The a16z Show
00:00:00 · Josh Elman, David Pawlan, Anish Acharya
[00:00:00] S0: We have so many different facets of our life, whether it's how we're managing our finances or planning trips. Agents are gonna be able to fill different facets of these. [00:00:07] S1: From over a 147 different assistants that have come across my plate so far, the number fear that people talk about, 22% of the messages are talking about trust as the main fear. [00:00:17] S2: What are the aspects of ourselves that we don't either want to think about or reveal? Whoever is able to build that type of trust, almost like a dark agent, will actually have something really fascinating [00:00:29] S1: on their hands. It is a very, very sensitive space. It's almost gonna be like a new, like, social network where businesses have to put a lot more thought and value into the quality of what they're giving [00:00:39] S2: What I've seen from thirty years in consumer product is paternalism will kill any product. We talk about productivity and goals, sort of achievement, but maybe people want the exact opposite of it. Everyone right now [00:00:51] S1: really is approaching this world as just like a general assistant. As time goes on, we'll start to see.
00:00:51 · David Pawlan, Erik Torenberg, Anish Acharya, Josh Elman
[00:00:51] S1: really is approaching this world as just like a general assistant. As time goes on, we'll start to see. [00:00:56] S3: A month ago, we took stock of the race to build a personal AI assistant. Since then, the agent landscape has already changed dramatically. In this episode, Anish Acharya is back with David Pawlan, creator of Assistant Benchmark, and Josh Elman to look at what's changed and where agents are heading next. David has now tested more than 140 AI assistants, and they get into what's separating them from memory and judgment to trust, shopping, and social experiences. They also explore what happens when our agents start talking to each other and why the next breakthrough may not be an agent that makes us more productive, but one that feels like a secret superpower. [00:01:37] S2: Welcome back to the a 16 z show. I'm here with my partner, Josh, and David, who's been leading a ton of the agent bench and assistant efforts. We're gonna talk about all things agents, and a ton has happened since we last connected. What was it? [00:01:50] S0: A month ago? [00:01:50] S1: About a month ago. Oh my god, dude. Feel like [00:01:52] S2: we should record an episode like TBPN sounds [00:01:54] S1: almost every day. Absolutely insane. [00:01:56] S0: Agents are changing every day. [00:01:58] S2: That's totally right. So... Okay. So maybe let's start with last night, you hosted an agent meetup. Yep. Kinda tell us about the event, tell us about the vibes, tell us about the topics.
00:01:58 · Anish Acharya, David Pawlan
[00:01:58] S2: That's totally right. So... Okay. So maybe let's start with last night, you hosted an agent meetup. Yep. Kinda tell us about the event, tell us about the vibes, tell us about the topics. [00:02:07] S1: It was great. So, we had just over a 100 people come out, all just proud agent nerds, loving everything to do with agents in that whole world, and it was just people just hanging out, talking. We did have a pitch competition of sorts, so a bunch of 10 different AI assistant builders were able to pitch their startup and what they're working on. And it was just good conversations. It's interesting how the general thing that really stuck out to me was that people are craving community even in the agent web world. Everyone's like, why don't we have more of these meetups? Why don't we have more of these opportunities to get to know each other? Which is... It's kinda funny hearing it from people who are spending all their day, all their time just messaging agents. [00:02:50] S2: And it's funny because it feels like, oh, so many of these products are at least overlapping in a cursory way that the founders might be a little bit more cagey, but that's not what you're seeing. [00:02:58] S1: No. Everyone is incredibly open minded, just very interested to be getting feedback. I think because we're we're so at the frontier of this, nobody really knows what the landscape is really gonna shake out to be. Yeah. And so we're all just kinda playing in the sandbox together.
00:02:58 · David Pawlan, Josh Elman, Anish Acharya
[00:02:58] S1: No. Everyone is incredibly open minded, just very interested to be getting feedback. I think because we're we're so at the frontier of this, nobody really knows what the landscape is really gonna shake out to be. Yeah. And so we're all just kinda playing in the sandbox together. [00:03:11] S0: Well, isn't it also that we have so much more time because we're just using our agents to do all these things? Right. We have more time to actually hang out together Right. And be in person. So maybe that's part of it too. [00:03:19] S1: That's right. That's right. [00:03:20] S2: It is actually fun. I mean, it reminds me a little bit of the early days of social gaming or social networks broadly. I mean, do you think that's right, Josh?
00:03:20 · Anish Acharya, Josh Elman
[00:03:20] S2: It is actually fun. I mean, it reminds me a little bit of the early days of social gaming or social networks broadly. I mean, do you think that's right, Josh? [00:03:28] S0: I mean, I think what's really cool is this is not a zero sum game. I mean, at at some point, it might be that there might be one or some agents that have the majority of the behavior. But right now, we're at such a beginning, like Cambrian phase of we're inventing so much. And we're trying to figure out so many things that everybody can learn from each other, can share these best practices, can figure out what things people are enjoying, what things are work once but don't actually work reliably. And these are gonna be built in so many directions. I mean, we're not just gonna all have one agent that does one thing in our lives, and I'll use it, and you guys will only all have to use the same agent. We're gonna have so many different products that do so many things for us that I'm excited for why we're all inventing it together. [00:04:10] S2: So I totally agree that we're gonna have a whole world of agents, as many different sort of types of humans as we might have or archetypes of humans. I think we'll have a similar number of agents. But maybe talk about what you think are the different axes for differentiation. Like, there's a sort of spectrum between really serious and productive to really playful and maybe even sort of adversarial. And I'm sure there are many other ways to think about these things.
00:04:10 · Anish Acharya, Josh Elman, David Pawlan
[00:04:10] S2: So I totally agree that we're gonna have a whole world of agents, as many different sort of types of humans as we might have or archetypes of humans. I think we'll have a similar number of agents. But maybe talk about what you think are the different axes for differentiation. Like, there's a sort of spectrum between really serious and productive to really playful and maybe even sort of adversarial. And I'm sure there are many other ways to think about these things. [00:04:32] S0: Yeah. I mean, I think what's gonna be really interesting is we have so many different facets of our life, whether it's how we're managing our finances or planning trips or dealing with our health or just getting through our day or managing our calendar or sometimes just wanting to think something out loud. And agents are gonna be able to fill different facets of these. And you call different friends for different things. You spend different friends who have different expertise that you call when you need expertise. And I think we're gonna get used to having kind of an army of agents that will do this. And some will be very matter of fact. And we'll be like, hey, I need to get this thing done. It'll be your productivity agent. [00:05:03] S1: Mhmm.