Will AI kill us—or just our jobs?
I did 30+ street interviews in 2 weeks to hear from real people...
Hey there! I’m Robert. Welcome to a free edition of my newsletter. Every week, I share my story of bootstrapping my startup in AI, Alignment, and Longevity. I’m documenting my journey to become my best self—and helping humanity do the same to survive and thrive in the age of AI.These newsletters include my reflections on the journey, and topics such as entrepreneurship, startups, growth, leadership, communication, product, and more. Subscribe today to become the person and leader that people love, respect, and follow.
“Is AI going to kill us all or just take our jobs? Are you worried?”
That’s the question I hit the streets with in my free time outside of my day job recently.
Doing live, raw, uncut street interviews.
I’ve gotten hundreds of rejections by this point.
I don’t care.
I keep going.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take"
I keep asking the question.
Because I’m worried myself.
And I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking tired of tech billionaires telling us what to think.
I want to hear it from real every day people, with real problems.
The answers were unfiltered.
Messy. Human.
A college student in a hoodie didn’t even hesitate:
“I don’t trust Sam Altman or any of those tech billionaires. They’re playing God with stuff they can’t control.”
A middle-aged dad pushing a stroller shook his head:
“I read about that kid who used ChatGPT and ended up taking his own life. If this is what the future looks like, how do I protect my family?”
A food delivery driver put it bluntly:
“It’s not just jobs. It’s people losing their grip. This stuff makes you question what’s real—and that kind of madness is scarier than layoffs.”
Different voices.
Same undertone: distrust.
Distrust of the companies racing to deploy AI.
Distrust of the leaders claiming to “have it under control.”
Distrust of the tools themselves.
It’s not just about technology—it’s about fear and uncertainty.
Fear of a future where we don’t know what’s real.
Uncertainty about whether we’re building systems that serve us, or systems that consume us.
And standing there, microphone in hand, I realized: this is the real alignment problem.
Not just between humans and AI—but between humans and the people building it.
Side Note: We’re Evolving Fam
For the past year, this newsletter has been my home for sharing lessons on growth, leadership, and emotional intelligence—building in public.
That isn’t changing.
But something inside me has shifted.
I’ve realized that my obsession with personal growth isn’t just about me.
It’s about preparing myself—and hopefully others—for the most existential challenge humanity has ever faced: AI Alignment.
I worry about bringing my future kids into a world where we haven’t solved this problem. I truly do.
I don’t just want them to survive in the age of AI—I want them to thrive.
I’ll be making some changes to the newsletter branding in a good way—stay tuned for that. 👀
So here’s what I’m committing to going forward:
Documenting everything. My wins, my losses, the hard lessons from building a startup.
Sharing what I learn. Every week, you’ll still get distilled insights you can use in your own life.
Building in public. I’m not just writing about growth; I’m showing the messy, beautiful process of becoming.
And the vehicle for this?
Clarity.
We’re building the AI we all need (on top of our own SDK):
one that co-evolves with us,
that understands who we are, and what makes us human,
that shows us transparently what it knows about us and our values,
that maximizes our agency,
and deepens our self-understanding.
NOT an AI that replaces us.
An AI that helps us become our best self.
Here’s a hype video.
Hey don’t just take it from me—I’m the biased AF Founder building this.
We already have users, and they’re referring other users.
Here’s what one woman in her 20s had to say about Clarity after 3 days:
If that resonates, join the waitlist at heyclarity.me.
Another note…
I’m also growing my YouTube channel, where I’m documenting this journey in video form.
I’ve started posting a street interview just about every day, so people can follow along in real time.
Subscribe here—even if you don’t watch all my videos, your subscribing will assist our mission of helping everyone survive and thrive in the age of AI: youtube.com/@therobertta
A Founder’s Biggest Fear
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
This week I faced a founder’s biggest fear: putting my baby in front of more strangers.
The setup:
Street interviews with our Clarity app.
No scripts.
No guardrails.
Just raw user reactions.
And MANY rejections.
And…
The app fucking broke on me in real time. LOL.
Immediately I texted my co-founder Jonathan, but we couldn’t get a live fix that fast.
Great learnings: cross browser testing is hell.
The result: Ina, a 20-year-old community college student, finished onboarding in 5:45 minutes and said the words that made my week:
“This helped me prep for therapy tomorrow.”
She clicked our self-alignment score help icon without hesitation.
She called our target-self narrative “encouraging.”
She navigated non-sequentially but intuitively.
And the kicker—she said she’d pay for Clarity if it “truly knew her.”
Those are all data points that show me we’re going the right way with our design.
The data:
Onboarding completion: under 6 minutes (faster than expected)
Immediate feature discovery: help icons, belief visualizations
Value proposition: therapy prep + life decision support
Willingness to pay: confirmed for personalized insights
The lesson: Users will surprise you.
Ina didn’t use Clarity the way we designed it—she used it the way she needed it.
That’s the gap between product-founder fit (what makes sense in your head) and product-market fit (what actually resonates in people’s lives).
Solid learning.
Now we’re targeting 500 weekly active users by November with 75 paid conversions.
I’m working on a virality campaign to drive a wedge on a beachhead I determined we can hit (more on that in future posts).
The path is getting more clear everyday.
You can say, I have clarity on Clarity’s roadmap and traction. 😂
The Brutal Truth of Building in Public
Here’s the part people don’t usually share about building in public.
It’s not all rainbows and unicorn dust.
This week, Jonathan McCoy (my cofounder) pushed until 03:30 AM fixing bugs just to enable basic user testing.
Shoutout to him for being the best Co-Founder ever.
Here’s what he worked through:
Sliders in onboarding broke.
500 errors galore.
Cross-browser nightmares. (seriously, someone go solve this problem please)
03:30 AM is right around the time I get up every morning.
Jonathan gets up around 10:00 AM.
By afternoon/evening (depending on the day), I’ve already put in reps in the morning and have gotten more learnings or iterations.
I’m the morning watch, he’s the night watch.
We have a handoff where everyday we’re prioritizing features based on user research interviews.
We go HARD, EVERYDAY.
We’re keeping it simple:
We hop on a call, I share my synthesized learnings (all recorded)
I make a list to prioritize for the next build cycle
We align on what to ship
We ship
I go out hunting for more learnings
I bring back synthesized learnings
Then we iterate, and ship more.
The days are long.
But we don’t compromise on ourselves, or our health.
Because we must act in alignment with who we want to become:
The team that solves for aligning AI to humans,
to help give the opportunity for every single human on the planet (including my future kids—shoutout if you read this, your dad loves you)
to become their best selves.
So our small but mighty team goes HARD at EVERYTHING.
In fact, because I get up so early (03:00-03:30ish), I work out and ship features before people even wake up.
Here’s a recent half marathon run I did before work, with a weight vest.
And I’m on day 273 of at least 30 minutes of daily meditation.
I try to make stuff like this is normal and casual for me.
Why?
Because I firmly believe that we need to be our best selves, to help humanity survive the age of AI.
And I have a saying:
Normal thinking,
Normal execution,
Normal results.
Outlier thinking,
Outlier execution,
Outlier results.
If we want outlier results, we must have outlier thinking and execution.
Every. Fucking. Day.
We’re building Clarity, so we need to have clarity in who we are.
If people depend on my product, to become their best selves—then I must set the highest possible bar for that myself and live that every single day.
My team too.
We do not deviate from that—our health is in service of the mission.
So there are no compromises on health, because success in the mission is a function of health.
I ALWAYS check in on my Founder friends’ health. ALWAYS.
When you’re building the future, you gotta be on top of your game.
So are you on top of your game?
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P.S. If you haven’t already checked out my other newsletter, ABCs for Building The Future, where I reflect on my founder’s journey building a venture in the open. Check out my learnings on product, leadership, entrepreneurship, and more—in real time!
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I love this post today! I was just preparing for doing some truck stops interviews. This gave me the encouragement I needed :) and this insight particularly resonated:
Ina didn’t use Clarity the way we designed it—she used it the way she needed it.
That’s the gap between product-founder fit (what makes sense in your head) and product-market fit (what actually resonates in people’s lives).