The a16z Show
00:05:03 · David Pawlan, Josh Elman, Anish Acharya
[00:05:03] S1: Mhmm. [00:05:03] S0: Some will be plugged into your email, and it'll be like, here's the five emails you need to get done right now. And some are gonna be sort of these agents you'll kinda wanna talk to all day that'll be fun, that might even be a little bit gossipy. I've been playing with a few agents that are are very kinda playful and gossipy, and they're connected to a few of my friends too. And they'll share information back and forth. One just told me that my friend's power had been out all weekend because he'd been doing some renovation, and they'd cut the power. And I called him that evening, and I was like, dude, you didn't tell me your power's out. The agent told me. He was like, yeah, yeah, I I knew that's how you'd find out. I'm like, that's like creating these better connections, but that has nothing to do with booking a trip or saving money or getting anything done. [00:05:40] S1: Right. I think from over a 147 different assistants that have come across my plate so far Mhmm. I've seen them really broken down into four categories. You have the general, you have the work oriented, you have the multiplayer, and then you have the travel. And the one that I have not really seen come to fruition yet is more of, like, the finance side of things. Yeah. And I think it actually does make sense when you start digging into the numbers. So of all the different group chats that I'm running of AI powered users, there's about 3,600 give or take messages so far. [00:06:14] S2: Mhmm.
00:06:14 · Anish Acharya, David Pawlan
[00:06:14] S2: Mhmm. [00:06:14] S1: And when looking at the pain points of what are the fears of the space, the number one fear that people talk about, 22% of the messages, are talking about trust as the main fear. And so it's really interesting to see because you have one camp that's this productivity and aspects of fun that's just interesting and brings a different sense to life. But then you have another camp that really still is sitting in this kind of fear space of being a little trepid and not really knowing where the space is moving. And I'm really curious to see how things are gonna play out on that trust layer. And if we can solve that trust layer, then what do we end up seeing on more of the finance side of stuff?
00:06:49 · Josh Elman, David Pawlan
[00:06:49] S0: And if you looked at what Shane Mack has been talking about recently about trust, he's been talking about this concept of something called picnic. Yep. And they had an analogy that I really liked, which is if you have a kid and you don't have any fences on your yards and you let them go run outside, you're actually very worried about them and you try to protect them and you don't want them to run very far from the house and you actually don't really wanna do them without watching. Then the moment you actually put up a little fence in your yard, you say you can just go roam free within the fence boundaries and be very, very safe. And so he's really kind of like, how do we build the right fences? So we let our agent play in this fence, give it access to some of our data, some of our apps, some of our other things, and be able to actually do everything it can within that fence boundaries. He had a problem where I think a personal agent spanned over into work, and he actually, like, blasted his finances on his company Slack. Yep. And I think that's the whole point of like, okay, my personal agent should have access to my personal things and my personal communication channels, but not my work ones. [00:07:43] S1: Right. [00:07:44] S0: And not let those bleed. And so that idea of fences and permissions and more controlled permissions and better monitoring really how we're gonna have to build a lot more trust. Totally.
00:07:44 · Josh Elman, Anish Acharya, David Pawlan
[00:07:44] S0: And not let those bleed. And so that idea of fences and permissions and more controlled permissions and better monitoring really how we're gonna have to build a lot more trust. Totally. [00:07:53] S2: It's interesting though because I think we have this traditional mental model of what it means to have a sandbox Yeah. Which is you have a hard set of constraints and rules that must be followed or not followed. And somebody was describing this framing of instead of giving models rules, we should give them laws and principles. Yeah. And I think a similar thing may apply here, which is like, look, here's how to dial in your presumptuousness, and it's very qualitative. [00:08:16] S1: And the [00:08:16] S2: model will have to make a judgment call based on your qualitative sort of advice to it just as an employee would have to.
00:08:16 · Anish Acharya, Josh Elman, David Pawlan
[00:08:16] S2: model will have to make a judgment call based on your qualitative sort of advice to it just as an employee would have to. [00:08:22] S0: Yeah. I mean, I think that's part of why the analogy is, you know, a fence for children. Because in some ways, these agents, they're incredibly capable. Yeah. But at the same time, they're kind of children sometimes, and how they may behave and not know all the nuances of like, hey, is this a good idea or not? And they don't always have that logic. And the most important thing, I think, we keep talking about agents being autonomous. Book me the trip. Yeah. Make me the reservation. And I think as humans, we actually don't wanna give away that sense of control. I think we actually want it to check-in with us, but do all the groundwork. Save me all the time in coming up with the best options and the right trade offs. And now let me make the final decision, and also let me make sure I've qualified the final decision, the cost Mhmm. Anything else before my agent acts, is I think a place... And maybe over time, we'll even learn to trust it. [00:09:09] S1: Right. [00:09:10] S0: But I think right now, we don't need to to still have a really, really effective agent.
00:09:10 · Josh Elman, David Pawlan, Anish Acharya
[00:09:10] S0: But I think right now, we don't need to to still have a really, really effective agent. [00:09:14] S1: Right. I mean, it's it's... We're at, like, the nineteen nineties of ecommerce where I think the, like, last stat I read was in 1997 or so. Was 60 to 90% of individuals on the Internet thought that putting your credit card online was a preposterous idea. Mhmm. And here we are today. It's just everyone's tossing their credit card wherever you want. Yeah. And I think we'll we'll eventually hit that in this era as well, but it's gonna take a little bit of time. [00:09:37] S2: I think there's, like, a stated versus revealed preferences thing here. Because I think in revealed preferences, consumers will share any amount of data for even the most trivial amount of upside. [00:09:45] S1: Right. [00:09:46] S2: You know, like, people have been connecting their cards, their credit cards, and the bank accounts via Plaid since the Venmo era. So I don't know that people... But when you ask them, they're like, oh, yes. I'm very concerned about trust and safety. I think an example though of where consumers are very concerned about sort of trust and assumptions is around being embarrassed [00:10:04] S0: Mhmm. [00:10:04] S2: Yes. And social signaling. And, actually, the most interesting thing about the Shane Mac story, the most horrifying visceral thing is that it embarrassed him. [00:10:11] S0: That's right.