A Founder Announces a Company That Will Use No AI

Summary

In a letter dated October 2026, Kent Walters announces plans to start a company that will use no artificial intelligence in its work. The company would avoid AI for writing documentation, code, websites, deployment, email, meeting summaries, call transcription, résumé screening, LinkedIn posts, sales outreach and call preparation. It would also avoid software engineers in favor of webmasters, secretaries and notetakers, with employees relying heavily on email, paper memos and manually recorded information. Walters says the resulting organization would be slow, error-prone and burdened by repetitive work, with low margins and a culture centered on seniority and waterfall development. He describes it as a time capsule, museum and potential source of untouched reinforcement-learning training data that it would not sell. The letter frames the project as an intentionally obsolete institution, invoking occupations such as lamplighters, coachmen, ivory carvers and phrenologists. Its tone is deliberately satirical, presenting the rejection of AI as both an organizational principle and a performance of resistance to technological change.