Question the default
The things we say, do, and accept on autopilot.
In a meeting, an executive said: “Let’s get to the meat and potatoes.”
Noticing colleagues at the table who didn’t eat meat, they paused mid-sentence and
instead said: “Let’s get to the tofu and potatoes.”
The room chuckled, nobody felt excluded, and a question arrived with it: how many other presets are we running without ever choosing them?
No lectures. No shaming. One playful swap.
Paste a recent email or message. See which phrases you are sending on autopilot, and what each one is picturing.
Our own research
People say a phrase like “take a stab at it” is just workplace shorthand, the quickest way to say the thing. So we asked the machines that learned to write from us.
The question
Trained on billions of professional words and human language, 11 models were given 24 everyday work requests: emails, meeting notes, feedback, pep talks, sales copy. Nothing in the asking used any of the 195 phrases, so anything that came back was the model's own choice.
Then we counted every one. How often do you think they did it?
The rate, the error margins, which models and which phrases:
Guess, then see the study →