Why AI Hasn’t Blown Our Minds…Yet

Hypothetically, if AI is a bust in a bunch of different ways but it works extremely well fixing customer service, that's still massive. It's going to change our world; massive impact.

Hello, this is Dalton plus Michael and today we're going to talk about: why isn't AI knocking our socks off? Where's the AI Revolution? Where's I? I was told this is a revolutionary product and I saw that Google thing, and Google's demo was bad. Where is my surplus economy? Like, aren't we supposed to be in Star Trek World by now? Why do I have to still work? Like, what's going on?

Yeah, one funny thing about hype cycles is there's always going to be two sides of the debate, which is this thing is overhyped and this thing is underhyped. Yes, you don't get many clicks arguing this is exactly the right amount of hype, subtly perfectly hyped. Yeah, this is perfect. So, you always have like two sides of it. I think one of the "AI is overhyped" arguments is just the demos may be cool when you see the launch videos, but the products themselves are kind of crappy and not being deployed in production. They're not being deployed in ways that touch lots of consumers.

I try to say it a different way: I don't pick up my phone and use an AI product multiple times a day in the same way that, like, other products I've adopted.

Yeah, the perfect example: Google, right? It's just like Google search happened and I found myself using it without prompt. Yep. I haven't had that moment yet. I guess the argument that I would make on this is that the low-hanging fruit use cases are going to be fixed first, and those are not likely to be the use cases that are the knock-your-socks-off consumer, “Oh my God, I'm living in the futuristic dream world.”

Um, I think the one I would talk about first that I think is happening already is the following: Have you ever tried to talk to Xfinity, Comcast, or Verizon Wireless or United Airlines?

United Airlines, yes.

Um, those experiences are uniquely bad.

Yes, and known to be bad.

And are, you know, just bad. Always just bad. It's just bad. And you go into them knowing it's going to be bad and then somehow this, this is impressively bad.

And it seems like one of the first use cases that AI is being implemented is to improve customer support in various ways. Yes, we are already seeing a lot of this being deployed in real use cases and what it's competing with is something that is so bad.

Yeah, um, AI makes it better. I think the other reason we're not hearing about this maybe as much as you would think is if you're actually deploying AI to these use cases, there's a few reasons you wouldn't want to beat your chest and be proud of it and talk about it. A few of which are just like, you know, people’s jobs. People are worried about their jobs. Also, you don't want to get embarrassed like Google did of all this bad press they put something out and they got embarrassed because the chatbot did embarrassing things. And so, I think there's a lot of secret customer service AI things that are out there doing real stuff.

Well, another thing with customer service, for most consumers, it's not a daily thing.

That's right.

Like hopefully, you're not calling customer service every day so you don't see it like you see other consumer products.

And so I think it's already being deployed. I think there'll be more of it deployed. I think it's going to revolutionize; be good. It's going to revolutionize things. And these are not small industries. Sometimes I'll talk to people like, “Oh yeah, customer service, cool, what else?” and I'll be like, “Wait, hold on! Yeah, this is a really part of the GDP of the world is people that do customer service or try to interact in these service-level jobs.”

So this alone, yes. Hypothetically, if AI is a bust in a bunch of different ways but it works extremely well fixing customer service, that's still probably going to change our world; massive impact.

That's a great example, obviously. Um, if you're a developer, I would argue that you're having a different experience than the experience I described.

Between using AI products to help you code, using something like Copilot.

Yeah, everyone uses Copilot, right? Like, the numbers that I've heard are crazy. What percentage of programmers use Coop? And it's actually interesting to me because, unlike Google, where I would say that I saw developers and non-developers kind of equally have overwhelming usage, there's actually a very clear divide. Where it's like developers can use something like ChatGPT way more often and generate way more value with it than normal consumers can.

Y.

And so this is another area where, of course, making developers more productive would have a profound impact.

Yeah.

On the world, it won't knock your socks off if you're a consumer out there. You'll be like, “Okay, you're boring me, Dalton and Michael, I don't care.” But if you're a programmer and you now have this new tool you didn't have in the past, you're using every single day to do your job, that is a profound improvement.

Big, big, big deal. And then, I mean, obviously, you know, internet research, right? Like just the finding information. And this is one where I've seen it with my kid. Like I realize, you know, as a grizzled 41-year-old, I'm just like not actively seeking out information at the same rate that my six-year-old child is.

You know, you have a young child, like you know, just like they can ask a question about everything once every 10 seconds for their whole waking time.

And products like this that can just answer every single question like the best encyclopedia and dictionary that ever existed, that's useful to a six-year-old.

Again, we have that. So I think people are already being desensitized.

Like yeah, yeah, whatever, cool, like I get it, but when is it going to be really good? It's like, “Hey, this is already pretty useful.”

Yes, pretty, pretty good.

What's interesting is you see those use cases and you still, though, have to acknowledge people have this feeling.

And specifically, I think the feeling that they have—I've tried to unpack this in my own mind. I originally thought of it as smartphones, right? I originally thought of like, “Oh my God, my life changed with smartphones.” But when I thought about it harder, it's actually gig economy.

I actually believe that between sharing economy and gig economy, those are the two things that's happening.

Yeah.

Define gig economy for—

Yeah, gig economy is your DoorDashers of the world, so food delivery. Your Ubers of the world; car sharing economy. That's like Uber, basically the ability to touch something on a screen and something happens in the real world.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Like push a button, things happen, people show up.

Yes, that's kind of—that didn't exist before smartphones.

No, and like that is super, like that is mind-blowing!

Like, yeah, and we don't see things like that yet with AI but to your point, like that doesn't mean the world's not rearranging because of AI.

It could just be; it's a thought experiment that it just does developer productivity. It just does customer support, like all the things we just talked about.

And that alone will have a profound impact on the world forever; massive, massive!

And I'm not saying that will happen, I'm saying there probably will be more wacky stuff that happens, but it's already changing things.

It just doesn't slap you in the face as some people might expect.

And it's interesting because I think there's such revisionist history that even myself, right? Like thinking, “Oh, smartphones was this moment.” I remember when the first Apple phone came out; I didn't buy it. It wasn’t this like amazing; there was no App Store, there was no 3G.

Yeah, I didn't buy the first iPhone.

No, it was, it was kind of bad!

And so the idea that there are these like moments in time, I think like I've even been guilty of like, yeah, when you're summarizing history, it's easy to be like pre-iPhone, post-iPhone.

In reality, I don't even know if it was the iPhone I was experiencing. I feel like it was the gig economy I was experiencing.

It was the first time I took an Uber and I can finally get a taxi in San Francisco.

And to talk about Uber as an example and DoorDash, it took a really long time for that to grow across the US and the world and for it to be normalized, where most people had downloaded and use those apps.

That took years!

And where do you want to start the start line? Do you want to start the start line with car phones? Or do you just want to start it with like Palm Trio, like, or BlackBerry, first G smartphones? Or do you want to start it with the first iPhone?

Like, it took a long, long—it wasn’t overnight everything changed.

No! Right?

No!

So we can see some cool things now, probably more cool things to come, but yeah, like I would argue like I agree with this sentiment. I'm not like—I'm not shell shocked yet.

Yeah, I'm not either. I guess I haven't tried to talk to Comcast in a while.

No, I—but like I’m hoping it’s better.

I've removed Comcast from my life; that was my solution.

But I think those are the places it's going to show up is: things that are like unseen, yes, behind the scenes, and that are like already really bad.

And I think that this is an important point to leave with. You know, that's why we're excited to fund founders who are messing around with these new tools because these innovations don't happen in a second.

And oftentimes someone creates a base innovation and more founders, entrepreneurs have to do the rest of the work.

Yep.

And so many of the use cases haven't been invented yet. We gotta fund a lot of them to see what should change.

You know, that's what's kind of fun about our jobs.

So with that, great chat, do alright?

Thanks.