CEO's daily phone calls: why she resists AI notetakers

The article is framed as a personal reflection on the tension between AI efficiency and human cognitive development. The author, a CEO and mother of seven, has been thinking about the "doom-and-hype cycle" surrounding AI—the tendency for conversations to swing between the Industrial Revolution narrative (unprecedented productivity) and the job-elimination narrative (technological unemployment and displacement). She uses a novel, Yesteryear, as a metaphor for this binary thinking: the story presents two extreme narratives for women's lives, neither of which has to be true, and she argues the same applies to AI's future.

Crucially, she connects this observation to a generational shift. Her daughter's generation is not pursuing prestigious corporate internships but instead starting businesses with unglamorous ideas—optimizing for autonomy and control over their own work and lives. The author published an essay titled "Three Times the CEO I Was a Year Ago" (optimistic about AI) while her daughter published "I Don't Want AI to Think for Me" (skeptical of AI), and despite their opposing stances, they both arrived at the conclusion that there must be a middle path.

The daily phone call habit emerges as a concrete practice embodying this philosophy. Rather than accept the premise that AI will always "catch us up later," she insists on preserving her own thinking first. The article does not predict what will happen to the workforce or to industries; instead, it is a personal meditation on what gets lost when humans stop paying attention because machines are recording.