Curt Steinhorst

Keynote speaker. Forbes contributor. Author.
Helping teams do the hard part: working together.
Frisco, TX. Dad x3. Never done a cold plunge.

[Karli Bonne’ 🇺🇸 @KarluskaP]

Sheeple have always been

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

I have ADHD. I wrote a book about attention anyway, which either disqualifies me or is the entire point.

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

@drantbradley Agree! friends stayingwith us when they fly through Dallas are some of the best nights of my year

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

@PaulSmc_ For sure, and, that shifts sole responsibility from the “liar” to, at least in part, the person who doesn’t make the truth easy to tell.

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

The higher you rise, the less truth reaches you. Your reaction to bad news teaches people what to bring you next time. So they don't lie. They filter. They edit. They read your mood and adjust.

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

Ask yourself: "what would you say in your next meeting if there was no risk in saying it?"

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

Most of the things that are being demanded of me in the form of emails, even social media posts that I need to reply to, won't matter at all in a week.

This is one of the most important ideas to remind myself daily. Most of what stresses me out WON'T MATTER later. The better filter: right here and now, where I am, what is the single thing that deserves my attention most? What needs attention later is often the biggest source of distraction now.

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

Three thousand years ago, Solomon ran the experiment with a king's resources: every pleasure, every project, every kind of mastery. The word he kept landing on translates from Hebrew as vanity, though it sits closer to vapor. We keep running the same experiment with better tools.

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

Distraction is confusion about what matters. Which is why the app blocker keeps not fixing it.

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

Gen Z is spending 109 days a year on a screen and only 106 days a year sleeping.

This is affecting how our teams function today.

What's one way you're thinking about leadership today during this epidemic of loneliness?

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

How many times must they have forgiven each other to reach this moment?

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

Dario has written that we need to “pace the frontier,” and Sam has agreed. People may be surprised by my response: go ahead.

You guys are the frontier. By any reasonable metric — market share, revenue growth, model capability — the two of you have a duopoly on frontier intelligence. You’ve also claimed the lead is widening because of recursive self-improvement.

I don’t see what you see in the lab. If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible.

But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability. Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. Stop pretending you need those same evaluators to police competitors who aren’t even at the frontier.

Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack. The market already punishes models that behave in unpredictable or unauthorized ways. After the Hugging Face episode, it is simply good business for OpenAI and Anthropic to trade some raw power for reliability and predictability. Call it alignment if you want. It is also just giving customers what they want.

Pacing the frontier would also create breathing room for a more intelligent conversation about regulation than Bernie Sanders’ “shut it all down.” China is very unlikely to join a global agreement, as you know, and that has to be taken into account as well.

So go ahead and pace the frontier. You are the ones setting it. The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it. Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system. So just do it.

If you do, you’ll buy goodwill for the next conversation. If you don’t, we’ll know this was just another bid for regulatory capture — or an election-season psyop.

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

I've never met someone who said "I need to be less curious" or "my team's problem is they are just too curious."

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

The AI question isn't really about the AI.

#Leadership #AI #ChangeManagement #WorkplaceCulture #Adaptability

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

@GabeBock Not to mention that you were getting up at like 5 am to do it while in school, while the rest of us slept until 11 am. And yet you never were willing to handle my class registration... only Megan's.

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

This is one all parents with kids still in the house should read and remember….

[Matt Walsh @MattWalshBlog]

I’ve let my kids stay up late the last two nights so we could play board games. On Saturday we played Scrabble until it was an hour past their bedtime and then I decided that we’d have ice cream and watch TV for a while. They were thrilled. This time I spent with my kids wasn’t a “sacrifice” or a burden I heroically shouldered for their sake. I like hanging out with them. They’re smart and funny and fun to be around. Sure they can be annoying sometimes, but anyone can be annoying. I’ve annoyed countless people in my day. Including my kids.

If you hate being a parent and actively resent your children, it’s either because you categorically refuse to get out of your own head and put in the minimal effort it requires to develop a real relationship with them, or it’s because you’ve done a really crappy job raising them so now they’re hard to be around. Either way, it’s a you problem. It’s your fault. Not theirs. It’s your responsibility, then, to pretend you don’t hate it.

Yes, pretend. Yes, suppress your true feelings. Yes, put on an act. Maintain the facade for your kids, because it’s deeply scarring and unfair to saddle them with your personal issues. And maintain the facade for the public, because frankly we don’t want to have to deal with your narcissistic nonsense either. Your “true self” is unsightly and off putting, and you shouldn’t force anyone to bear witness to it.

So fake it til you make it. Act like the kind of parent you should be, until you actually become that parent. Shoulder the burden of your own narcissism silently and with dignity. If you do that, after a while, and by definition, you will no longer be a narcissist. One day you’ll look up and realize that you’re actually not faking it anymore. You really do enjoy giving your time and yourself to those you love.

At least that’s how it often works. I don’t know if it will for you or not. But either way, whatever you do, don’t take your failures out on your children.

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

We're taught that being in charge means having every answer. The leaders keeping up are the ones who ask more questions than they answer, especially when they don't have to.

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

My son was five. I was on my phone. He looked at me and said, 'Daddy, wake up.'

You only get to be in one room at a time. The question is whether you're improving it or ruining it.

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

I love everything about this. This is how we should all aim to live our lives. Don't take ourselves too seriously, dance when you have the chance, and make the party better because you were there.

[Be Believing @Be_Believing]

The mascot had no idea that approaching the security guard would turn into one of the most legendary moments in Astros history. 🤣

[Curt Steinhorst @curtsteinhorst]

Most of the work happens before anyone's watching.

#keynotespeaker