This weekend my wife Carrie asked if I ever think about the environmental impact of AI, and whether that influences how I feel about the products I am building that wouldn't exist without powerful LLMs. The implicit subtext is that AI consumes massive amounts of energy, and the production of that energy is bad for the environment because much of it comes from fossil fuels. And that I, in a very small way, am contributing to the climate crisis by building products that increase the demand for AI.

My answer was that I do think about the environmental impact of AI, but that I think about it in a net positive way.

It is an objective truth that there must be an energy transition from fossil fuels to cleaner forms of renewable energy production like nuclear, solar, and wind because 1) if this does not happen the climate crisis will accelerate and that will be catastrophic for humanity, 2) we need more and more energy to progress technological innovation and improve the quality of life for humanity, and 3) coal and fossil fuels are a finite resource - we will eventually run out of them.

Unfortunately, as a group, humans don't respond well to taking preventative measures to act in the best interest of our collective future. We collectively respond when staring catastrophic threats directly in the face (e.g. war, natural disasters). And while it's true that the climate crisis has accelerated the frequency and severity of natural disasters, it still hasn't produced the "Drop everything and fix it" mentality needed to drive the energy transition.

It is both a fortunate and unfortunate truth that capitalism is a great motivator, and so is geopolitical competition. And right now AI is the bright star of GDP growth, and there is a geopolitical battle between the West and East to become the global leader in AI. Progressing AI requires an insatiable demand for energy, and these two forces, capitalism and geopolitical competition, will force our hand to accelerate the energy transition. Ironically, not because it is what will mitigate the climate crisis, but because it will drive GDP and AI leadership.

So I don't feel bad about AI's impact on energy consumption. I think there is short term pain, but long term gain. I am optimistic about its net effect. And I really hope I am right on this one.

I’m working on a project called Biographer. I started building it last year as a gift to my parents. I wanted to design something that would help capture their life stories—something they’d actually enjoy using, and that would create a meaningful, shared experience for all of us.

When my dad passed away earlier this year, I put the project down. But after some time away, I’ve found myself pulled back to it. Losing him only made me realize how important this really is.

At its core, Biographer is about making it easy, fun, and natural for people to talk about their lives, starting with our parents. There are plenty of services where you gift a family member a subscription, they reply to a weekly email prompt, and a year later those answers are bound into a book.

That is not what we are building.

Here is our plan:

• Use AI to guide natural, engaging conversations that make revealing your life story feel like a game, not homework

• Turn those spoken memories into beautifully structured, written chapters in real time

• Keep families in the loop, making the process of storytelling collaborative and social

• Expand beyond text, mapping these conversations into interactive photo albums, audio documentaries, and legacy podcasts

If we do this right, the conversation itself is the product. A physical book is just raw material—one optional artifact of a much larger experience.

Right now, we are entirely focused on nailing those first two steps. To get the experience right, we are keeping Biographer completely free. We want to learn directly from you and your families about what resonates, what doesn't, and what we should build next.

And while we believe a life is far too big to fit inside a single book, we want to celebrate those who help us build this. We are giving a high-quality hardcover book to the first 500 family members who complete 30 conversations with Biographer. 

If you’ve been looking for a way to preserve your own memories, or if you want to give your parents or grandparents an experience they’ll genuinely love while bringing your family closer together, sign up at Biographer.

Social media in its purest form - sharing and connecting with real friends - is incredibly fun. It’s a great example of how technology can bring people closer together. It’s what I grew up with on the internet. 

Unfortunately, outside of our group chats, there are very few platforms that focus on connecting with people we actually know and care about. Maybe there’s no market for it anymore and we are in a post-social media world. But I don’t think that’s the case. I think there will always be a desire to share and connect with other human beings. 

In the middle of April, along with some colleagues I’ve worked with for over a decade, we started testing a new application called Postcards with some friends and family. It’s fun, simple, and social, and we really like using it. 

Postcards are what happens when you mash together photos, voice notes, and some text, and use a little bit of AI and some filters to turn it into a nice little piece of stylized media. We create postcards about our days, personal musings, vacations, things our kids did, places we went, and more. From the mundane to the important, it’s how we are beginning to share the things that happen in our lives with our friends and families. 

Back in the day there were social networks that were built around your real friend graph. Those morphed into broadcast media - places to get famous and places to consume entertaining content, almost entirely from people you don’t know in real life. Then came the proliferation of group chats as an antidote - a place to be yourself and not be judged by the world. 

I know there is a space that exists somewhere between those two worlds - the best of your group chats, but only people you know and like in real life. Postcards is designed to play in that void. It’s an easy way to stay connected to the people you care about, and it is not a place for mind-numbingly consuming content. 

If you want to create some postcards and send them to friends and family, try it out here. I’d love your feedback on it, and I hope there are lots of builders out there trying to figure out how to make social media fun and feel good again.