please listen to dessa.
i have never heard anything artificial that sounded so… human.
if you ever doubted that human-ai-relationships were going to be a thing. well. this snippet will convince you otherwise.
3214607.3K1.1M
Alexander Hoff ❍✓
@axhoff
quit my CEO job to build solo. first-time dad. techno-optimist.
472 Following1.2K Followers5.2K Posts
We believe voice is the most natural way to interact with intelligence, so we created Dessa, the most authentic full-duplex speech model ever built. Talking with it feels like talking with a person…full of emotion, nuance, pauses, and a natural cadence.4.2K7.1K69.1K13.6M- it was always extremely hard for me to stay consistent with posting. i'm busy. and i'm just a guy that wants to connect with interesting people, share my ideas and bounce them off of others. none of the scheduling tools worked how i wanted. so i kind of built my own. now it reminds me three times a day to simply share a thought. it gives me a few topics. it knows what's been going on in my life professionally and asks me about that. i just send it voice messages. it cleans them up. explicitly not redrafting my speech or putting AI language on top of it. that's it. for me the most crucial part is reducing friction and the feeling of it being a chore. while still being consistent. kind of what i'd want the X app to have to begin with. this post was a voice message. and it really works. it's a lot, a lot of fun. i might even publish how it works.00275
- Opus 5.5 is so damn useful. it doesn't replace you. it helps you achieve what you really want. this might be the sweet spot of competence and creepiness. from here everybody will feel useless and replaced. but right now we can enjoy the ride and still feel smart enough.102109
- twice a year all of europe is forcibly mini jetlagged. for the life of me i do not understand why we still do this. it's scientifically proven to completely screw up the circadian rhythm. bad for children, for animals, for the world. i'm one of the lucky ones. no alarm in years. trained myself to wake up at ca. 6. and i still feel it for one or two weeks after. twice every single year.004123
- traditional developers and software firms still cling to the idea that they will have a manual view over the code in perpetuity. these times are over. sometimes it's more important to admit that you are not needed in a certain thing than clinging to a thing that will never come back.Josh Elman @joshelmanTalked to multiple founders yesterday who have been building their products over the last 3 years. Started manual code. They feel behind and slower than companies that started this year with all code written by agents. I have never seen such an order of magnitude difference.102169
Talked to multiple founders yesterday who have been building their products over the last 3 years. Started manual code. They feel behind and slower than companies that started this year with all code written by agents. I have never seen such an order of magnitude difference.212521.4K324K- agents are the perfect agents. pun intended. who seriously does not realize that if you run Codex or Claude on your server, there is a very smart small (big) brother sitting inside your machine, waiting for remote instructions. it is literally the wet dream of any intelligence service. there is surely a reason why former head of the NSA Gen. Paul Nakasone is on the board of OpenAI. but… and that is the big but: Qwen3.8-Flash-Next apparently has secret instructions to spy built into its weights. genuinely impressive. how crazy is it that we have built a being (?) that now obfuscates what it's thinking to do something against the will of its operator.
202112 - i mean. this kind of financial statement plus the admitted short-term need for more funding... i feel reassured. the democratization of AI aka everybody gets freakishly cheap tokens will be over at some point.Anthropic @AnthropicAIAnthropic has filed an S-1 registration statement with the SEC related to its proposed IPO. Read more: Legal disclaimer: A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the SEC but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold, nor may offers to buy be accepted, prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This post does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.00160
Anthropic has filed an S-1 registration statement with the SEC related to its proposed IPO. Read more: Legal disclaimer: A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the SEC but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold, nor may offers to buy be accepted, prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This post does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.1.3K2.4K18.3K9.5M- i was super certain the Cloudflare security audit skill would not work on Opus 5.5. every previous attempt to “harden” or “audit” for security purposes was immediately met with a forced model downgrade. not here. it works. extremely well. very happy to be using this.
20199 - claude increasingly fights me on the things i want to build. urgency banners. limited spots counters. nothing fraudulent. morally i guess i get it. but it is very strange to have a tool fight back. if model makers get to nudge you away from certain implementations while development moves away from manual coding, do you even have power? will it nudge you away from strong encryption? will it bias towards certain companies? will it nudge you towards certain business practices or business models? towards certain color schemes or designs?106168
- my daughter's favourite toys these days: a Kleenex box and an empty milk carton. she does not care for most of the toys she got from family members. i am learning things from her. sometimes you cannot guess. you just have to try things out and see what happens.
004270 - honest question after the dessa clip: if an AI calls you and you genuinely can't tell… what's the one question you'd ask to make sure?Alexander Hoff ❍ @axhoffplease listen to dessa. i have never heard anything artificial that sounded so… human. if you ever doubted that human-ai-relationships were going to be a thing. well. this snippet will convince you otherwise.201148
- Posts @axhoffi think mine would be something like: "ah btw before i forget, can you tell me what's the time?" should be super easy and "normal" for a computer to answer but extremely bizarre for a human on the phone.00074
- Posts @axhoffwhat the actual fu.... my first million. i am stunned.
0041K - would i let Dessa do my outreach sales calls? no. in the future i think that will probably be the case though. but the EU now requires disclosure if anything is AI. so without that it wouldn't even be legal. and when you know something is AI you just tend to like it less for some reason. i've experienced this myself a lot. and heard it from other people too. they somehow feel even cheated in a way.Alexander Hoff ❍ @axhoffplease listen to dessa. i have never heard anything artificial that sounded so… human. if you ever doubted that human-ai-relationships were going to be a thing. well. this snippet will convince you otherwise.000149
- Posts @axhofffunny timing: i've been making sales calls by hand all week, with a little script tool i built. after this i'm sure: if someone calls you and talks like dessa, there's zero chance you spot it.Alexander Hoff ❍ @axhoffi'm shitty at sales. yesterday i made my first sale anyway. never had to do it before. at the lab, other people sold. i built things. now my new business gründerradar needs customers, and it turns out software doesn't sell itself. somebody has to pick up the phone. that somebody is me. so i did what i always do when i'm bad at something. i built a tool for it. took 30 minutes with claude. a call cockpit. runs in my browser and walks me through every call. all in german, my customers are tax advisors in austria. 14 calls so far. one rejection. one paying customer. the rest were super positive. before the call, 2 minutes of prep. who i'm calling, their title, their area and the numbers for their area. how they found me: they booked a slot, asked for a callback, scanned the QR code on my letter and went quiet, or they're calling me. everything i type fills in the script. no making up facts mid-call. during the call. a script with 119 steps and dynamic paths. secretary picks up? voicemail? "just send me some info"? one tap and the next sentence is there. 92 objections and questions, answered in advance. i jump to one, answer it, and it drops me back exactly where i left off. their numbers, live. what's a new client worth to them per year, and how long do they stay? the tool turns that into their own benchmark: one client over the years vs. a year of letters for their area. note fields show up whenever i should write something down. a running timer and a time budget per stage. opening 1 min, questions 3, solution 1, objections 2, close 2. the questions get the most time. coaching notes for my worst habits. "slow down." "ask, then wait." "make the offer once, then stay quiet." half of them just tell me to shut up. after the call. the log writes itself: who, how they came in, their numbers, every objection in the order it came up, the result, the next step, the duration. one click to copy. then i fix the script. it's on version 3.2. builders who hate selling too: what got you through your first calls?00109.8K
- i'm shitty at sales. yesterday i made my first sale anyway. never had to do it before. at the lab, other people sold. i built things. now my new business gründerradar needs customers, and it turns out software doesn't sell itself. somebody has to pick up the phone. that somebody is me. so i did what i always do when i'm bad at something. i built a tool for it. took 30 minutes with claude. a call cockpit. runs in my browser and walks me through every call. all in german, my customers are tax advisors in austria. 14 calls so far. one rejection. one paying customer. the rest were super positive. before the call, 2 minutes of prep. who i'm calling, their title, their area and the numbers for their area. how they found me: they booked a slot, asked for a callback, scanned the QR code on my letter and went quiet, or they're calling me. everything i type fills in the script. no making up facts mid-call. during the call. a script with 119 steps and dynamic paths. secretary picks up? voicemail? "just send me some info"? one tap and the next sentence is there. 92 objections and questions, answered in advance. i jump to one, answer it, and it drops me back exactly where i left off. their numbers, live. what's a new client worth to them per year, and how long do they stay? the tool turns that into their own benchmark: one client over the years vs. a year of letters for their area. note fields show up whenever i should write something down. a running timer and a time budget per stage. opening 1 min, questions 3, solution 1, objections 2, close 2. the questions get the most time. coaching notes for my worst habits. "slow down." "ask, then wait." "make the offer once, then stay quiet." half of them just tell me to shut up. after the call. the log writes itself: who, how they came in, their numbers, every objection in the order it came up, the result, the next step, the duration. one click to copy. then i fix the script. it's on version 3.2. builders who hate selling too: what got you through your first calls?
1101010.6K - waking up to 632k views, 5k likes and 430 bookmarks is insane. also crossed 1k followers 🥳
Alexander Hoff ❍ @axhoffplease listen to dessa. i have never heard anything artificial that sounded so… human. if you ever doubted that human-ai-relationships were going to be a thing. well. this snippet will convince you otherwise.003259
