Michael Ducker and Noah Levin get into the practical mechanics of bringing AI into a real business. Michael shares the story behind his work building open source emoji at Twitter, then digs into why AI is creating real disillusionment even as it transforms how work gets done.

They walk through what it actually takes to get IT and a skeptical team on board, and the step-by-step process for turning a single AI session into a reusable skill through a technique called hill climbing.

The conversation lands on the real shift underway: agents moving from single-player tools into something teams build and share together, changing what it means to be a worker at all.

You’ll hear:

• Three reasons AI adoption is creating disillusionment right now
• How to get IT comfortable with AI tools through proxies and access controls
• What a skill really is, and how to build one using the hill climbing technique
• Moving from single player AI use to building agents with a team
• Where to start automating real business processes, from knowledge bases to full agent workflows

Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:01) Michael's role in bringing open source emoji to the web

(04:36) Three reasons AI is causing disillusionment

(08:46) The trust question: giving AI access to email and bank accounts

(11:11) The founding story of Valet

(15:22) What actually sells AI adoption to a team

(19:35) Building a shared folder as the foundation for team AI adoption

(21:54) What a skill is and how to build one through hill climbing

(32:43) Graduating to agent builder, and where to start with agents in your business

Resources:
Valet — Episode Sponsor

Valet turns repeatable business processes into agents that work where your team already does—across Slack, email, calendars, and the tools you use every day. Try the Calendar Research agent, which researches who you’re meeting and sends the context you need directly to Slack before the conversation.

Set up Calendar Research with Valet

https://dashboard.valet.dev/deploy/calendar-research

Valet — own the business, not the busy-ness.

Follow Valet on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/valetdotdev/

Valet Website: https://valet.dev/

Connect with Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miradu/

Connect with Michael in person at Agent Builders Breakfast: https://agentbuildersbreakfast.com/

Connect with Noah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahlevin/

Serious People Website: https://seriouspeople.ai/

Most AI content is tech people talking to tech people. Serious People is different.

This is for the operators actually running things — selling supplements, managing caregivers, coordinating field crews. Real businesses with bad data, compliance headaches, and employees who've heard it all before.

Host Noah Levin spent almost twenty years inside complex operations at Amazon, Whole Foods, and healthcare tech. Now he sits down with operators who've done the work: what broke, what they tried, what it cost, and whether it actually paid off.

No hype. No magic prompts. No pretending the hard part is picking a model. Just AI, inside a real business, from people who run one.

New episodes start this month. Subscribe now.

Resources:

Connect with Noah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahlevin/

Noah’s Website: https://www.noahlevin.com/

Serious People Website: https://seriouspeople.ai/