This week might have been a new high for AI-enabled estate-settlement companies reaching out to me with story pitches. That this influx comes on the heels of my, let’s say, less-than-friendly account of what AI can “really” do to help with this insanely complex process says all you really need to know about the current state of GenAI. I wrote that most of these new estate-planning AIs were borderline useless, and all these companies heard was, “This guy is writing about AI estate settlement! Let’s get him to write about ours!”
Fantastic.
Over the last four years, I’ve interviewed my fair share of first-generation funeral directors, and they fall (very) loosely into three categories: Someone who took a high school job cutting grass or answering phones at their local funeral home, someone who was enticed by the job the way anyone is enticed to go into any profession, and people who had a profound experience of loss and were either very impressed (or disappointed) by the service.
It’s the m…