What a time to be alive. I was driving this morning on my way to the office and was lost in thought... about thought! I've been understandably obsessed with bringing these virtual employees to life, and have often tried to imagine how I would bring a new human employee into say a receptionist role. What would I need to explain before they ever answered a call? What would I expect them to remember and what would I expect them to simply understand?

In addition to being obsessed with high level processes involved, at Voxlayer we are also focused on doing all of this with local models. Our telecom background and experience with legal and healthcare clients has biased us against public API endpoints. Besides the privacy concerns involved, we want to avoid the per-minute/token charges and the blatent uncertainty involved with the AI "bubble". Will OpenAI be around in a year's time? Anthropic? Twenty years ago I would have argued "too big to fail", but these days? I'm not so sure. I'm personally terrified to tie my business to one of these companies today, when pricing, platform changes, and longevity are simply up in the air.

But back to the point - I was lost in thought on my drive, then realized what an absolute privilege I am enjoying to be able to spend my time this way. I am not spending my day hunting and gathering food to not starve... I am tearing down the road with minimal effort and totally focused on the most abstract thing imaginable right now. I can only do this because of all the folks that came before me, whose shoulders I am standing on.

I would like think this current reality is stable and that I will be able to continue spending my time this way, making my own mark on our society and hopefully doing my part to move things forward.

What a time to be alive!