Tobi Lütke on AI councils, taste, and Shopify's AI colleague River
rseroter · x · 2026-09-22
Farnam Street's Brain Food newsletter (No. 699) features the third podcast conversation with Shopify founder and CEO Tobi Lütke on AI agents, decision-making, and the future of work.
- Lütke explains how he uses an "AI council" to examine his hardest decisions.
- A deep dive into River, Shopify's internal AI colleague with memory, personality, and permission to challenge the CEO.
- He argues taste, judgment, and responsibility become more valuable as AI capability grows.
- Other topics: choosing between several good options and why the best long-term decisions often lack immediate feedback.
The newsletter also frames a "Golden Rule of AI": don't use AI to save yourself time by wasting someone else's.
Related event: Shopify CEO: AI Can't Take Responsibility, and Slop Is Rising(4 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- Reddit essay argues AI extinction this decade is near-impossible: the social contract collapses first — flexingonmyself · 2026-09-22
- AI risk checklist mocked for listing 'writing term papers' among top technology risks — birchlse · 2026-09-22
- Peter Diamandis calls it a 'pandemic of fear,' pushing back on AI extinction concerns — PeterDiamandis · 2026-09-22
- Hendrycks paper argues mutualistic human-AI future beats pure control strategies — xuanalogue · 2026-09-22
- Metaculus community puts AI solving a Millennium math problem ~20 years before AI researchers — ben_j_todd · 2026-09-22
- Journalist: Lab 'doomers' are easy to find, almost impossible to get on record — StewartalsopIII · 2026-09-22