Ali

Building my life and my software projects, one day at a time

[Ali @BuildLife86]

I disagree. My therapy app https://t.co/xHwBsrnzia is now using Opus 4.8 for various functions and honestly the difference in writing style, tone, and emotional intelligence is night and day compared to 4.7.

Also unlike 4.7, and unlike GPT 5.5, it's actually capable of not gaslighting the user. First time that's been true of an Anthropic or OpenAI model in a very long time.

[Ali @BuildLife86]

Honestly I think the question assumes something that might be a bit backwards. No offence meant, I just mean flip it round. It's not necessarily new products that would emerge, but new internal tools!

If my company sells a product in an industry that I'm an expert in, why would I suddenly start selling something else?

I can see the case for a new way of looking at the existing product, iteration, and I guess maybe a whole new approach. But really as an example, a self driving car is still a car. It's not really a new product.

Anyway maybe I'm wrong, but I think in the short to medium term most of the gains have got to be internal with process improvements and tooling.

[Ali @BuildLife86]

@paulg Wow yours actually let you put them down on their back for more than 2 minutes?

We're 8 weeks in and the scenario in this picture seems like a dream 😂

I hear that apparently that can change at 3 months so fingers crossed.

[Ali @BuildLife86]

@RyanOlunix I'm a founder and AI enthusiast working on a few different projects. The only one which is actually ready and complete is https://t.co/DquRTetkiE . I wanted to finish that one first as it's really my passion project.

[Ali @BuildLife86]

I've also built an AI powered thinking / support tool (https://t.co/xHwBsrnzia), I have to say though I'm very intrigued by your onboarding flow and business model. Do you have any sort of financial backing? And like, what's the thinking behind giving 10 free minutes if they sign up with Google? Why?

[Ali @BuildLife86]

@ionleu AI thinking / life organisation tool: Steady On

https://t.co/DquRTetkiE

[Ali @BuildLife86]

@showupsanjeet Well as someone who just finished building my first proper product (https://t.co/DquRTetkiE) I would 100% say distribution. But that makes sense, because as builders, that's where we're comfortable, that's what we do. Distribution involves an entirely different set of skills.

[Ali @BuildLife86]

@erikcreating @nooriefyi Exactly what I moved to. It's like a breath of fresh air.

[Ali @BuildLife86]

@nooriefyi Personally I just went self hosted with Coolify for my NextJS app, it's better in almost every way in my opinion.

Yes there's a bit more maintenance overhead, but really minimal.

And you can still use a CDN service like Cloudflare in front of your self hosted servers.

[Ali @BuildLife86]

I think better, 100%, because it can be a sort of digital pensive, so rather than having random thoughts that come and go, you can get them out there, figure out whether they're true or not or useful, and then move on. That can help you gain clarify faster, and then a clear direction, and then you're off to the races.

And I built an app specifically to help with this, https://t.co/xHwBsrnzia , and I started from the premise that most people just need a really good sounding board and a stone to sharpen their ideas on. They need honesty, accountability, and something to help keep them organised (e.g. todo list items, notes). So with all that in mind, I built Steady On.

[Ali @BuildLife86]

It's interesting you say that because I'm working on a project right now (using AI ironically) called "Find Life". It's basically going to be an AI powered app which knows all about you and your interests, your exact personality, the things that really stick with you at a deeper level, and then it will basically help you maintain a realistic calendar of events to go to. So you can, well, find life, as the name implies.

I came up with this approach from a somewhat similar angle to what your post describes. Basically, ok so I can work all day every day, I can save time with AI, but what actually interests me, what truly motivates me to get out of the house rather than just procrastinating. And I realised that there are a few challenges.

The main one being that it's difficult to actually do something if you're just doing it performatively. Like if there's something that you feel you should be interested in, and you'd quite like to be interested in, but deep down you just don't care, you're not going to actually turn up.

And then you feel guilty, and then you're even less likely to do anything, so it's a vicious cycle. So anyway I'm going to keep working on Find Life, but hopefully it's going to be a good app for just getting people out the house for things for things which are actually realistic for them, and not just performative or keeping them trapped in the content consumption loop.

[Ali @BuildLife86]

I think the problem is that like all things these days, it's just become tribal/political, and therefore people have developed a reflex to deny it. Because if you accept it, it (unfortunately apparently in most people's minds) means you accept the entire framing of the discussion, any proposed political measures, punishments, taxes etc that go along with that framing. And furthermore, any solutions you might have will be instantly discarded.

So everything has become a sort of 'just win at all costs regardless of the actual truth' situation. Of course in a sane world people would be able to say, "yes I do think there is human impact on climate change, but here's what I think the solution is." But unfortunately I think with some justification, people are terrified that if they even utter the first part of that sentence they'll immediately be put in some sort of communist gulag. So it's like, you can't concede anything, because anything will be used against you.

So the only choices that people feel they're left with are either: don't engage in the discussion at all and just concede all of the ground to whoever wants to scream at each other, or, just deny absolutely everything that the opposition says regardless of whether you agree or disagree with that specific point.

[Ali @BuildLife86]

@Leo7hsv @maGLac_ Please do share if you've got a link, and checkout https://t.co/DquRTetkiE if want to compare approaches

[Ali @BuildLife86]

@paulg Agreed, it's rude to send people the output of AI, because you're basically saying that you can't be bothered to do the work yourself. So it's like saying, I couldn't be bothered to write this, but I want you to be bothered to read it.

[Ali @BuildLife86]

@robhughesyyc @Eggplant_Elon Totally agree with this. And the interesting thing about Fight Club was always Tyler's psychological battle with the emptiness of his own life vs the emptiness of modern society, how to reconcile the two, and how to overcome it from within.

[Ali @BuildLife86]

I certainly agree with the idea of AI being useful not to give you answers but to help you organise, reflect, and just make sense of your own thoughts. What is it you're actually building then? Because I started from the same premise and built effectively an AI life organiser, chat bot, thinking partner, and there are some other features. It's https://t.co/xHwBsrnzia if you want to check it out, but I'm curious to know, if Mira isn't a chat bot, then what's the interface? How do you interact with it?

[Ali @BuildLife86]

As someone who has actually built an AI therapy app (https://t.co/xHwBsrnzia), I can tell you that although yes it's going to be much cheaper than seeing a human therapist, it's still not that cheap, because we're still in an era where absolute frontier intelligence costs quite a bit, especially with all the moving parts and backgrounds jobs needed to keep the system working well. So it's cheap-er, but not necessarily cheap by the standards of what people have become used to online. E.g. these days so many things are VC funded so they're able to be effectively 'free' for the end user, or there are various hidden gotchas like selling data. So unfortunately to have something truly intelligent and private, it's not nothing.

Also just on the broader point, I wouldn't say that AI can replace a human, just because a human therapist has a real presence, and without realising it you're mirroring their nervous system state, their breathing, their heart rate. Obviously a computer will never be able to offer that.

[Ali @BuildLife86]

I agree with this, although I think there's a place for both. I think AI is best for identifying and challenging your thoughts in a space where you feel more comfortable first, basically for helping you to introspect, and then once you're more organised in your mind, that's where only a real human being can help with that final step of the way.

I've actually built an AI therapy app https://t.co/xHwBsrnzia , so shameless plug for that. But obviously this is something that interests me a lot as I've spent a lot of time on it.

[Ali @BuildLife86]

@thecoastguy Absolutely, I think it's been this way for about 15 years now.

[Ali @BuildLife86]

@GrantHBrennerMD So I've actually just made this account (literally my first ever post) to be involved in the conversation about AI, software development and more. And my latest project that I've just completed actually is an AI therapy app, so I am genuinely keen to talk to you about this