Michael Brendan Dougherty

author of My Father Left Me Ireland. Senior Writer @NRO.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

Me: Hey kid! Back up, you're going to get bit by that crocodile if you're not careful.

Them: Crocodile lover. Big Croc shill. Why do you hate innocent kids?

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

There was slow adoption of using credit cards on websites. I’m sure some people will be nervous about this, but there are engineering solutions to it.

As this develops, your AI will hold a lot of your information, maybe a lot of it will be tokenized or encrypted. Currently people who use a McDonalds app to order will find that McDonalds now has a 50 page dossier of information on them far beyond just their interactions with McDonalds, all betrayed to them by your phone or sold to them by data brokers. Seems to me that agentic AI could be used to decrease the width of that kind of promiscuous corporate surveillance.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

Yes, I don’t think people understand that the best agentic AIs are going to allow you to not stare at your phone as much. They will do the boring tasks that you start, and unlike you, they won’t succumb to the distraction/attention economy.

[Patrick Ruffini @PatrickRuffini]

Agentic AI is the thing that can make dinner reservations for you, get you discounts on your monthly bills, or automate the most boring drudgery of your job.

What a weird thing for government to go after.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@LennyNero2022 lol

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

One reason I’m excited about AI, despite the Claudespeak issue, is that these AI agents are starting to become useful at translating your instructions into action and freeing you from the phone and computer.

[Mark Zuckerberg @finkd]

Opening access for developers to build Muse connectors. You bring the API -- Muse brings the agent, the browser, and the context of what the person actually wants. People reach your service just by asking for it, and their agent takes it from there.

New connectors are live today. Come build with us. https://t.co/o6oTf1Sj9y

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@zeynep Nothing matches the 66 year jump from Kitty Hawk to the moon. A young boy excitedly read a newspaper account of man’s first flight, then sat in a rocking chair when we landed on the moon.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

No special news to share, just time with people I love on a beautiful day. Baseball, soccer, treating kids to ice cream.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

An absolutely incredible day.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@Phiophills A notes app I’ve used for ten years made a Claude connector or mcp and Claude was able to organize, categorize and make a useful TOC for my notes in seconds. That would have taken me half a day and I wouldn’t have done it as well.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

I think Meta and Grok can improve the reputation of AI by making it useful and productive and cheap for normies. Anthropic and Claude foolishly decided on a message of “we’re building a chat bot to make humans harder to educate, redundant at work, or extinct as a species”

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

I had it clean up an old email account that would have taken me hours to organize. Muse is scanning Facebook market place for something i need and knows my budget so i don’t have to look or get distracted. Looks for sales on things i buy regularly. Organizes my notes, tells me which messages are actually important, etc etc.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@AnthonyMaio @thomaschattwill i have it on iphone and mac. i’m developing a lot more.

Had Claude Code fix and organize and categorize thousands of notes i’ve been taking in Bear for ten years

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@thomaschattwill Please, download Meta Muse or Grokbot and figure out how to give it some digital busy work and liberate you from scrolling. Set the permissions conservatively if you like. It’s incredibly freeing.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@thomaschattwill He clearly knows nothing about the tech. AI agents are the likeliest route out of cell phone screen and app hell.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

There is zero technical thinking going into this.

[Matt O'Brien @ObsoleteDogma]

100% this —>

AI agents are inherently dangerous. We shouldn’t have them. We should nationalize the AI labs, decommercialize it, and use AI exclusively for scientific research.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@TPCarney Good job.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

I dunno Bridgeport and Poughkeepsie have seen better days.

[Boston @BostonMassUSA]

1 in 6 Americans are lucky enough live here

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@CatholicSmark i actually don’t mind a personality. i have a Grokbot a strict permission to have no references later than early 17th century Ireland, and to be curt and impatient but helpful and, in a way, soulful. Not snappy and authortitative. Much better.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@CatholicSmark my only problem so far is the Claudespeak it gives. Grokbot is similar.

Will give Claude this. My notes app built a Claude connector for itself. And claude was able to reorg and draw up an intelligent TOC for my 3.000 notes Very cool.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@joeljmiller It really digs deep into Google and iPhone stuff (Health, Home) easily where Grokbot would need more tinkering. Grokbot easier to hit slack.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@JuddBaroff @joeljmiller I try to only give permissions after a good proposal for action is in. And yeah, i spent 35 minutes looking through 8gigs of junks to check if real email was getting mixed in. it wasn’t.