What a t-shirt can tell us about AI
2025-01-08 | tags: thoughts

This article about a t-shirt manufacturer makes no mention of AI. And yet, the lessons therein can tell you a lot about how to use AI in your business.

"How a $12.98 T-Shirt Is Made in America – at a Profit" (WSJ)

In short:

1/ Understand your business challenges.

2/ See which parts are amenable to automation.

3/ Find and implement the right tools to automate them.

That's it. It holds true for tangible goods and for digital business processes, for factory machines and ML/AI.

(Yes, yes, the fancy, outward-facing uses of AI may get you some extra customer attention. Or even a news writeup. But if you're looking for meaningful, sustainable uses of AI … look to these three steps. And if you need help with those steps, please reach out.)

Never let the bots run unattended

A Meta genAI bot incident is a reminder for everyone to check their own work

Complex Machinery 026: A brief chatbot detour

The latest issue of Complex Machinery: Bots say the darndest things. Why do we keep learning this the hard way?