---
author: a16z
date: '2026-09-29'
guest: ''
layout: post.njk
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T5sij3spWw
speaker: a16z
tags:
- ai-agent
- personal-assistant
- benchmark
- business-model
title: 个人 AI 智能体的演进、主动性与商业模式探讨
summary: 对话探讨了消费级个人 AI 智能体的发展脉络、Assistant Bench 基准测试、主动性壁垒及性格配置，并分析了长尾初创公司面临的成本挑战与商业化模式。
insight: ''
draft: true
series: ''
category: ai-application
area: tech-engineering
project: []
people:
- David Pollen
companies_orgs:
- A16Z
- OpenAI
products_models:
- ChatGPT
- Muse
- Instinct
- Poke
- Assistant Bench
media_books: []
status: evergreen
---
普通大众并不在乎效率提高 10%。我有一个很大胆的观点：这款 Muse 吊坠实际上并非想在硬件游戏上取胜，[音乐] 它更多是为了在真实世界中收集数据，以此推动扎克伯格构建真实世界图景的未来元宇宙。
Original English
the general population does not care about being 10% more efficient. I have a hot take thesis that this Muse charm is actually less about trying to win the hardware game [music] and it's more about data collection in the real world to fuel Zuckerberg's future metaverse of mapping out the actual world.
Original English
>> We were joking internally like we're days away from an agent messaging someone saying I noticed you weren't that into her so I went ahead and broke up with her.
Original English
>> There is massive defensibility around proactivity. I was biking to work. I want to get stuff done and I just start talking to chat GBT voice and throughout my 30-minute bike ride to work categorized my emails submitted them to different labels sent out calendar invites got to the desk inbox zero but it will be a very fine line because if you cross that line once you lose all trust with your user
Original English
>> does feel like there's going to be infrastructure and products that exist only for agentto agent interactions that doesn't exist today what do you think
Original English
>> it is inevitable that we're going to see
Original English
All right, welcome to the A16Z show. I'm so psyched to be here with my friend David Pollen. We hung a couple of weeks ago. We're both so enthusiastic about everything that's been happening with personal assistant um and consumer AI generally. And man, so much has happened in the last couple of weeks. Maybe to tee it up, you know, I sort of think that there's been a few moments where some part of the, you know, ecosystem has sort of seen God. Um and chatbt was a big one. And you know, I think for a lot of folks in November 22 and a bit of 23, it was like, what is this thing that can, you know, write emails and poems and, you know, start to have a conversation back and forth and feel like you're interacting with the synthetic person? That was of course the the beginning, the big bang. Um, the second moment really was coding agents and everything that developers have been obsessed with around sort of quad code and codecs and the ability to trivially create software. And then finally, most recently with Instinct, Muse, and ChachiPT work, we've had this extraordinary enthusiasm around personal agents and what they can do for us as consumers. So, we're here to talk about all things personal agents. Um, we're going to go as deep as we can. We're going to assume that everybody has seen many of the same things that we have seen and we're going to make this the first in a series of conversations. Welcome, David.
Original English
>> Thank you. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Let's like zoom out and and maybe talk about you know the arc of uh personal agents over the last few months, the last few weeks. What have you been seeing? What's your sort of view on things?
Original English
>> Yeah, so this space has exploded over the past four weeks. We can roll it back. I was I was an early adopter of Poke. So I want to say Poke, which was kind of one of the first like consumer AI agents to really hit the market. Yes. That launched I believe it was September 8th and then I started using it September 11th, like 3 days later. And like I remember it so vividly cuz it was just an unbelievable experience. Their their whole gimmick was this, you know, negotiation with the agent on how much you're actually going to pay. And it totally blew my mind. Um then comes late November and Open Claw gets released and that kind of takes the actual world by storm of like there is there is something coming. And then a few other have popped up here and there, but most recently we saw Instinct really blow up the the tech Twitter bubble. just absolutely rode a wave, went nuts, and then it was just dominoes. You have Grockbot, you have Muse, you have a bunch of longtail ones like Caddy or Ali or Pi. And it's really been amazing to see, you know, this whole tech bubble is just exploding with interest and like an intellectual curiosity for what can these agents do for us on a day-to-day basis. And there's uh I think everyone's kind of in the same boat where nobody really knows like it's it's the wild wild west. We're just playing around here.
Original English
>> I totally agree. And you we should take a moment to talk about Assistant Bench, which is this new, you know, really important and discussed benchmark that you're the author of. Maybe tee up Assistant Bench a little bit and then I'll ask you a few questions.
Original English
>> Assistant Benchmark is a site that essentially compares all these AI assistants on a use case basis. So we're asking all of these assistants the same prompt. Book me a flight to Chicago. find me a vegetarian restaurant within five blocks of my specific location, etc., etc. And we're comparing the actual outcome on like on a oneshot prompt. Does it actually work? Does it ask follow-up questions? How does it perform across 16 different dimensions? And we compare those all. So, it's we use the word benchmark. Think of it more as like a consumerf facing benchmark, not necessarily technical behind the scenes, but if I want to book a flight, which one should I actually use? Who is performing the best? how fast are they actually replying? Got into this whole comparison because I was just doing market research myself trying to figure out how are these all comparing against one another? What are the gaps? And uh published a bit of that and it was uh almost two weeks ago. It's 16 days ago today that we launched it and it's just absolutely exploded. It's, you know, over 100,000 views on the the website has website has had over 100,000 visitors have out had outreach from basically every single founder. Um, and I think it really just goes to show like everyone's curious. People people are looking for for answers to where this industry is is moving.
Original English
>> And so talk us through David. That's incredibly exciting. It's cool to actually It's funny how benchmarks have become such a staple now of the conversation because it's so there's so many launches it's hard to try everything which is also an exciting signal. Maybe talk us through everybody who's not Instinct and Muse. We're definitely going to deep dive on those later, but who else do you think is doing interesting work and what are the kind of directions of specialization that you're seeing?
Original English
>> Totally. So, we've got a bunch of longtail solutions out there. I think I would categorize it into two groups. You have like the BTOC consumerf facing generalized agents. That's like the Instinct or Muse. Um, some of the longer tail ones, you have Caddy, you have Ali, you have Season. Um there's I believe 64 right now just in the general category on the site and then we can break that down even further into a little more specialized within that. So you can have travel specific ones uh like soore or miso. You can have email specific ones. The other side of the spectrum is going to be more of like your B2B workflow type uh assistants. And those are, you know, anyone from the town to catch to Vellum. And they're all essentially doing the same thing, right? They're they're your assistant that's actually like more of like an executive assistant, not not the consumerf facing um approach to it. And that's kind of like the general landscape at the moment. Um, so far to my knowledge there are 122 different ones.
Original English
>> Wow.
Original English
>> Across all the categories.
Original English
>> Incredible. And what about areas of concentration? Where is the most sort of interesting competitive focus?
Original English
>> So everyone right now by and large is focusing on the generaliz like
Original English
>> Yep.
Original English
>> Yeah.
Original English
>> Yeah.
Original English
>> Just trying to do trying to do everything.
Original English
>> And when you think about something like travel, just to pick on that, that's an infrequent high value behavior. Do you think that that category ends up being organized more as a connector into the horizontal agent or do you think they have the right to win as a general horizontal agent as well?
Original English
>> I think you're going to maybe see potentially one winner as as an independent agent, but by and large I really think it is going to be more of a connector. Um, so I have like seven or eight different group chats now with just individuals obsessed with assistants talking. There's now over 1,200 people across all of the group chats just chatting over and over and over. Travel is the fourth most talked about use case, which is really interesting because when you look at
Original English
like
virality,
it
tends
to
be
the
number
one
that
people
are
talking
about
of
it
checked
into
my
flight
for
me.
I
was
able
to
book
my
flight.
But
then
you
actually
look
at
the
day-to-day
conversations
of
what
people
are
really
using
it
for
and
most
curious
about.
To
your
point,
people
aren't
traveling
every
day.
So,
it's
Original English
>> it's
it's
more
of
a
gimmick,
right?
It's
it's
an
attention
grabb.
Original English
>> What
are
use
cases
one
to
three?
So,
number
one
is
more
uh
just
daily
admin
type
stuff,
whether
it's
cleaning
out
your
inbox,
whether
it's
filing
forms
for
you.
Um
the
things
that
are
are
really
annoying
and
I
think
that
gets
to
the
broader
thesis
of
where
I
think
the
winner
of
the
space
will
go
that
that
we
can,
you
know,
touch
on.
Original English
>> Um
the
second
is
going
to
be
more
agent
orchestration,
which
is
really
interesting.
I
think
these
group
chats
are
a
little
biased
as
the
third
one
is
uh
development
focused.
Okay,
Original English
>> these
are
all
group
chats
with
people
in
tech
Twitter,
right?
So,
it's
it's
not
necessarily
representative
of
of
the
world
at
large.
Yeah,
but
uh
people
are
talking
a
ton
about
agent
orchestration
and
how
do
you
find
the
most
efficient
agent
or
how
let
your
agents
talk
to
each
other.
uh
development
agents,
how
does
this
now
translate
to
this
coding
world
on
your
phone?
Whether
it
be,
you
know,
using
claude
code
from
a
text
component
or
even
take
it
one
step
further
of,
okay,
if
I'm
a
designer,
can
I
now
make
edits
to
my
design
files
by
just
like
texting
my
agent
of
like
little
small
iteration
changes?
Original English
>> Yeah.
Original English
>> And
then
the
last
category
being
finance.
Um
I
think
that's
the
most
fun
one
to
look
into
because
it
is
in
my
opinion
the
least
practical.
Like
there's
so
many
decisions
and
right
like
if
you
could
have
an
agent
make
a
billion
dollars
for
you
all
the
hedge
funds
would
be
doing
it.
It's
it's
not
something
that
like
everyone's
going
to
succeed
at
with
their
own
phone.
But
it
is
the
most
interesting
that
you
give
someone
an
agent
a
powerful
tool
right
in
their
hands
and
the
first
thing
they
think
is
okay
how
are
you
going to
make
me
a
million
dollars?
Original English
>> Yeah.
Yeah.
It's
really
interesting
because
one
of the
critiques,
you
know,
Ben
Thompson
was
on
TVPN
a
few
days
ago
talking
about
how
most
consumers
aren't
looking
for
productivity
uh
in
their
lives.
They're
looking
to
spend
time
not
save
time
which
I
agree
with
Original English
>> but
it
does
feel
like
finance
is
an
area
in
which
it
is
there
is
a
ton
of
administrative
overhead
for
the
average
consumer
Original English
>> and
if
you
look
at
you
know
the
number
of
financial
markets
or
financial
sort
of
profit
pools
that
are
defined
by
consumer
apathy
or
being
uninformed
that's
a
lot
of
profit
dollars
that
could
be
delivered
back
to
the
consumer
right
so
y
Original English
>> I
do
think
that
the
you
know
while
I
generally
agree
with
Ben
that
most
consumers
are
looking
for
entertainment
and
dispens
time.
I
think
there
are
sort
of
defining
aspects
of
the
US
consumer's
life
that
are,
you
know,
heavily
administrative
that
these
agents
can
really
be
a
breakthrough
for.
Original English
>> Totally.
And
I
think
that
that
kind
of
touches
on
the
general
thesis
to
where
I
think
the
winners
will
sit.
And
that
is
that
like
to
Ben's
point,
I
I
agree.
I
I
think
the
general
population
does
not
care
about
being
10%
more
efficient.
Original English
>> Yeah.
Original English
>> You
you
hire
an
assistant
to
allow
it
to
be
invisible,
right?
like
the
the
best
employee
I've
ever
had
are
the
ones
that
are
just
doing
their
work,
getting
things
done,
they
update
you
like
here,
here's
what
I
did,
and
you're
like,
"Wow,
amazing."
I
like,
you
know,
you
don't
hire
someone
because
you
enjoy
managing
them.
Original English
>> Yeah.
Original English
>> And
the
best,
most
proactive
use
cases
I'm
seeing,
I
think,
do
fall
in
the
finance
category.
Original English
>> Um,
and
I
think
we're
going
to
see
an
explosion
in
a
world
though
where
it's
not
cost
makers,
it's
cost
savers.
And
so
it's
going
to
be
workflows
where
um
like
some
cool
use
cases
I
saw
people
are
using
it
to
go
through
their
past
year
of
receipts
and
file
HSA
reimbursements.
Oh,
cool.
Original English
>> Or
um
one
that
I
do
is
anytime
I
book
a
flight,
if
the
flight
price
drops,
Yeah.
Original English
>> I
then
have
my
assistant
hit
up
the
airline
and
get
me
a
travel
credit.
Original English
>> Wow.
Original English
>> And
um
I
have
a
friend,
this
is
my
favorite
use
case
I
think
I've
I've
seen
yet.
He
hooked
up
his
Grockbot
to
his
sprinkler
system
at
his
home
and
connected
it
to
the
weather
system.
Oh,
smart.
Original English
>> And
so
now
his
sprinklers
are
dependent
on
the
weather
and
it's
dropped
his
water
bill
by
50%.
Original English
>> Yeah.
And
so
I
think
these
like
invisible
type
agents
that
are
going
to
be
doing
these
cost-saving
type
workflows
um
fall
within
that
finance
category,
but
but
they're
really
going
to
lean
into
these
like
cost-saving
activities
that
create
a
world
that
is
a
lot
more
consumer
aligned.
Original English
>> Yeah.
It'll
be
interesting
too
like
I
think
the
American
consumer
nobody
wants
to
hear
about
saving
money.
People
want
to
hear
about
spending
money
and
free
money.
Original English
>> And
I
actually
think
the
hook
that's
going
to
get
a
lot
of
people
here
is
it's
going
to
feel
like
free
money.
like
going
back
through
and
you
know
submitting
HSA
um
sort
of
refund
requests
is
going
to
be
free
money.
You
know
getting
all
of
your
airline
tickets
where
the
price
is
dropped
you
know
to
refund
you
the
delta
is
going
to
be
free
money.
So
I
think
that
that's
a
hugely
powerful
hook.
It's
also
really
really
interesting
because
this
is
a
sort
of
infrequent
but
high-value
behavior
and
that's
where
my
head
goes
on
both
travel
and
finance
like
maybe
these
things
will
be
really
powerful
you
know
billion-dollar
businesses
that
are
still
vertical
connectors
rather
than
general
horizontal
agents.
Original English
>> Totally.
It's
it's
going
to
be
a
very
interesting
world
in
terms
of
the
application
phase
which
I
think
then
you
know
that
also
something
that
we
talked
about
last
time
we
went
for
the
walk
was
okay
here's
what
it
can
do
but
now
how
do
you
actually
interact
with
that
agent
um
and
something
that
we
chatted
on
I'm
curious
your
thoughts
right
so
like
we
both
were
in
the
world
of
iMessage
it's
where
we
live
it's
easier
for
us
um
you
mentioned
your
wife
and
her
friends
prefer
a
separate
application
yeah
Original English
>> and
so
like
where
do
you
see
this
world
moving
do
you
believe
that
mult
multiple
surfaces
can
exist
as
a
winner
or
there's
going
to
be
one
dominant
lane.
Original English
>> Yeah,
that
it's
a
great
question,
man.
I
mean,
I
think
this
is
why
there's
so
much
consumer
preference
that's
going
to
matter
here
because
I've
heard
the
argument
that
for
folks
that
are
Gen
Z,
they're
more
interested
in
just
texting
and
for
folks
that
are
millennial
or
Gen
X,
they're
interested
in
app
interfaces.
So,
I
think
part
of
it
may
um
fragment
by
generation,
Original English
>> part
of
it
may
actually
fragment
by
gender
as
well
to
some
extent.
I
mean,
it's
a
generalization,
but
the
types
of
things
I'm
doing
versus
the
types
of
things
my
wife
is
doing,
you
know,
she's
big
on
building
a
dream
board
and
trying
to
achieve
all
of
her
one-year
goals
and
her
lifelong
goals.
So,
she
really
prefers
a
visual
interface.
You
know,
she
does
a
lot
of
sort
of
travel
is
is
very
visual
driven
for
her,
whereas
for
me,
it's
much
more
functional
like,
hey,
how
do
I
just
get
from
X
to
Y?
Ideally,
with
Starlink
on
my
plane,
um,
which
works
better
for
me.
I
feel
like
iMessage
sort
of
Original English
>> the
iMessage
space
is
more
precious.
Original English
>> So
it
feels
like
a
more
personal
interaction
when
I'm
in
that
space.
And
now
of
course
that
changes
if
every
second
thread
is
with
an
agent.
But
for
now
I
feel
like
it
kind
of
lives
in
a
privileged
place
on
my
phone
where
you
know
the
app
on
the
app
grid
just
doesn't.
What
do
you
think?
Original English
>> Yep.
I
I
completely
agree.
Um,
I
think
the
the
personalization
that
comes
with
iMessage
is
just
because
I
already
live
there,
it
feels
like
it's
something
that's
already
connected
to
me.
It
doesn't
feel
like
an
additive
workflow.
Original English
>> Yeah.
Original English
>> And
I
I
really
have
only
though
seen
by
and
large
two
services
appear.
It's
either
the
iMessage
or
a
separate
application.
Um,
I've
I've
seen
a
third
um
signal
startup
actually
Sky.
They
they
have
like
a
iPhone
widget
Original English
>> that
they're
trying
to
introduce
as
a
different
surface
which
is
pretty
interesting.
Um,
but
then
even
yesterday,
right,
we
saw
Zuckerberg
and
and
the
Muse
team
dropped
uh
the
Muse
Charm.
Yes,
that's
now
an
entirely
different
Original English
uh use case for for how we interact with an agent. What What do you think about hardware?
Original English
>> I think it's fascinating. I mean, there a smart person said this, which is that every person who's working on a piece of hardware thinks that their hardware is the kind of beall endall. Like the pendant is the ultimate thing, you know, the the watch strap is the ultimate thing. Um, so I don't think that that's right. I think again it's going to be very personal preference driven. You just as jewelry is like some people like to wear necklaces and some people like to wear earrings. And I think the same way this kind of form factor is going to manifest is going to be very customer specific. But I think that there's value in having something that is sort of with you and ambient and can capture all the kind of context and requests and you know promises and commitments and everything that happens through the day. I mean, I think we're going to have to sort of figure it out together in terms of privacy expectations in society. You know, you go to restaurants in Washington and they take away your phone. Maybe they're going to be taking away your phone and your pendant. Um,
Original English
>> right.
Original English
>> But I think that there's actually something there with hardware and I just like that we're being ambitious in that direction. You know, I think after 10 years of startups being discouraged from working on hardware, now we've got a lot of interesting new consumer efforts,
Original English
>> right? I think it's it's going to be super interesting. I have a hot take thesis that this uh Muse charm is actually less about trying to win the hardware game and it's more about data collection in the real world for the meta team in terms of like how the real world actually functions given it has a camera and multiple microphones and it's primar I don't really see it being a mass adoption thing. I think it's going to get adopted by the Twitter bubble and they're going to use it everywhere and it's just going to feed meta with a ridiculous amount of data to fuel Zuckerberg's future metaverse of mapping out the actual world.
Original English
>> But don't you think that they already get that from the glasses?
Original English
>> I think they they do to some extent, but I don't know if I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I I are the glasses always going to be on in the same way that this charm will be because
Original English
>> I don't think so. Yeah, it's a great point. I I think the charm is meant to be more as, you know, as you mentioned, it's an ambient 247 companion versus the glasses are more actionoriented.
Original English
>> It's going to be fascinating. I thought the, you know, I've got to try the VR release. That was interesting, but I actually think that the audio only glasses might be a sleeper hit.
Original English
>> Yep.
Original English
>> I think there's something really compelling to that. I think people, you know, I mean, the vision of sort of Jane from Enders Game was all about this sort of all- knowing audio only companion. And I don't know, you know, I think there's a set of people that love to wear the kind of camera on their face, but I think others may be aware of the fact that it could make people uncomfortable
Original English
>> and they're going to like feeling like they have the technology connectivity without any of the social awkwardness of the camera.
Original English
>> Audio is incredible. I'm I'm quite bullish on voice and audio. Chatbt voice yesterday dropped their uh chatbt voice to allow connectors in so you can connect to like your Gmail and calendar.
Original English
>> Um I played around with it this morning and to me it was my second magic moment of this whole AI assistant space
Original English
>> really.
Original English
>> Um, I was biking to work, hands are busy, I want to get stuff done, and I just start talking to chat GBT voice. I just open up a session, start chatting with it. And throughout my 30-minute bike ride to work, categorized my emails, uh, submitted them to different labels.
Original English
>> Yeah.
Original English
>> Replied to different emails, sent out calendar invites, got to the desk, inbox zero. It It was It was so electric.
Original English
>> It's incred. And so, this is Chat GBT voice, not Muse,
Original English
>> correct? Chat GBT voice. Oh, amazing. Okay, I misunderstood you. I thought you'd said muse voice. I totally agree. I think the chat GPT um it's based on the GPT live one model. It's full duplex voice and it can see all your threads. So, you can ask it things like, hey, what are those three projects I started and you know, where are we and what am I blocked on? I think it's an extraordinary capability and it's one that neither, you know, Muse nor Instinct has today. Though, though I think that Zuck actually did announce full duplex voice, so maybe it's coming to Muse soon.
Original English
>> Definitely, it's coming. But I I I do think that for the general consumer, an assistant is most helpful when you are most occupied, right? It's not like you're going to be sitting down on your couch and spending all of your time using your assistant to do stuff. It's most helpful when you're gardening or cooking or doing things where your hands are busy and you can't actually engage with an interface. And you know, it it goes back to that like invisible assistant where you can just talk and say something and it just goes and runs and does something in the background.
Original English
>> Yeah.
Original English
>> And I I think that the tech bubble that is chronically online and on their phone and in front of a computer is a very different environment than the general population.
Original English
>> Yeah. Um, and so I'm really excited to see how does this actually hit mass adoption and how does like the average consumer think about an assistant when it's actually like is it going to be an assistant that solves real pain points for them where they're going to use it when something is really really painful because they don't want to do it. Like you get a traffic ticket, you want you have to go pay for that traffic ticket. Great. Just take a picture and let your agent go do it for you.
Original English
>> Um,
Original English
>> it's going to be interesting to see.
Original English
>> So the next thing I wanted to talk to you about was social. Um, you know, we talked in multiplayer generally. You know, we talked about how iMessage is this sort of privileged place to be, which is actually one cool things about um Instinct. However, in my experience, building agents that you add to group chats somehow feels intrusive or like it diminishes social capital.
Original English
>> Have you seen anything that works well? And what are your kind of theories for how these agents get um get to a multiplayer state?
Original English
>> A lot of people have tried it. I think I've seen three different approaches. Uh the first approach is your traditional add it to a group chat and it's just like the group chat in in your companion. The second approach I've seen is how instinct did it where you have like an agent network where you invite another agent and they're talking behind the scenes on your behalf and they'll update you as to what's going on. The third way that I've seen it which I think is the most interesting uh it's a new one called Doc uh by this guy Shane Mack. um I think also an A16Z uh A16Z company um XMTP and they are approaching it more like granola. So you add an agent to a group chat but that agent is silent and it's purely a listener. It's taking notes on what people are talking about and if it has an action item it independently will ping the person in a separate message thread. And then if you want to see what people are talking about you can go into the actual docs and see what it's taken notes on. In that way, it's more of again, it's your invisible agent. You don't know it's there. It's doing all the admin work that you would want out of a multiplayer function, and if it needs action items, it doesn't bother the majority of the group. Really, really cool approach.
Original English
>> I've got to try that out. I love that. And I love that it's an A16Z company already. Of course. Um you know my theory on this if you look at this and Near from OBO said it and he you know I think he's right which is the progress the models are making on verifiable domains like coding are of course exponential but the progress they've made on just pros quality and even like bedside manner has maybe plateaued or maybe is even getting worse. So I actually think that with the the models as they are today and perhaps with our own expectations you
Original English
know in terms of these social dynamics I don't think there's a lot of ways that the agents can contribute and enhance the sort of social connectivity of the group you know conversely I think agents that are very utilitarian you know one of the experiments I've been doing is adding it I'm a collector you know I collect records and a bunch of other things adding an agent to the chats where I talk to my fellow collector friends and trying to catalog our respective collections and our tastes. And I haven't quite hit it, but it at least feels like it's something that's genuinely additive to the group rather than, you know, this sort of low EQ robot that's chattering when we don't want it to.
Original English
>> Yep. Totally. You'll you should you should give uh you should give Doc a try. I think I think you're going to be quite fascinated by it.
Original English
>> I will. Yeah. Yeah. The other interesting take that I heard this week was that, you know, something about messaging in particular is doesn't lend itself to these agent interactions because in messaging it's as if somebody has the mic and it feels uncomfortable to give the agent the mic. Whereas, if you look at something like maybe closer to a Discord or even a traditional web form,
Original English
>> that's actually something where an agent can make a post and you can either engage with the post or not, Reddit style, but for some reason it feels less intrusive than group chat. I don't know.
Original English
>> Yeah. Interest. It's almost It's almost as if we're trying to humanize these agents a little too much. That's right. Like and I think that comes to another component where if you look at the actual design of the character of the agent, I see some companies that have it try to be like an AI generated human and then you have other companies like Muse that it's this like adorable yeti.
Original English
>> Yes.
Original English
>> And I think it's really interesting to see how the world has fallen in love with this yeti. It's just so cute and adorable.
Original English
>> Yes. and the like AI generated human to your point like I think people feel a little uncomfortable like it feels weird to humanize these assistants so much
Original English
>> um in your like in your personal space.
Original English
>> So one related question I wanted to ask you is do you think that the market segments by personality or archetype? You know, we were chatting a bit about this on our walk, but you know, some people prefer a kind of serious, gruff, authoritative doctor, and some people prefer a, you know, warm and friendly, you know, sort of a doctor that feels like a peer. And those are just two different archetypes of doctors. Obviously, no doctor is both of those things. They're in opposition. Do you think the same will be true of agents?
Original English
>> I think everyone for sure prefers a different style of communication.
Original English
>> Poke came out of the gates hot, right? The personality of Poke is is quite distinctive and it's something that I have a lot of friends who are like, I refuse to give Poke any of my personal information because it's so sassy and it actually makes me uncomfortable to engage in a conversation with it.
Original English
>> But I don't think personality is really a defensible mode because it's it's quite easy to configure. It's like you as a consumer, you text your agent, you say that you would prefer it responds in a certain way, it just saves that to its memory or its soul file and then you're good to go and it changes. Um, I think we'll get to a place where whatever general agent ends up being the leader that it'll be quite configurable and each person can kind of tailor the agent to speak to them how, you know, however makes them most comfortable.
Original English
>> So, that's interesting and I agree with you, but maybe let me try the steel man here for not just personality but kind of um,
Original English
>> you know, constitution for lack of a better word, which is an example of a kind of defining characteristic is presumptuousness. You know, we've talked a little bit about this and there are some jobs for which you want the agent to be highly presumptuous
Original English
>> and you'd rather have it make mistakes 10% of the time as long as it often gets things done. And there are other styles of agents like our finance agent perhaps where you want it to be highly cautious. So I sort of wonder if some of these things which we're now describing as personality start to push down into sort of capabilities and you know how it tie breaks in a position of ambiguity and perhaps there's a bit more defensibility around that.
Original English
>> I think there is massive defensibility around proactivity. I think that's actually going to be something that separates the winner from the you know the meat of the pack. the agent that can be most proactive, that can serve as an an invisible assistant and start doing things on your behalf without you even asking. I I think the best like gimmick cool aha moment that we've seen so far is checking into your flight for you.
Original English
>> Um to your point though,
Original English
>> it really does come down to two categories. There's some workflows where
Original English
>> you want to retain control and you don't really want an agent to be acting too proactive on your behalf. Yeah.
Original English
>> And I think those are workflows that require a a change in action uh on your side. So maybe that is an agent identifies that the insurance you're using is charging too much money and thinks you should switch insurances.
Original English
>> Yeah,
Original English
>> it should probably get your permission before it actually makes that switch because that's that's a direct action on your behalf that impacts you.
Original English
>> However, the proactiveness of, hey, I drafted this email for you or I got a flight credit on your behalf,
Original English
>> there's no action needed on your side. It's just saving you money. It's saving you time. Um, so I think it'll be interesting to see like how do we really categorize and break down those those type of behaviors, but it will be a very fine line because if you if you cross that line once, I think you immediately lose all trust with your user.
Original English
>> Yeah, it'll [snorts] be interesting. You know, we were joking internally like we're days away from an agent messaging someone saying, "I noticed you weren't that into her, so I went ahead and broke up with her for you."
Original English
>> Yep.
Original English
>> You know, so like saw that one. It's going to happen, man. But, you know, I think a lot of the magic comes from the presumptuousness. And I think that if you didn't see people posting on X about, oh, the agent did this, the agent did that, it would probably be a sign that the agents are not pushing hard enough in this direction. Like, I think there's going and actually I'd be curious to know, first of all, I'm, you know, a little suspicious of whether the the Bongchang post was even real. Um, and for folks who don't know, there's there's a person who tweeted that Instinct checked him into a flight and hallucinated his middle name um as Bong Chang and he wasn't able to get on the flight. So, I'm not sure if that's just posting or if that really happened. Um, but I I'd be curious to know if that person is still using instinct. I'm guessing they are.
Original English
>> I would assume so purely given the traction of that post that they're [laughter] probably feeding for more more
Original English
>> nothing else. At least just a source of comedic popular tweets.
Original English
>> Right. Right. maybe talk, you know, it feels like one of the big things that's happened is that the kind of primitives that were developed during the open claw period have now been productized in a way that the mass market consumer can sort of you know digest and appreciate.
Original English
>> Do you think there and also Poke which you had mentioned a couple of times like Poke was extraordinary. I think they did a super clever job and I think if they had started six months later they might have ended up being the winner. I think the team is is really really talented there and I'll be curious to see what they actually have in store for us next because I'm sure that you now that they're a part of cognition they haven't stopped working on this. I'd be very curious to know if there are capabilities or lessons from the openclaw era that you notice that you think are going to tell us what's coming next in consumer agents.
Original English
>> Right now I honestly see the consumer agent is is literally just a replication of openclaw but it's just preconfigured. Um, I don't see much happening in the personal assistant space
Original English
that you can't do with OpenClaw or Hermes.Original English
>> It's just a matter of fact that you don't have to configure everything and you're not getting error messages popping up every seven hours and it's it's really easy to use. It's an easy interface. Um, so we'll we'll see what happens. I I think the direction of the space will continue to move towards proactivity. I think the direction of the space will continue to see more hyper specialization which which I think goes to your point in your thesis of of uh narrow startups and how does the space look as we see more of these longtail opportunities whether it isOriginal English
>> you know instead of being a generalist I'm going to spend all of my time focusing my assistant to be an expert for single mothers with children under the age of three.Original English
>> Yeah.Original English
>> And it knows everything about how a mother operates her day-to-day life, child development, where it literally feels like that assistant is reading their mind. And that could maybe be a plugin into the generalist, but you know, I'm curious with with this being your thesis. Um, how how do you think about, you know, I guess firstOriginal English
>> give us some more insight on what narrow startups are to you and and how do you see that playing? Yeah, the theory with narrow startups is that, you know, you can now build software that's incredibly ambitious um and incredibly valuable for a very small number of people. And we have this precedent of people paying, you know, 200, 250, $300 a month. So you can build, you know, a hundred million dollar run rate business with tens of thousands of people, which has never really existed in the past. A lot of it also is that the capabilities can be specialized to such an astounding degree. And then as we think about what you're discussing, I totally agree with you. I think there will be this kind of comparative advantage. I think it's going to be a combination of taste and proprietary knowledge. You know, there may be just as you, you know, you have a doula that may subscribe to a certain sort of style of, you know, helping women give birth, you may have a personal agent that actually subscribes to a certain school of thought or style or, you know, even a set of lessons that aren't well understood. and you're going to hire that agent to sort of provide that service to you. And then proprietary data, you know, you'd mentioned potentially having a personal agent just for New York City.Original English
>> Like I think, you know, just as there might be a concierge that's got A+ taste that's hard to replicate that knows all the best spots that you're going to love and there may be another dozen for, you know, another dozen different people or archetypes of people. I do think that there'll be this sort of subjective and objective specialization that happens.Original English
>> It's it's going to be interesting to follow. Um, I'm also curious from your for your lens even in just noticing our conversation here. Yeah.Original English
>> We interchange between assistant and agentOriginal English
>> and it's been a constant conversation I see people talking about on Twitter.Original English
>> Yeah.Original English
>> Is the future of this ecosystem is it going to be a personal assistant or a personal agent?Original English
>> Yeah.Original English
>> And what do those mean to you?Original English
>> Oh, that's such a great question, man. I mean, to me, assistant is a sort of lesser form than agent. Um, you know, for me, an agent is somebody, you could imagine them being a peer in a social group,Original English
>> you know, and maybe we need a better word than agent. But an assistant can only sort of definitionally do what it what you ask it to do, it can assist you in doing something that you've directed it to do.Original English
>> While while an agent has agency um, and can just make good things happen in the world. And and maybe this parallels a little bit, you know, the sort ofOriginal English
>> agents and AI in the enterprise where they've sort of started as interns and through, you know, doing work and improved intelligence, they're able to get promoted into doing higher order forms of work in the enterprise. Like what does it mean for an assistant and later an agent to be promoted in the consumer's life to do moreOriginal English
>> specialized and delicate work?Original English
>> I'm I'm super aligned. I'm I'm also very interested what ramifications it might have in just like the social layer of humanity where you know does the word agent allow us to you know not personify uh AI enough you know is is assistant does it add too much human to the experience and and does that make society uncomfortable um and it'll be interesting to see like how theOriginal English
>> we're in bubbles you're in a more bubble you're SF so you're in the tech hub of of the world. Um I would say New York is a little behind SF and then you know the rest of the world catches up after. So it'll it'll be interesting to see how people actually think about uh the vernacular of the space.Original English
>> I don't know if it's a bubble. I just think it's like it's like the future you know it's like uh you know we're in the near future. UmOriginal English
>> yeah.Original English
>> Yeah. I don't know. I actually think that it could increase a improve a lot of social dynamics as well. Um because you start to think aboutOriginal English
>> the agent as a non-human. It can provide a layer of social indirection, you know, so there might be something that's sort of awkward for me to say to you or an uncomfortable social dynamic that's occurring in a group. And with a very carefully designed agent, I think the agent can you know help to I don't know whether it's provide feedback or sort of organize a conflict in a way that feels non-emotional because you know thatOriginal English
>> like an arbiter of confrontationOriginal English
>> potentially. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I you know I'm not advocating for a more passive aggressive sort of social system, but I do think it's interesting that they can be a sort of source and a destination for social indirection if that makes sense.Original English
>> Right. Right. And I think that it will have a lot of like significantly positive influences in the world. How do you see AI impacting right if we look 5 years down the line?Original English
>> Yeah.Original English
>> Where do these agents where do these assistants actually take us? How do they make us happier human beings?Original English
>> It's a great question, man. I mean, I do think that those are the problems that we're really after at the root of things. You know, we talked about productivity. We talked about finances and health. There's a lot of mundane things. You know, I was looking this up yesterday, but 1.5 million people a year in this country get a DUI. Um, and look, like I can the amount of administrative burden that's probably implied by that. And how many of those people have access to attorneys? And so I do think there's almost this sort of bureaucratic pressure that's applied to the average consumer. So I think step one is how do we sort of relieve that bureaucratic pressure and have people, you know, be financially optimized, have their health be optimized and have them access have that have them have the same access to whether it's an attorney or a kind of family office that somebody who's wealthy might have.Original English
>> Then I think the bigger question, you know, I grew up with my mother saying the hardest part about getting what you want is knowing what you want. is like what are we all truly after? Um and what are the ways that these assistants can sort of engage us? And I don't think it's as simplistic as just goals. I don't know how many people even have goals. I think a lot of it is people are just trying to you know find out who they are and turn into the best most authentic versions of themsel. And this kind of interplay between our own self-development and our subjective experience in the world and these machines could be a very beautiful future for us. Totally. I see this future where I envision this world where my future kids are going to be looking at old videos of the current generation walking down the street, you know, next crane down staring at your phone.Original English
>> What are you What are you doing? Like it is a beautiful world out there. Like why are you spending all of your time staring at a screen?Original English
>> Um because in you know hopefully it's going to allow us to automate so many of those things. So, as a parent, you can actually spend more time with your kids. As an adult in your 20s, you can actually spend more time talking to friends.Original English
>> And
it's
I'm
I'm
really
curious
to
see
how
it
will
just
change
life
for
the
better
in
so
many
ways
of
reducing
the
things
that
Original English
>> you
just
really
hate
to
do,
but
it's
like
the
life
admin
work.
Original English
>> Yeah,
that's
right.
I
mean,
that's
also
why
I
think
that,
you
know,
so
many
times
coding
agents
are
not
competing
with
human
programmers
because
they're
doing
things
that
no
human
programmers
are
doing.
you
know,
whether
it's
building
this
ridiculous
side
project.
I've
been
building
um
a
virtual
record
shop
that
you
can
walk
into.
I'll
send
you
a
link
to
it
after.
It's
awesome.
Like
I
would
never
hire
a
programmer
to
work
on
that
five
or
seven
10
years
ago.
I
would
have
never
spent
the
year
of
my
life
that
it
would
have
taken.
So
all
of
this
stuff
is
this
sort
of
things
that
never
would
have
happened
Original English
>> otherwise.
Um
and
I
think
there's
a
lot
of
versions
of
this
technology
in
our
life
where
we're
just
getting
to
explore
things
we
never
would
have
explored
anyway.
It's
not
about
cost
reduction.
It's
about
possibility
expansion.
Um,
Original English
>> yeah.
Original English
>> Makes
life
more
fun.
Makes
life
more
interesting.
Original English
>> You
know,
to
kind
of
come
back
to
the
near-
term,
a
thing
that
I've
been
thinking
a
bunch
about,
but
I'm
curious
for
your
take
on
is,
you
know,
the
lessons
of
Moltbook
and
what
are
these
sort
of
agentnative
systems
that
are
going
to
need
to
be
built.
And
maybe
this
is
some
of
what
Instinct
is
doing
with
their
kind
of
Instinctto
instinct
network,
but
it
does
feel
like
there's
going
to
be
Original English
>> infrastructure
and
products
that
exist
only
for
agentto
agent
interactions
that
doesn't
exist
today.
What
do
you
think?
Original English
>> It's
it's
going
to
be
a
whole
new
paradigm.
I
think
it
it
opens
up,
you
know,
I
think
that
can
be
a
10-hour
conversation
on
its
own.
Mhm.
Original English
>> You
have
agent
emails.
You
have
agent
phone
numbers.
You
have
what
does
the
world
of
service
look
like
when
it's
no
longer
human
booking
to
human
and
no
longer
agent
booking
from
human
but
it's
now
agent
booking
from
agent
and
how
does
that
redefine
the
entire
service
industry
as
a
whole.
Mhm.
Original English
>> Uh
and
then
you
have
like
the
whole
cyber
security
uh
component
of
all
this
stuff
which
is
okay
well
you
know
internet
came
first
then
came
cyber
security
agents
came
first
now
comes
the
security
security
component
of
these
agents
and
what
industry
is
that
going
to
create.
Uh
the
beautiful
part
of
it
all
though,
I
think
that's
that's
the
beauty
of
capitalism.
There's
like
so
much
opportunity
and
so
many
problems
to
solve
with
these
agents.
And
I
think
it
is
inevitable
that
we're
going
to
see
so
many
startups
popping
up
Original English
>> trying
to
figure
out
all
of
these
niche
problems
to
really
build
this
like
new
wave
of
internet
and
digital
connectivity.
Original English
>> Yeah,
it's
going
to
be
cool
to
see,
you
know,
because
especially
commerce,
you
know,
I
always
think
of
the
web
as
kind
of
there's
three
webs
within
the
web,
you
know,
just
like
there's
two
wolves
inside
me.
Um
the
three
webs
are
the
commerce
web,
um
the
application
web
and
the
content
web.
And
the
content
web
has
been
in
trouble
for
a
while.
I
think
that
the
commerce
web
has
actually
done
really
well
and
then
the
application
web
has
definitely
been
on
a
huge
upswing
ever
since
coding
agents
were
released.
Um
but
the
commerce
web
is
fascinating.
You
know,
you
saw
this
week
how
Shopify
embraced
Muse
and
Amazon
blocked
Muse.
I
think
part
of
the
calculus
is
going
to
be
a
winner
or
loser
when
you
actually
have
a
new
front
door
for
how
traffic
flows
to
these
marketplaces.
Original English
>> I
mean,
do
you
have
a
view
on
what
specifically
happened
with
Amazon
and
Shopify
and
maybe
more
broadly
who
the
winners
and
losers
are
likely
to
be?
Original English
>> Yeah,
so
I
think
you
know,
first
off,
Shopify
and
Amazon
are
two
completely
different
business
models.
You
have
Shopify
that's
hyperfocused
on
more
democratizing
commerce.
You
have
Amazon
that
makes
all
of
their
money
on
ad
revenue.
And
so
the
whole
ad
structure
of
commerce
is
going
to
be
really
fascinating
to
watch
because
when
you
remove
human
eyeballs,
it
defeats
the
entire
purpose
of
the
system.
Original English
>> And
so
I
think
[clears throat]
that's
where
Amazon
was
coming
from.
Like
if
you
let
Muse
and
these
agents
start
to
purchase
without
them
getting
any
ad
revenue
out
of
that,
Original English
>> it
really
takes
a
lot
of
their
profit
out
of
the
experience.
So,
I
think
there's
likely
going
to
have
to
be
some
new
paradigm
for
how
they're
able
to
profit
in
this
world
where
agents
are
are
purchasing
on
their
behalf
versus
a
Shopify
that
is
empowering
the
everyday
individual
to
sell
as
much
as
possible
and
agents
democratize
this
space
even
further.
So,
it's
it's
just
unbelievably
advantageous.
Um
I
think
it's
going
to
be
even
more
interesting
when
we
look
at
industries
that
have
yet
to
be
touched
and
that's
you
know
something
we
chatted
about
uh
last
week
was
restaurants
where
if
you
look
at
the
booking
space
right
like
you
go
to
make
a
reservation
I
think
we
saw
resi
uh
resi
started
shutting
people's
accounts
down
because
they
were
using
browser
use
and
they
didn't
want
bots
so
it
defeats
the
whole
the
whole
business
of
if
you
just
let
agents
take
these
reservations
instantaneously
Original English
then
it
kind
of
defeats
the
purpose
of
the
platform
of
this
like
humanoriented
booking
experience.
Original English
>> And
so
what
happens
though
when
everyone
has
an
agent
now
everyone's
on
the
same
playing
field.
Everyone
can
go
to
book
the
restaurant
at
the
same
time.
Original English
>> Do
we
enter
a
world
where
one
power
goes
back
to
the
restaurants
and
they
can
maybe
choose
who
they
want
to
give
the
reservation
to
based
off
of
loyalty
or
average
spend
or
whatever
it
be.
or
two,
do
we
go
into
this
world
of
bidding
where
everything
becomes
a
bidding
war
between
these
agents?
I'm
curious
your
thoughts
on
kind
of
what
that
future
looks
like.
Original English
>> Yeah,
I
think
you're
super
right.
I
mean,
very
interesting
because
I
think
there'll
be
um
things
that
are
supply
constrained
like
hot
restaurant
tables,
things
that
are
demand
constrained
like
people
that
want
to
fly
to
SF
tomorrow.
I
think
for
restaurants,
if
you
think
about
with
perfect
information,
who
do
they
want?
to
your
point,
it's
the
highest
AOV,
highest
LTV,
which
means
AOV
over
multiple
visits.
Plus,
they
actually
want
to
ensure
that
they're
at,
you
know,
near
100%
capacity
as
much
as
possible.
So,
that's
actually
a
more
sophisticated
calculation
and
I
don't
quite
know
how
they're
going
to
do
it,
but
I'm
sure
that
proprietary
supply
is
going
to
become
more
and
more
important,
you
know,
versus
relying
on
kind
of
friction
and
motivation
from
the
end
consumer
to
act
as
something
that
sort
of
prevents
this
DOS.
So
I
think
supply
constrained
sort
of
aspects
of
commerce
will
be
really
interesting
and
then
demand
constrained
will
be
completely
different
you
know
where
you
almost
have
a
group
buying
experience
where
you
have
a
set
of
buyers
that
are
willing
to
buy
a
product
or
a
service
or
an
experience
and
then
you
have
the
supply
side
the
merchants
that
could
potentially
fulfill
that
need
come
and
you
know
bid
to
see
who
can
do
it
the
best
experience
maybe
at
the
lowest
price.
So
we've
always
had
this
kind
of
aggregation
of
demand,
but
we've
never
really
had
aggregation
of
supply
in
the
same
way,
especially
not
in
an
auction
system
to
benefit
the
consumer.
Original English
>> So
I
think
that's
really
interesting.
Original English
>> You
know,
in
the
Amazon
Shopify
thing,
I
think
that
the
Amazon
Amazon
probably
is
rightly
taking
the
bet
that
they
don't
want
to
be
disintermediated
and
that
they'll
lose
not
just
advertising
revenue,
but
impulse
shopping.
I'm
kind
of
curious
to
know
if
the
agents
themselves
will
be
impulse
shoppers
to
some
extent
because
I
think
the
point
around
proactivity
means
the
agents
are
going
to
try
to
make
delightful
guesses
and
you
know
what
is
more
delightful
than
a
surprise
or
a
gift.
Original English
>> So
I'm
guessing
that
one
of
the
really
interesting
um
sort
of
dynamics
were
going
to
play
out
is
that
these
agents
are
not
perfect
reflections
of
their
principles.
They're
not
perfectly
rational.
They're
going
to
be
new
rational
and
nonrational
in
completely
new
ways.
And
I
don't
know
that
things
like
marketing,
things
like
impulse
purchases,
things
like
advertising
won't
matter.
I
just
think
they
need
to
be
transformed.
Original English
>> Totally.
And
I
think
that
opens
up
a
whole
new
conversation
as
well,
which
is
what
is
the
recommendation
engine
of
this
agentic
commerce
space
actually
Original English
look like? Yeah.
Original English
>> Because AI and LLM feels like it's kind of broke the internet in terms of quality search. But then if you use an agent and you say, "Hey, buy me some white socks."
Original English
>> There's like 20,000 different types of white socks out there, it's going to send you, it doesn't actually know what exact type of white socks you prefer.
Original English
>> Yeah.
Original English
>> And so I think it'll be really interesting. I think Muse has probably a head start on this. And you know, this is whole Zuck's whole thesis of attacks on all commerce where they have your Instagram data, they have your Facebook data, so they probably have a little better understanding of what you actually prefer. But it'll be really interesting to see what this recommendation layer looks like. Yeah.
Original English
>> In this world of commerce.
Original English
>> Well, I think it could be fun for the longtail, you know, because you could imagine to your white socks example, like I could go to Amazon and get white socks, you know, but maybe my agent comes back and says, "Hey, I found someone awesome on Etsy that can knit you the socks, you know, grandma in Nebraska, and she she just knits these amazing white socks. It's going to take three weeks. Are you down?" I'm like, "Sure, I'm down. That sounds interesting." So, I kind of wonder if it brings more serendipity in because of course, you know, it can examine all the options and perfectly tailor these things to you with no adverse incentives.
Original English
>> Right. I would love that. I think that'd be so fun. It would definitely add a little flavor to the mundane life of shopping today.
Original English
>> Exactly.
Original English
>> Mundane from my point of view as someone who, you know, doesn't take joy in uh sock shopping. Well, dude, and look, you could even imagine a world and you get a little more futuristic where it starts to now um catalyze things in the real world. So maybe instead of grandma who knits white socks and sells them on Etsy, you know, maybe it messages the agent of a grandma and says, "Hey, would you be up for doing this?" So I think this is where the kind of agentto agent spaces get really interesting where they're all acting on behalf of their humans. you know, some to provide products, services, knowledge, and some to make money. And, you know, maybe there's this sort of secondary economy that's much more dynamic, much more high frequency, um, and just much more interesting than the one we have today.
Original English
>> I'm I'm just imagining now a grandma in Nebraska receiving a text message saying, "Hey, this guy in SF wants you to knit white socks for him. You want to do it?"
Original English
>> Why not? Yeah. Yeah. Why not?
Original English
>> It'd be awesome.
Original English
>> Yeah. So, I'm I'm I'm actually very hopeful. You know, it also it sort of sets the incentives in the right way because if the agents are doing the right thing, they're choosing great products based on product quality and they can assess product quality for themselves rather than, you know, the thing that has the best marketing or the best brand. And by the way, if they are choosing on a brand basis, it's at least with the explicit sign off of their user like I just want to have Nikes cuz I love Nikes, not because you know there there's sort of this cognitive dissonance that's happening in the marketing and the consumer is actually doing something that's not optimal for themselves,
Original English
>> right? It it opens the door to a truly consumer aligned internet which I think we have been lacking for quite some time.
Original English
>> I agree, man. We touched on the the economics of the agents. Of the 122 that I have looked through, so I've personally tested 26 of them.
Original English
>> Okay.
Original English
>> Of the 122, uh, 65 are paid.
Original English
>> Interesting.
Original English
>> 35 of them are fully paid. 30 are a premium model. So once you hit a limit, then you have to pay. Only 13 of them are actually free.
When you have Muse and Instinct that are both free that are also the dominant ones and then you have Open AI that supposedly is going to be releasing something cool maybe next week, who knows?
Original English
>> How does a longtail startup actually win this space?
And why are they charging money when the big dogs are giving it to you for free?
Original English
>> Man, it's going to be really challenging. you know, by our estimate, it's costing something like $20 per user per day
to do this in a really ambitious way. You know, potentially hundreds of millions a year for a startup. I mean, I think the two positive trends to bet on are that browser use should get it should be deflationary, get exponentially cheaper, very rapidly. Now if you're a startup that is raising today that's betting on that happening in 6 months maybe it's a little bit of a game of chicken but we have seen kind of token prices depress dramatically and sort of emerging capabilities depress so the price of them
so I think it's very possible that browser use gets cheap enough that more um more products can offer this for free. I guess the flip though is that I don't love the idea of you know a customer subsidy being the primary value prop. So, I'd love to see the agent that costs $1,000 a month that the consumer is so excited about that they're willing to pay. Like, people spend $1,000 a month on a lot of different things that are, you know, not necessarily necessities, their sort of desires. So, what is the agent that is exciting enough that you're willing to pay that kind of price for it and then that agent will benefit from both extreme market fit as well as sort of deflating costs.
Original English
>> Right. Right. I think it'll be interesting to see.
Original English
>> Super interesting. Well, David from Assistant Bench, make sure everybody checks it out. Thank you so much for joining us. We're going to do this frequently. I mean, I feel like we could do this every week, dude. Like, things are happening every single day. So,
Original English
>> please follow him on X. Follow me as well. We'll all keep up to speed and sort of learn together in the X community. And uh and sort of
Original English
>> happy day to you and your agents.
Original English
>> Appreciate it. Same to you. This is fun.
Original English
>> All right, brother. Thank you.
Original English
>> Awesome.