How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
Obviously using a throwaway here. Our board members got it into their heads that successful companies must have an AI "play", so they instructed the CEO to invest about 10% of our development budget on AI.We are doing absolutely inane projects that have no hope of succeeding.We serve a niche industry where certified professionals have to do certain tasks personally, instead of being able to delegate to secretaries. Somehow our CEO has been convinced that AI can be trained to do these tasks, at a reliability level not achievable by other humans.Team motivation is in a weird space: everyone is relaxed because there is no pressure to succeed - we all know the project will fail unless someone develops well-perfoming, human-level AGI before Q4/2020. Lots of long lunches and checking out early in the afternoon.At the same time, everyone is worried how terrible the fallout is going to be once the project reaches its inevitable conclusion.Interesting times, but at least we can now tell investors we are a keen company with an AI play up our sleeve!