The a16z Show
00:42:34 · Josh Elman, David Pawlan
[00:42:34] S0: Full disk access just to read your messages. Right. You know, we've obviously got email, we've got calendar, we've now started talking about the photo role. What are some of those other core life, you know, things that people haven't connected yet to agents that would actually really open up personalization or open up new connectivity? [00:42:52] S1: It's... So it's something that comes to mind. I don't I don't know how much data this would actually provide. Maybe it's more of a habitual thing, and and again, it's it's dependent on the hardware and how smart that hardware is and how much data it's able to store. WeiJoe just released the MCP, the ability to connect to hardware. And I find that, you know, I think it's gonna be really interesting where, okay, if you can connect your assistant to your AC unit or you can connect it to your vacuum, and now your assistant has context on how frequently is your vacuum cleaning or how frequent... You know, what... What's the typical temperature you sleep at night? It's gonna start to develop these, you know, very passive understandings of, oh, you're you're kind of a neat freak or you really prefer cold weather over warm weather. And that's gonna then influence its understanding of your context of shopping. So I think there could be some interesting stuff there. Again, it's heavily dependent on on the hardware itself, and I think we're still at the earliest of innings in in that world.
00:42:52 · David Pawlan, Josh Elman
[00:42:52] S1: It's... So it's something that comes to mind. I don't I don't know how much data this would actually provide. Maybe it's more of a habitual thing, and and again, it's it's dependent on the hardware and how smart that hardware is and how much data it's able to store. WeiJoe just released the MCP, the ability to connect to hardware. And I find that, you know, I think it's gonna be really interesting where, okay, if you can connect your assistant to your AC unit or you can connect it to your vacuum, and now your assistant has context on how frequently is your vacuum cleaning or how frequent... You know, what... What's the typical temperature you sleep at night? It's gonna start to develop these, you know, very passive understandings of, oh, you're you're kind of a neat freak or you really prefer cold weather over warm weather. And that's gonna then influence its understanding of your context of shopping. So I think there could be some interesting stuff there. Again, it's heavily dependent on on the hardware itself, and I think we're still at the earliest of innings in in that world. [00:43:40] S0: So connecting to your home is super interesting. You know, I still think a lot about connecting. And, again, Amazon may be blocking this, but I think connecting to my Amazon history Right. Is something that I haven't heard anybody talk about. But, like, you know, we all have those days where you'd like... You can scroll all the way up and see, like, your very first order ever [00:43:57] S1: Mhmm.
00:43:57 · David Pawlan, Josh Elman, Anish Acharya
[00:43:57] S1: Mhmm. [00:43:57] S0: On Amazon. I actually do this on like the Apple App Store too, where you go back and you see like every app I've ever downloaded. And I think like histories like that, they're very part of my life. But until an agent has access to those, it just doesn't understand all of that. And so I think there's so much more kind of shopping history that if we could package up and give to our agents Right. Could do even richer things for us. Yeah. [00:44:20] S2: Look, think bringing agents to social events is really interesting. You talked about the home, like, have it be there for a family dinner one day. Right. Have it be there when we watch the, you know, Seahawks game on Sunday. Have it be there for a party or a bachelor party or who knows what. So I think, of course, there's all kinds of questions about permission and the Schrodinger's cat thing, which is, you know, does the active observation change the quality of the interactions? Mhmm. [00:44:45] S1: But [00:44:45] S2: I bet even a snapshot of you being yourself in that environment would provide so much more signal than, you know, a lifetime of hardware and Totally. I think. [00:44:54] S1: Yeah. [00:44:55] S0: No. I think it's right. You know, so much of it is [00:44:56] S2: on the written word, and
00:44:56 · Anish Acharya, Josh Elman, David Pawlan
[00:44:56] S2: on the written word, and [00:44:57] S0: they understand exactly what we've typed or texted and tries to build a personality, but we're so different. One of the other things I think a lot about with with agents is the things we often use agents for or even search for are things we don't know about, things that aren't fundamentals to our lives. You know, I I was doing all this searching when the World Cup was on this summer, and all of a sudden, Chadwick, he thought I was like a soccer fiend. Yeah. I was like, no. No. I was in the World Cup. That [00:45:21] S2: was it. [00:45:21] S0: Right? We're done. That was good. And, you know, I go on these curiosity journeys all the time. My daughter's into an artist, and so I'm gonna go, like, learn about the artist and listen to music to get to know it, but it's not my habitual artist or taste. [00:45:33] S1: Mhmm. [00:45:33] S0: And so how can it know that when we're on these curiosity journeys, that is not actually who we are or what our real preferences are? Is something that I still haven't figured out how to [00:45:42] S1: do with [00:45:42] S0: the agent. So I actually go into, like, the invisible mode a lot in order to not have things stored, which then isn't really helping either. So I'm curious of, you know, how we can actually get our agents to get to know us better. I like this idea of our our real world [00:45:56] S1: behaviors. Now how do you capture that data of the real world behavior is gonna be the interesting piece.
00:45:56 · David Pawlan, Anish Acharya, Josh Elman
[00:45:56] S1: behaviors. Now how do you capture that data of the real world behavior is gonna be the interesting piece. [00:46:00] S2: I don't know. I mean, there's gonna be a thousand capture devices. I mean, unless you're going to the, you know, the new set of bars that are gonna emerge that exist in Faraday cages, which I definitely think is going to happen in San Francisco. Yep. I think we... People are going to increasingly assume that they're being recorded Mhmm. You know, in all environments. [00:46:17] S1: I mean, I I bought [00:46:17] S0: the new Apple Watch because they have talked about some features like Siri recap Right. And live rewind that are coming out. I don't think they're quite out yet, but I upgraded my watch in expectation for those because I think it'll be really interesting to have this thing that's at least kinda capturing tidbits across my day. [00:46:31] S1: Right. I mean, like Amazon beats a twenty four seven ambient listener Yeah. Wearing your wrist. [00:46:36] S2: Okay. Maybe to wrap it up. So the first is, we're gonna get back together, let's say, in three or four weeks. Yeah. What do you think will have changed? [00:46:43] S1: Okay. I think we're gonna see a lot more innovation in the enterprise world. You know, we were chatting briefly before. It really seems like the whole world is focusing on consumer with not as much attention on enterprise, and I think that we're gonna start to see a little bit more shift in that in that direction. I mean, I
00:46:43 · David Pawlan, Josh Elman, Anish Acharya
[00:46:43] S1: Okay. I think we're gonna see a lot more innovation in the enterprise world. You know, we were chatting briefly before. It really seems like the whole world is focusing on consumer with not as much attention on enterprise, and I think that we're gonna start to see a little bit more shift in that in that direction. I mean, I [00:46:58] S0: think we're gonna start talking more about fun. I think we're gonna see agents that don't just feel like they're here to do something for us, but they're here to actually let us think out loud and help and get through our day a little bit more, making us laugh, doing little gossip in the background. Because I think that's what's gonna then make us build a relationship that'll make us trust it more to get all this other stuff done. Mhmm. [00:47:20] S1: So I think we're gonna start seeing the next wave of of users taking hold of of these and seeing how they behave. And and one reason I point to that is I gave my mom instinct, and I'm just, like, watching her now play around with it. She's having so much fun. She's technophobe, hates technology, and is just having a blast. It's like a kid in a candy shop. [00:47:41] S2: K.