$4 million for an AI executive assistant?

That's an expensive Olive

That’s the list-price cost for two months of “Olive,” an AI assistant built by entrepreneur Bill Nguyen and his team. Olive answers his emails, books meetings and travel, and even buys groceries.

Olive runs on subsidized token prices, and its cost will come down. Possibly even below the $150K per year for a human EA. But I'm skeptical for two reasons:

1. Judgment. The best EA I ever had didn't just manage my calendar. She moved low priority meetings without being asked, blocked extra travel time because she knew I ran late, and stood outside my door to remind me my next meeting had arrived.

2. Reliability. Bill's EA occasionally "goes rogue," making odd choices or sending random emails. For a job whose point is to save people’s time, mixing up a critical meeting or picking the wrong flight is a brutal error.

The natural starting point are doing basic tasks for people who can't afford a human.

I'm most curious with how we’ll handle AI assistant mistakes. Will AI make a convenient scapegoat, or will we blame the executive who chose it?

Will execs be proud to use an AI assistant, or hide them in the background?