Donkey Work – What I Actually Want AI to Do

I’ve been using the term “donkey work” a lot lately, and some of you have been asking what I mean by it. Fair enough. Let me explain.

When I started paying attention to AI, I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t want it writing for me. I didn’t want it making my videos or drafting my newsletters. That’s the work I love. That’s the stuff I wake up wanting to do. If I hand that off to a machine, what’s left?

But I also realized I spend hours every day on stuff that has nothing to do with creation. Resetting a customer’s password. Chasing down links for a blog post. Formatting show notes. Updating spreadsheets. Processing email. None of that is creative work. It’s necessary, but it’s not why I’m here.

That’s donkey work. The administrative tedium that fills your day and keeps you from the work that actually matters to you.

And here’s what I’ve figured out. The current state of AI is really good at donkey work. Not perfect, but good. If you spend some time setting things up, you can get AI to handle a surprising amount of the tedium.

I’m talking about real, practical stuff you can do today. Not someday. Today.

The big AI companies are so busy talking about artificial general intelligence and curing cancer that they’re skipping over the boring part.

Right now, Claude can process my email. It can triage my task list. It can process a customer service request. It can look up information I need for a blog post in seconds instead of the 20 minutes it used to take me. That’s not science fiction. That’s today.

I don’t look at AI as a replacement for me. I look at it as a way to get my time back. Every hour I save on donkey work is an hour I can spend writing, recording, or teaching. That’s the trade I’m making, and so far it’s a good one.

You’ll be hearing more about this from me. I’m living at the sharp end of this stuff every day, testing what works and what doesn’t.

But I wanted to put a name on the concept because I think it changes how you think about AI. Stop asking “Can AI do my job?” Start asking, “Can AI do the parts of my job I don’t want to do?”

For a lot of us, the answer is already yes. The solutions to your tedium problems might be closer than you think.

The Apple March 4 Experience

Apple just announced a “special Apple Experience” on March 4 in New York, London, and Shanghai. Not an “event.” An “experience.”

The rumor mill has up to nine new products in play: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and Max, MacBook Air with M5, iPhone 17e, two new iPads, a budget MacBook with an A18 chip, a refreshed Studio Display, a new Apple TV, and a HomePod mini 2. That’s a lot of hardware, and I doubt we’ll see all (or perhaps any?) of it on March 4.

Part of me wants this to be the big HomePod moment. A proper smart speaker with a proper Siri. But we still haven’t seen a successful Siri brain transplant, so I suspect that’s still a ways off.

If I had to bet a nickel, I’d say the headliner is the M5 MacBook Pro and new Studio Displays. If you’ve been following my posts on M5 AI performance, you know I think this chip is a big deal. March 4 might be the day we get real specs and a ship date.

Mac Power Users 836: Welcome, Stephen

On this episode of Mac Power Users, I officially welcome Stephen Robles as co-host, exploring his background in music, podcasting, and his Mac setup. Then, rapid-fire questions, putting Stephen on the spot for some Apple hot takes!

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

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Why the M5 Matters If You Run AI Locally

Apple says the M5 delivers 4X the peak GPU compute for AI compared to the M4. Most tech sites reported the number and moved on. I don’t think people have fully grasped what this means for running AI locally.

The gain isn’t just faster cores. Apple put a Neural Accelerator in every GPU core. I’ve been running local models through MLX on my M2 Mac for a while now, but barely. The M5 turns local AI from “it works, I guess” into something that feels responsive.

There’s a timing angle here too. NAND and memory prices jumped 55-60% in Q1 2026, and the industry expects them to keep climbing. If you want a Mac with serious memory for local AI work, buying now might save you real money over waiting for the M6 or M7. Future machines could carry a much higher price tag for the same RAM.

I look at these numbers, and then I look at my M2 Mac Studio, and I’m raising an eyebrow. The M2 was great when I bought it. But 4X faster prompt processing with purpose-built AI hardware? That’s the kind of gap that makes you start browsing the Apple Store at midnight.

If you have zero interest in local AI, the M5 is just another chip upgrade. But if you’re running models, experimenting with MLX, or thinking about it, this is the first Mac where Apple clearly built the GPU around AI. And with memory prices headed where they’re headed, the window to get in at current pricing might not stay open.

A (Retired) Lawyer’s Take on Claude’s Legal Plugin

Anthropic recently released a legal plugin for Claude that handles contract review, NDA triage, and compliance workflows. The day it dropped, Thomson Reuters fell 16%, LegalZoom crashed 20%, and Wolters Kluwer lost 13%. Wall Street noticed. As a guy who spent 30 years practicing law, so did I.

I’ve thought for a long time that transactional law is the area most likely to get disrupted by AI. Contracts follow patterns. They use known language.

The donkey work of reviewing a standard NDA or employment agreement is exactly the kind of thing Claude and other LLMs are good at. Feed it a contract, ask it to flag the problems. It does a surprisingly decent job.

I know there are things a wily attorney picks up that AI just isn’t sophisticated enough to catch. The weird clause buried on page 12 that changes the entire deal. The missing indemnification language that only matters if things go sideways. The stuff you learn to spot after you’ve been burned by it once. AI doesn’t have scar tissue. Lawyers do.

But the routine stuff? Absolutely. Let AI handle first-pass review. Let it draft the boilerplate. Let it compare versions and catch what changed.

That’s real, useful work that used to cost clients hundreds of dollars an hour. AI doing it faster and cheaper is a good thing.

The danger is when people skip the lawyer entirely.

I can already see the lawsuits forming. Someone uses an AI tool to draft a partnership agreement. It looks professional. It reads like a real contract. They sign it.

Six months later they discover the AI missed something critical, or included language that means something different than they thought. Now they’re in trouble.

And here’s the part that keeps me up at night. If your attorney makes that mistake, you have recourse. Legal malpractice exists for a reason. There’s insurance. There’s accountability.

But if your AI-drafted contract has a fatal flaw, where do you go for relief? Who do you sue? The chatbot? Good luck with that.

We’re heading into a period where people are going to trust AI contracts the way they trust Google searches. Confidently and without much thought.

Some of those people are going to get hurt. Not because the technology is bad, but because they treated it like a lawyer when it’s really just a very fast research assistant.

Use AI for contract review. I do. But treat it like a first draft, not a final opinion. The donkey work is AI’s job now. The thinking is still yours (and your attorneys).

Good Grief!, Siri.

Bloomberg reports that the new Gemini-powered Siri features planned for iOS 26.4 are being pushed back. Some to iOS 26.5 in May. Some to iOS 27 in September.

Have you ever felt like Charlie Brown running to kick the football, only to notice, at the last minute, that Lucy is holding it?

Letterpress in a Digital World (Sponsor: Hoban Press)

This post is brought to you by Hoban Press, makers of beautiful letterpress business cards and stationery.

I’ve been handing out Hoban Cards for years. Every single time, the person on the receiving end pauses. They rub their thumb across the card. They comment on it. A business card shouldn’t be a conversation starter, but a Hoban Card is.

That’s because these aren’t printed on some office inkjet. Evan Calkins and his team in the Pacific Northwest hand-feed every card into antique cast iron letterpresses, some over 100 years old. The cards are printed on thick cotton stock. Crane’s Lettra, 600gsm. You can feel the impression of each letter pressed into the paper. It’s the opposite of everything digital, and that’s exactly why it works.

Hoban Cards has over 50 templates to choose from, starting at $65. You pick a design, customize your details, and they print a short run on real letterpress equipment. If you want something fully custom with your own branding and layout, they do that too. They also print stationery, thank you notes, wedding invitations, coasters, and even clothing tags.

Since the last time Hoban sponsored the blog, I’ve discovered a new use for their stationery. I have a 1950s era typewriter, and I’ve started using it to hammer out notes to friends on Hoban stationery cards. The combination of typewritten letters pressed into that thick, embossed cotton stock looks incredible. There’s a physicality to it that you just can’t get any other way. People tell me they keep them.

I work in tech all day. I love my devices. But there’s a reason I keep ordering from Hoban. Some things are better when they’re analog.

If you’ve been thinking about getting proper business cards or stationery that people actually want to hold onto, check out Hoban Press. Use the code MacSparky for $10 off your order.