An Executive Met the AI. The Plan Stayed in the Binder.

A friend asked me to teach him how to use AI for a big project. He wants to learn. He also cannot talk to it. This strip is about the ten minutes I spent trying to introduce a grown man to a text box.

Scooter can talk to anyone. Put him in front of a blank prompt and he freezes. He straightens his tie. He asks the machine if it comes here often. I ask him to show it the plan, the one in the binder he is hugging, and he says second date.

What I kept noticing was the shape of it. It is a buddy scene. One friend is comfortable talking to the girl, the other falls apart the second she looks at him, and the comfortable one spends the whole night whispering instructions out of the side of his mouth. The AI is the girl. I am the wingman.

Nobody tells you that the hard part of AI for most people is not the technology. It is the social awkwardness of talking to something that answers back. Scooter brought a binder to the meeting and never opened it. That binder is the whole problem, and the whole joke.

The ending is the part I like. He walks out certain it went great, phone already back at his ear, and Adam asks if he has a LinkedIn. The characters are inspired by real people but they are not them. Scooter is going to be fine. He just needs a few more dates.