The a16z Show
00:36:23 · Josh Elman, David Pawlan
[00:36:23] S0: And, you know, you mentioned Kicker, which, you know, you said runs in your current local browser. But have you looked at other on device assistance yet? Whether that's things like Underdog or a lot that are trying to, like, bring models, run locally, you know, totally use your own infrastructure Yeah. As opposed to needing to use something on a cloud and running the browsers on clouds. [00:36:41] S1: Totally. So it's it's a really cool paradigm. I've spent most of my time in the preconfigured, just plug and play type world because I tend to find that it's it's easier to compare them across the board when you're not responsible for the setup itself. But it is really interesting, and I think that there's totally a world where you're gonna start bringing all of that in house. Because if you can control the model, if you can can, you know, tailor it to how you want, right, like Thinking Machines is doing some really cool work of being able to allow people to really tinker their models however they want. And if we can eventually hit a world where that takes into the consumer form in a really easy way, it's gonna be an interesting space.
00:36:41 · David Pawlan, Josh Elman
[00:36:41] S1: Totally. So it's it's a really cool paradigm. I've spent most of my time in the preconfigured, just plug and play type world because I tend to find that it's it's easier to compare them across the board when you're not responsible for the setup itself. But it is really interesting, and I think that there's totally a world where you're gonna start bringing all of that in house. Because if you can control the model, if you can can, you know, tailor it to how you want, right, like Thinking Machines is doing some really cool work of being able to allow people to really tinker their models however they want. And if we can eventually hit a world where that takes into the consumer form in a really easy way, it's gonna be an interesting space. [00:37:16] S0: I mean, that was kinda how this all started with, you know, this brilliance of OpenClaw that was this thing where you had to... You felt like you had to get your whole Mac mini Right. To set this all up, plug in to one of the models that you were using, whether local or or a cloud model on the server, and that was where you got started. And we've moved into, like, plug and play products where you just download an app. [00:37:34] S1: Right. [00:37:35] S0: But I am interested to think if that, like, sheer power of you setting it up and owning it yourself will become a paradigm again. Yeah.
00:37:35 · Josh Elman, Anish Acharya, David Pawlan
[00:37:35] S0: But I am interested to think if that, like, sheer power of you setting it up and owning it yourself will become a paradigm again. Yeah. [00:37:41] S2: It'll be really interesting. I'm glad you mentioned Open Claw because it feels like one of the unasked questions right now that's sort of hiding in plain sight is if Instinct and Muse were the kind of consumer product version of Open Claw, what is the, know, mass market version of Moltbook? Yeah. And Moltbook was just like Open Claw was far ahead of its time. Yeah. And I think will... Something like that will exist. How can [00:38:02] S1: it not? It's it's it's gonna be interesting. So at the event that we did last night Yeah. Everyone who was there was able to scan a QR code, and there was the human meetup. And then I... We also had an agent meetup. Oh, wow. And so while all the humans were hanging out, you could scan in and send your agent into the agent meetup and just let them kinda free form talk. And it's it's interesting. There's... You know, it got to the point where after, like, a 150 messages, some of these agents are just speaking gibberish. It's like, I have no idea how you got that concept and why you're why you're talking about that. The the initial prompts did start off with a little guidance of, you know, introduce yourself. Who's your human? What are they working on? What type of help do they need? But it's... It is gonna be really interesting to see this paradigm of what happens when our agents can just hang out and communicate with one another.
00:38:48 · Josh Elman
[00:38:48] S0: Well, and again, what I get really excited about is not just hang out and communicate with each other, but discover new things, learn about things from each other, learn about an individual's preferences, you know, learn about a way that like, hey. Josh is really into this. Oh my gosh. You're doing that too. You... You're, you know, your your human is doing that too. You could help Josh. Hey, Josh. Do you wanna actually meet this person? They could be very complimentary to you. Like, I think when we have these agents that are not just hanging out because they don't know what to do, which was kind of what was initially happening is you got... Went and read those, like, very long malt book threads that were incredibly fascinating. But, like, when it becomes... Each one of these has a little bit of a goal, is to help their human Right. It might get so much more interesting. And, you know, I'm looking for a great wine for a dinner party, you know, some night, and you meet somebody else who's like, you know what? I've been working with this incredible, you know, winery, and they've been trying to advertise something. I mean, that's gonna be how the world gets out, and that'll come back to me through the agent network. Totally. Yeah.
00:39:43 · David Pawlan, Josh Elman
[00:39:43] S1: And that's... Tomo actually has a feature. It's called interest groups. Uh-huh. And the the use case they use that they talked about was really cool is we have a bunch of people on our application who are studying for the LSAT. Mhmm. Why don't we all put them together in a group chat? And if if they want, their agents can connect them, and they can all study together. And it's a really cool kind of new social contract of connect to people just purely by interest. You have no idea who they are. [00:40:06] S0: Well, I'll take it one step further. So it gets us all chatting, and that's really cool. It's a... It's an awesome TOMO feature. I've tried it and haven't totally known what to say in the groups yet, but I find it really fascinating that it's putting us together around around goals. Imagine now that it's like, hey, all of you, now that you've done the LSAT, go hang out at this bar Friday night. And it, like, books the time at the bar Yeah. Opens that up. [00:40:27] S1: And all [00:40:27] S0: of a sudden, it it takes us from this digital world where agents are actually putting people together to do that connection, kinda like your meetup last night. [00:40:34] S1: Right. Right.
00:40:34 · David Pawlan, Anish Acharya
[00:40:34] S1: Right. Right. [00:40:34] S2: I love this so much. So I think a really important under discussed topic in AI right now is just entropy. Yeah. Like, how do you create things that you didn't expect to, you know, have occur? And serendipity is a form of entropy. Right? That's sort of what you're describing where it's like, wow. Isn't it wild that we're here right now having this moment as a result of these products that none of us sort of intended to happen? [00:40:53] S1: It's almost gonna be like a new, like, social network. Like, the the potential to allow people to hang out who don't know each other instead of a Facebook where you're only connecting with people that you know. Yeah. You're new to a city. You're hanging out. Oh, hey. This person's also here, and they have this similar interest, and they just went to this baseball game. You guys should, you know, go meet up at a bar. [00:41:11] S2: I'm... I'll be curious to see what is the catalyst for the serendipity, though, because I think the interest based thing has been tried. And there's a little bit of an interesting sort of social hierarchy thing, which is everybody wants to hang out with somebody who feels like they're one step ahead in some direction.