than your old telephone phone tree, she was supposedly sussing my issue.
Of course it leads to wanting me to enter a credit card to get an answer, and yeah cheapskate, it was only CA$2 (or that’s where it starts), but I was not interest in entangling with likely what might have been another Agent, or someone who just looked shit up in a database to spit back at me.
I hung up on Pearl, and went back to the pump for One More Try… and the darn thing worked. So maybe the whole AI bot did have some charm.
I spill all this for the inevitable now future where more an more we are going to be “talking” to or getting service from magical AI agents.
My mind went to the current episode of Jeff Young’s Learning Curve Podcast episode on How to Prepare Students For a World of AI Co-Workers— I am still but a bit into it. Jeff’s question is an that part of the curve suggesting students will need to know how to be in a world of work where their colleagues are Agentic AI.
And his guest and the framing is, well a host of another podcast, Evan Ratliff’s Shell Game (which I am now cued up to listen to a few episiodes). Ratfliif is testing this idea that the big boys like Sammy A are pitching
Speaking during an interview with Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, Altman said he regularly speculates about when the first founder will reach a billion-dollar valuation without even hiring a single employee.
“In my little group chat with my tech CEO friends there’s this betting pool for the first year that there is a one-person billion-dollar company,” Altman told Ohanian. “Which would have been unimaginable without AI and now will happen.”
https://fortune.com/2024/02/04/sam-altman-one-person-unicorn-silicon-valley-founder-myth/
So Ratliff apparently is the opne human who has started up an AI business full of different Agentic AI characters willing roles of CTO, and human resources, and sales. They all have names, generated bios, voice intros, and apparently they regularly have zoom meetgins and chats in Slack.
Like WTF?
The story Jeff Young is pursuing is the experience of a real student who answered an ad to be a social media intern for this “company” It’s farcical, but also feels pretty much real.
My mind went to thinking Jeff was not thinking big enough for education. If there can be a startup company being in business with but one human, why can’t there be entire university run by one dude?
And then my associative brain, deeply wired to my television immersed childhood and youth, went to the Saturday Night Live skit with Father Guido Sarducci and the Five Minute University. It was funny than, and about uncanny now. The premise was that FMU could cover everything a college graduate remembers 5 years after their degree.
I think in education, it does not matter where you go to school, Italy, America, Brazil. It’s all the same.
It’s all just memorization. And it don’t matter how long you can remember anything, just so you can parrot it back for the test.
And I got an idea for a school I would like to start, somtthing called the “Five Minute University.”
[laughter]
The idea is that in five minutes, you learn what the average college graduate remembers five years after he or she is out of school.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO8x8eoU3L4
That’s just the opening. It’s classic.
And quaint now in 2026. Get ready for the Agentic University?
Heck it makes Sebastian Thrun sound as innovative as Windows ME.
Bring on the agents! Weeeeeeeeeeee.
Featured Image: Collage of my own photo of my Champion Water pump before it started working, with an overlay of my session with Pearbot at Just Answer, and a bit of ghosty image of Father Guido Sarducci, image remixed by me, and very lijkely completely in violation of copyright. Sue me, its paraody and talk to my Agentic Lawyer!
I’m not sure it reflects well on me, but I’ve really been enjoying Shell Game. It’s wild all the emotions I’ll go through in a single listen. Laughing one minute, and gasping with horror in the next. It’s nothing if not thought provoking.
Glad to hear your machine started working again. We are having one of those seasons in our family where it seems like everything is breaking. Including our windshield getting hit by a rock on a way back from spring break. We were glad to learn that insurance will cover the repair, though, as that thing isn’t inexpensive to replace. I can tell you that.