This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Allie K. Miller, the CEO of Open Machine, based in New York, about her daily routine. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
I studied cognitive science at Dartmouth College and completed a three-year independent study in machine learning and natural-language processing, graduating in 2010. I later earned my MBA from Wharton.
In 2016, I joined IBM Watson as a product manager, eventually becoming a lead product manager, and launched IBM’s first multimodal AI team. In 2019, I joined Amazon Web Services, where I worked as the global head of machine learning for startups and venture capital for three and a half years.
I founded Open Machine in 2022 after leaving AWS. Open Machine is focused on business transformation at scale. What I want most is for people to rethink how they work and achieve more than just 10%-15% productivity gains.
Here’s a day in my life running my company in New York City.
I wake up around 8 a.m.
Because my AI system has been working for me all night, I have the flexibility to stay in bed for the first 30 minutes of my day and avoid 9 a.m. client meetings. That first hour and a half is triage mode, where I look at escalations.
I have a morning briefing that gives me a rundown of the day: the weather, what to wear, and how to manage my energy. It also helps block out work-free time, so I can get deep work done before I have to be out the door.
For my personal life, the briefing also gives outfit ideas based on the local weather and suggests funky activities in whatever city I’m in — a recent San Francisco briefing surfaced pianos scattered through a botanical garden. I want it to help me make room for those experiences, too.
I don’t have a set breakfast time, and it’s grab-and-go. Today, I had Trader Joe’s egg bites. My fridge is filled with protein and sustenance I can grab in less than two minutes. Sometimes I order DoorDash avocado toast.
I have about 34 AI agents working for me
They’re connected to my goals, decisions, meeting transcripts, email, Google Docs, Notion, and other contexts. They run off prompts, decide what smart things to do, and then send me a summary email. The same thing happens in Slack, where our Claude agents will ping me with updates.
I use Codex Live Voice Mode — a voice interface for my entire AI workforce — to triage whatever needs my attention. That might mean going through emails, reviewing research papers, or pulling from meeting transcripts and my daily brain dumps to build and edit a client recap.
I don’t use live voice every morning, but when I’m doing my makeup, it’s a great time to talk through things. Sometimes I’ll also catch up on podcasts or YouTube.
By around 10 a.m., I’ve usually triaged dozens of emails
I’ve also handled any urgent fires, had at least one internal sync, and done an alignment session with my AI system. From there, I’m focused on prioritized, goal-aligned outcomes. We may be working on programs a few weeks or a month out, but with how quickly AI is moving, we’re not really planning a year in advance.
I work from home most days. When possible, I’ll go out for what we call a ‘Claude walk.’ I’ll walk for an hour while talking to AI, or catching up on calls with a recruiter, an accountant, an agent, or a client. We also have an AI consulting firm that lets us drop into their office whenever we want, so sometimes we’ll work from there.
During lunch, my assistant and I will usually do an energy boost of 60 jumps
Or we’ll turn on a karaoke song — today it was ABBA — or laugh about something in pop culture. Lunch is usually DoorDash, and we keep cranking.
Even when I was at Amazon and IBM, I wasn’t taking leisurely lunches, so that part hasn’t really changed. What has changed is that I can fire off a task to AI and then go eat for 20 minutes.
After lunch, I’ll usually meet with one or two clients. I might have press interviews, a keynote, or a board meeting, so almost every day includes some kind of client-facing work.
I want to transform a billion people and businesses
My core revenue comes from working with Fortune 500 enterprises, but I think it’s incredibly important to bring those aggregated learnings back to the rest of the world, so the middle of my day is often spent creating social media content.
I’m active across all social platforms, have a popular newsletter (“AI with Allie”), and have started experimenting with daily two to three-minute voice notes to thousands of my followers. I’ve educated my followers on AI for the last decade and am always thinking about how to deliver the most value to my AI-curious, passionate audience.
At around 2:15, I get a pop-up with my entire inbox triage
There are usually around 30 emails, and I can quickly dictate or type whatever I want to say. Little scheduling and admin tasks like that pop up throughout the day.
My apartment is filled with a thousand colored Post-its
I found a six-foot-long whiteboard on the street that’s now in my living room, and it’s utter bliss. We’ll AirPlay different AI outputs to the TV, and throughout the day, I’m constantly dictating to AI or taking photos of things I’ve written to give it more context.
At the end of the day, we’ll often do another energy boost and then go through our entire list while AI listens. We’ll assign tasks for the AI to work on overnight.
I work with a personal trainer once a week
I use the walking pad pretty often and go on long walks during the day.
I have a gym in my building, so I’ll usually do weights after work.
If I have no plans, I can end up working until 2 to 5 in the morning
If I go to bed at 5 a.m., which happens pretty often, I’ll wake up around 11 a.m., so I can at least get six hours of sleep.
We just did a massive workshop with Mark Cuban for 25,000 people, and that’s the kind of thing where I’ll put in extra effort every night leading up to it because I have a really high bar.
If I have plans, like a recent Olivia Dean concert, I’ll wrap around 5 or 6 p.m.
There are plenty of client dinners, Yankees games, and other events on my schedule.
At home, I’ll usually take a walking AI break around 6 p.m., catch up with family and friends around 7:30 p.m., and work again until about 11 p.m.
For dinner, I almost always order Thai or Vietnamese food
I most often order a chicken banh mi with extra pickled daikon. Honestly, a lot of my work is powered by DoorDash and Diet Coke.
My goal is to have the funkiest weekend possible
I’m a Broadway-loving former college a cappella singer living in one of the greatest cities in the world for the arts, so I try to get as much exposure to them as possible. That might mean seeing a theater show, going to Marie’s Crisis, and staying out until 2 a.m., singing Broadway songs.
Every weekend, I’ll do at least one strange thing that breaks me out of my comfort zone or teaches me something new.
Every Thursday, AI also sends me a list of weird things happening around New York. Recent options have included a puppet fair, an interactive rock musical, a puzzle variety show, a magic show, and a paper lamp workshop.
