Last week, I dusted off my old tech-bro getup and attended a “Friday Vibes” event at Seattle’s AI House - a public-private incubator and community space for all things AI.

(At a prime location on a renovated downtown pier, no less! 🤩)

The afternoon was structured around having builders share their current projects and ask for feedback.

One of the presenters owned a small local restaurant chain and is building an app to help scale himself out of day-to-day management.

Admittedly a newbie to AI tools, he expressed some hesitance with sharing all his ‘secret sauce’ with a tool like Claude or Codex, noting that it was hard-earned institutional knowledge he’d like to keep as his own competitive advantage.

The group’s broad response was that it’s ok to let your guard down a bit.

One person offered a visual metaphor:

This is where the fact that LLMs generate the average next response works in your favor.

If you tell an LLM your deepest business secrets…

AND they just so happen to be so unique that the LLM has never heard them before…

It’s not going to suddenly recognize that you’ve ‘cracked the code’ and share your genius with your competitors and everyone else.

Instead, it’s just going to treat you as an outlier and carry on.

(Still not a terrible idea to toggle ‘off’ any privacy setting about improving the tool. It won’t impact how it treats you 🙂)

💡

-Wes

P.S. I'm looking for two case study clients for the next iteration of my expertise visualization service.

If you know anyone who fits this bill:

• Former executive (~20+ years in corporate)
• Now testing out consulting on their own
• Got some early gigs, but now the market's just not 'getting' what they do

I'd love to have a 15-min chat with them just to gauge fit.

A simple email intro would be much appreciated. 🙏