Fearless & Careerless (Episode 3): The AI-loving Idealist
Meet Will MF King. He's committed to using technology to benefit humanity—not to mention melting all our minds with his genius (and tendency to elaborate).
INTRODUCTION:
It’s not easy being a technologist and a humanitarian these days. The high-tech world has been saturated by low-empathy assholes like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. It needs more people with actual feelings and principles.
Before I decided to abort my tech career in March, I connected with one Will MF King (the “MF” theoretically does not stand for “motherfucking,” but I kind of wish it did in a good, non-literal way). He calls himself an AI Automation Designer. But it wasn’t just his name and chosen field that stood out: His LinkedIn vibes were both personal and political—and it’s hard to find either one of those things on a “professional” platform.
He uses his powerful online presence to end mass incarceration in his region locally and has A LOT to say about AI (but unlike most people who talk about AI, the things he says are novel). He’s actively promoting AI automation in his local community to help small businesses.
Will is my first guest who’s crazy enough to put his real name out there in this unsafe space for people trying to be authentically human in an increasingly sterile world run by robots and people who act like them. I applaud him for that.
I’m not ready to put my real name out there yet. (Someday.)
MMM: Welcome, Will.
Will: Good to be here. Thanks.
MMM and Will spent the first ten minutes debating the merits and logistics of recording the conversation. They settled on doing so, even though MMM knew goddam well that he wouldn’t be able to take the next step and produce an acceptable audio episode.
MMM: Now that we’re recording, can you give everyone a sense of how you came to be?
Will: Well, about 34 years ago my parents got together, and you know how those things go. That’s the biological aspect. We could go back to the Big Bang…
MMM: For the sake of time, let’s start with your college years. How did you become so fascinated with people? I know that’s what led you to tech.
Will: Yes, I studied psychology. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, but I wanted to have an impact on the world. I saw on George Mason University’s website a master’s program called “Human Factors and Cognition.” I took a mental note.
Smart phones came out my senior year of undergrad, and I discovered that these powerful devices weren’t developed in a vacuum but based on human psychology. I went back to that website and had a eureka moment.
MMM: Oh, really? The last time I had one of those, I started seeing code like in The Matrix. It luckily wore off.
Will: Not quite like that, but it turned out the master’s program was just a really expensive networking thing. I didn’t learn anything new about how to do research and so on.
MMM: The pointlessness of higher ed is becoming a running theme these days.
Will: Yeah, and it was all too much when I thought about the stakes of working in human-centered design in the context of Three Mile Island, for example. Too much pressure. So, I moved into user experience design (UX), which is adjacent but focuses specifically on digital design and not so much on the shape of airplane cockpits, etc.
MMM: This is where we overlap. I loved psychology starting in high school but didn’t go that route in college. When I got into UX much later, though, the connection to behavioral psychology was my favorite part.
Will: It’s the best part. I didn’t like pushing pixels as a UXer. I liked talking to people and learning what it all fucking means. I love how you can structure a study to optimize your ability to learn something in an environment. I would deconstruct research methodologies and determine which one was most useful in a given context. Most researchers in academia don’t follow that approach—they use the same dry methods and focus on the esoteric.
MMM: I would try to dumb this down for our audience, but I’m not 100 percent sure I know what you’re saying myself. It sounds good, though.
Will: With UX research, you’re just trying to get more money—not unlock secrets of the universe. The competitive nature of business means you must be fast and dirty, so you get a lot of opportunity to practice and improve.
MMM: Okay, you got me back when you said “money.” Even the dumbest dumbass can understand that part. So, you’re saying that academic research is useless because there’s no money in it (or behind it), but that’s not the case with UX, which is all about money?
Will: That’s a very crude and reductionist summary, but we can move on.
MMM: I’ll decide when we move on. I’m the host. You just keeping talking until I say stop.
Will: What’s the question?
MMM: Do I need to ask a question?
Will: Yes, you do. In UX, especially. We need to know the WHY of things in order to design effective products. And questions have to be fucking on-point for qualitative research. If you don’t ask the right questions, you’re wasting your time (and mine).
MMM: Fair enough. Let’s move on.
Will: Just one other point. We haven’t talked about AI yet…
MMM: Oh, for fuck’s sake!
Will: With generative AI, what you put in is what you get out. You have to prompt AI by asking the right questions the same way you have to prompt a human research subject. Practicing the latter is how I got good with AI.
MMM: Why did you get out of UX research if you’re so good?
Will: The reality of research is that most things don’t need research. Often the answers are sitting right in front of us, but no one wants to look at them and take them seriously. It’s not that people don’t know.
Ideas are powerful but not nearly as powerful as words spoken, and words spoken aren’t nearly as powerful as actions taken. Actions carve reality. Words can get you there, but it’s not enough to just have the right words. As someone who did research for so many years, I’ve been trying to do the opposite: How do I act in the smallest way to get us toward the end goal eventually?
MMM: If you’re implying that by doing research all the time, we won’t get to the point where we’re actually DOING SOMETHING, I couldn’t agree more.
I left the field for a much simpler reason: I couldn’t get a job no matter how many times I applied, and nothing feels closer to DOING NOTHING than failing to get a job. I wish I could do more to help others cut through all the bullshit so that they don’t go through what I did.
Will: Everyone deserves agency. Everyone deserves the right to have control over their own work and over how they get that work done. I think the old models are going to die. What we know about systems is that change fucks up a system.
I watched the difference in me between being an employee and being given the freedom to exert my own intentions and actions in the world. When I worked for someone else, I used to have long stretches of no productivity, but now that I own my own work, I only have to ask myself permission to do it.
MMM: What’s it like working for yourself?
Will: Well, I’m not very good at sales, so it’s hard to line up work. When I left corporate America, I had my LLC ready and went to town—but I couldn’t make the case that research was useful to small businesses. My tasks multiplied quickly. No small business can do everything.
Now I make the case for AI and automated processes for clients who often ask why they need those things as small-town business owners. Fredericksburg, VA, isn’t exactly the tech-savvy capital of the world.
It might not make full business sense to focus solely on my hometown region, but it’s giving me the life I want. Because I know the people I’m around will still be there in 10 or 20 years. That makes my life and choices hit very differently than the corporate hellscape you and I have walked away from.
I don’t feel underemployed: I feel passionate. I’m fortunate that I don’t have to worry about money due to the injustice of inheritance laws. I have faith-based confidence in what I’m doing.
MMM: I know a big part of your work is putting yourself out there online, which I know firsthand can be tough. You don’t trust try to sell services but controversial ideas like ending mass incarceration. How do you handle blowback?
Will: I deal with it by listening to what people are saying. When I hear some type of criticism, I try to unpack it. I ask follow-up questions. I reflect on why I didn’t get the outcome I was hoping for.
People say they think I’m crazy based on what I post online. Anyone can say anything. but unless you follow it up with action, you’re not a reasonable human being. I believe we should show up with kindness when it’s appropriate, but when we encounter a false story, we must eviscerate the story.
It’s not that there isn’t support. People just need to be made more aware. They haven’t gone down the rabbit holes I have gone down. That’s okay, those rabbit holes are there when they decide to go down them.
I produced so much content that it’s too much for anyone to go through unless they want to commit a couple of hours—and that’s just what I did in three months.
I might have to go through suffering, but some people close to me are already suffering (in prison). It’s a war. The other side pretends it’s not a war, but they keep hurting us.
If I could send a simple message to the people in power, it would be “do better.”
MMM: I’m going to leave it there, even though I know we’ve only scratched the surface—of quite a lot of things. I’ll have you back on when I figure out how to produce a proper audio podcast.
Will: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.
SUMMARY: Not much more needs to be said. I’m pro-technology if it makes our lives easier while keeping our humanity intact. And I’ve been against mass incarceration for a very long time. If you’re not, you must be some kind of a sadist—or a Republican.
To find out more about Will’s anti-incarceration work, visit: https://linktr.ee/uncagerrj
To check out his AI-powered innovation work, visit: https://mfgrowth.ai/
Great talking with you as always Madman! May we all see the light of a new dawn one day