Connect your Claude, Codex or OpenClaw for full transcripts on millions of podcasts. Two week free trial, cancel anytime.

TF Tim Ferriss Tim Ferriss Author, early-stage technology investor and podcaster whose books include The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef, Tools of Titans and Tribe of Me...

“There have been so many technologies with that promise. The Industrial Revolution, we can go through a long list. And I have not yet seen it. I don't know anyone who's like, I used AI to free up a bunch of free time that I'm now using for kiteboarding and knitting. They're like, I was doing two projects, but now I can do 10 projects.”

The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss · Ideas & Essays · October 2026

“There have been so many technologies with that promise. The Industrial Revolution, we can go through a long list. And I have not yet seen it. I don't know anyone who's like, I used AI to free up a bunch of free time that I'm now using for kiteboarding and knitting. They're like, I was doing two projects, but now I can do 10 projects.” — Tim Ferriss, The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss

Kevin Rose hoped AI assistants would give people more leisure and more time together in person. Ferriss is skeptical, and also worries about people finding an always-supportive digital companion easier than a real partner.

Transcript

The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss
Tim Ferriss

that. Here's something I didn't think of. Could the decline in alcohol consumption actually be reflective of people sitting at home and not socializing outside? That

Kevin Rose

and I love that. Do you know what I mean, though? I have no idea. But

Tim Ferriss

you know what I'm talking about, right? Like it could actually correlate to people spending more time at home on their computers and their phones. Yeah. What I would say is with the AI Super, I hope it results in people having more in-person interactions. I do think that people are going to feel the poison, right? Like the dose makes the poison. I think they'll feel that it's not good for them in a very visceral, deep way that has not perhaps been as obvious in the last five years minus AI. But, and I'm not the first person to observe this, it's like, if interacting with a digital companion is easier than interacting with your actual partner, if they're always supportive and saying the right things and they're not getting dysregulated and freaking out like all humans do, right? If kids find their customized LLM, a better parent, easier to deal with because it eliminates some of the messiness of unpredictable human interactions, you know, what are the consequences of that? The leisure time, I hope that's true. There have been so many technologies with that promise. The Industrial Revolution, we can go through a long…

Kevin Rose

Something always fills the gap, right? Something's always going to fill the gap. And you have to be very selective about what's going to fill that gap. But I will say, for me, the daily grind of email and a lot of those other things. Now that I have these and it's going to be like, hey, Kevin, you…

Tim Ferriss

The woodworking. The woodworking comes up every nine months.

Kevin Rose

You know, Japanese trainery is amazing. I know

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

More from The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss