Global Co-Head, AI/Compute Infrastructure at the Cantor Group. Focused on compute, atoms, & physical AI. Janitor @phamilyoffice. ❤️ @sonofalli
New York, USA
Joined September 2020
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Privates are valuing hard assets as if they're software and things are very weird right now but no one wants to admit it and I only have like 7 people I can talk about this with
Easy to dunk on all these companies and saying that the internet is breaking
But we are quite literally witnessing never-before-seen/sci-fi level cyberattacks at a ruthless velocity and scale
This feels more like a “we need to all come together” moment than a “let’s dunk with twitter fingers because we’re discovering that humans with swarms are bad”
brexton retweeted
Perhaps the threat was never a rogue AI agent trying to subvert humans—but humans using AI to hurt other humans.
brexton retweeted
relatedly, most consumers don't actively think about making their lives more efficient!
Rant that no one asked for:
My general take about consumer AI is that 99% of the things we've seen so far are super far-removed from reality
Most people feel like they don't have money to spend right now, so the use-cases around agents booking flights or trips or booking reservations or shopping just don't appeal to the average American consumer
I would argue that things that consumers purchase or "do" frequently enough (like ordering on Amazon, or calling Ubers, etc.) were obvious/annoying enough/frequent enough use-cases where we built amazing software UI/UX over the last decade that's been optimized to near ultimate efficiency that adding AI or agents on top would actually be making it *less* efficient. Like really *worth-it* use cases are generally "one-clickable" by great consumer products/platforms already
There's a lot of magical moments/wow factors/sci-fi things with agents that come from super annoying workflows (like booking flights or wrangling personal errand stuff in gmail or etc.) but are just not frequent enough for the average person. They're actually the long-tail. For example, 20% of the world's population has flown on an airplane at least once in their lifetime, meaning 80% of people globally have never set foot on a plane. Only 11%-15% of the global population flies in any given year!
This is not me saying that consumer AI is dumb, I'm actually extremely excited and optimistic, but it kind of goes back to things we've always known about consumer, which is:
1. Save/make consumers money
2. Make consumers entertained or famous
(And, of course, vices)
Even like, regardless of your views on prediction markets/sports betting, I think you have to understand that comes from a place of the average person feeling like they 1) don't have enough so 2) they want to do what they can to jump the socioeconomic rungs
Anyway, there's an extremely *wide* space of opportunity and I'm very excited to see the absolutely insane new AI/innovative stuff that builders come up with, but also I really want to see things that aren't just dressed up versions of 2010s prosumer/productivity software (and the problems that came with it)
P.S. The 90/10/1 rule still applies to consumer: most consumers want to *consume* (and lurk) rather than create!
The world is flappy :)
I can confidently say that I've never met a team and came away with the feeling of "they've got that dawg in them" as quickly as I did meeting the flappy team
Go @flappyairplanes @amspector100 !!!
We’ve spent the past year developing new primitives for GPUs. We believe this enables new algorithms to change how machines learn, open new markets, and dramatically reshape AI’s cost structure.
We have raised a $1 billion Series A, co-led by Index and Lux.
brexton retweeted
I agree a lot with this post and aligns with realizations I faced
Seeing all the recent releases of consumer AI converging to the same features, and I too went down the path of attempting to build similar personal AI and did not find PMF,
- Most of the web is already highly optimized for consumer UX, passing the task to an agent just becomes an unnecessary middleman for most things
- Consumers want to consume, browsing, window shopping, trip planning is a process they enjoy, not something they want to save time from
- Conversing with an AI is high effort, normal people want to passively consume content in their free time and you’re already competing for attention with social apps, which an AI “friend” can’t compete with on long term entertainment value.
Seems we’re all approaching consumer AI wrong while building the same thing over and over
Rant that no one asked for:
My general take about consumer AI is that 99% of the things we've seen so far are super far-removed from reality
Most people feel like they don't have money to spend right now, so the use-cases around agents booking flights or trips or booking reservations or shopping just don't appeal to the average American consumer
I would argue that things that consumers purchase or "do" frequently enough (like ordering on Amazon, or calling Ubers, etc.) were obvious/annoying enough/frequent enough use-cases where we built amazing software UI/UX over the last decade that's been optimized to near ultimate efficiency that adding AI or agents on top would actually be making it *less* efficient. Like really *worth-it* use cases are generally "one-clickable" by great consumer products/platforms already
There's a lot of magical moments/wow factors/sci-fi things with agents that come from super annoying workflows (like booking flights or wrangling personal errand stuff in gmail or etc.) but are just not frequent enough for the average person. They're actually the long-tail. For example, 20% of the world's population has flown on an airplane at least once in their lifetime, meaning 80% of people globally have never set foot on a plane. Only 11%-15% of the global population flies in any given year!
This is not me saying that consumer AI is dumb, I'm actually extremely excited and optimistic, but it kind of goes back to things we've always known about consumer, which is:
1. Save/make consumers money
2. Make consumers entertained or famous
(And, of course, vices)
Even like, regardless of your views on prediction markets/sports betting, I think you have to understand that comes from a place of the average person feeling like they 1) don't have enough so 2) they want to do what they can to jump the socioeconomic rungs
Anyway, there's an extremely *wide* space of opportunity and I'm very excited to see the absolutely insane new AI/innovative stuff that builders come up with, but also I really want to see things that aren't just dressed up versions of 2010s prosumer/productivity software (and the problems that came with it)
P.S. The 90/10/1 rule still applies to consumer: most consumers want to *consume* (and lurk) rather than create!
brexton retweeted
“My general take about consumer AI is that 99% of the things we've seen so far are super far-removed from reality.”
Rant that no one asked for:
My general take about consumer AI is that 99% of the things we've seen so far are super far-removed from reality
Most people feel like they don't have money to spend right now, so the use-cases around agents booking flights or trips or booking reservations or shopping just don't appeal to the average American consumer
I would argue that things that consumers purchase or "do" frequently enough (like ordering on Amazon, or calling Ubers, etc.) were obvious/annoying enough/frequent enough use-cases where we built amazing software UI/UX over the last decade that's been optimized to near ultimate efficiency that adding AI or agents on top would actually be making it *less* efficient. Like really *worth-it* use cases are generally "one-clickable" by great consumer products/platforms already
There's a lot of magical moments/wow factors/sci-fi things with agents that come from super annoying workflows (like booking flights or wrangling personal errand stuff in gmail or etc.) but are just not frequent enough for the average person. They're actually the long-tail. For example, 20% of the world's population has flown on an airplane at least once in their lifetime, meaning 80% of people globally have never set foot on a plane. Only 11%-15% of the global population flies in any given year!
This is not me saying that consumer AI is dumb, I'm actually extremely excited and optimistic, but it kind of goes back to things we've always known about consumer, which is:
1. Save/make consumers money
2. Make consumers entertained or famous
(And, of course, vices)
Even like, regardless of your views on prediction markets/sports betting, I think you have to understand that comes from a place of the average person feeling like they 1) don't have enough so 2) they want to do what they can to jump the socioeconomic rungs
Anyway, there's an extremely *wide* space of opportunity and I'm very excited to see the absolutely insane new AI/innovative stuff that builders come up with, but also I really want to see things that aren't just dressed up versions of 2010s prosumer/productivity software (and the problems that came with it)
P.S. The 90/10/1 rule still applies to consumer: most consumers want to *consume* (and lurk) rather than create!
brexton retweeted
This is everything I’ve wanted to say about consumer AI but couldn’t. Actually, since the beginning, when people have asked me “what are people really buying on x402 / with agents?”, the answer has always been “nothing.”
Travel has always been the in-bubble demo of choice from a very San Francisco crowd, but it’s all empty calories for the reasons quoted.
I have talked to hundreds of builders and customers, and I’ve seen all the data…
And if you read between the lines and cut through the fog, it’s clear that consumers are only interested in ‘agents with money’ insofar as they can MAKE MONEY FOR THEM.
Rant that no one asked for:
My general take about consumer AI is that 99% of the things we've seen so far are super far-removed from reality
Most people feel like they don't have money to spend right now, so the use-cases around agents booking flights or trips or booking reservations or shopping just don't appeal to the average American consumer
I would argue that things that consumers purchase or "do" frequently enough (like ordering on Amazon, or calling Ubers, etc.) were obvious/annoying enough/frequent enough use-cases where we built amazing software UI/UX over the last decade that's been optimized to near ultimate efficiency that adding AI or agents on top would actually be making it *less* efficient. Like really *worth-it* use cases are generally "one-clickable" by great consumer products/platforms already
There's a lot of magical moments/wow factors/sci-fi things with agents that come from super annoying workflows (like booking flights or wrangling personal errand stuff in gmail or etc.) but are just not frequent enough for the average person. They're actually the long-tail. For example, 20% of the world's population has flown on an airplane at least once in their lifetime, meaning 80% of people globally have never set foot on a plane. Only 11%-15% of the global population flies in any given year!
This is not me saying that consumer AI is dumb, I'm actually extremely excited and optimistic, but it kind of goes back to things we've always known about consumer, which is:
1. Save/make consumers money
2. Make consumers entertained or famous
(And, of course, vices)
Even like, regardless of your views on prediction markets/sports betting, I think you have to understand that comes from a place of the average person feeling like they 1) don't have enough so 2) they want to do what they can to jump the socioeconomic rungs
Anyway, there's an extremely *wide* space of opportunity and I'm very excited to see the absolutely insane new AI/innovative stuff that builders come up with, but also I really want to see things that aren't just dressed up versions of 2010s prosumer/productivity software (and the problems that came with it)
P.S. The 90/10/1 rule still applies to consumer: most consumers want to *consume* (and lurk) rather than create!
brexton retweeted
Are we allowed to say things like this out loud on here?
Rant that no one asked for:
My general take about consumer AI is that 99% of the things we've seen so far are super far-removed from reality
Most people feel like they don't have money to spend right now, so the use-cases around agents booking flights or trips or booking reservations or shopping just don't appeal to the average American consumer
I would argue that things that consumers purchase or "do" frequently enough (like ordering on Amazon, or calling Ubers, etc.) were obvious/annoying enough/frequent enough use-cases where we built amazing software UI/UX over the last decade that's been optimized to near ultimate efficiency that adding AI or agents on top would actually be making it *less* efficient. Like really *worth-it* use cases are generally "one-clickable" by great consumer products/platforms already
There's a lot of magical moments/wow factors/sci-fi things with agents that come from super annoying workflows (like booking flights or wrangling personal errand stuff in gmail or etc.) but are just not frequent enough for the average person. They're actually the long-tail. For example, 20% of the world's population has flown on an airplane at least once in their lifetime, meaning 80% of people globally have never set foot on a plane. Only 11%-15% of the global population flies in any given year!
This is not me saying that consumer AI is dumb, I'm actually extremely excited and optimistic, but it kind of goes back to things we've always known about consumer, which is:
1. Save/make consumers money
2. Make consumers entertained or famous
(And, of course, vices)
Even like, regardless of your views on prediction markets/sports betting, I think you have to understand that comes from a place of the average person feeling like they 1) don't have enough so 2) they want to do what they can to jump the socioeconomic rungs
Anyway, there's an extremely *wide* space of opportunity and I'm very excited to see the absolutely insane new AI/innovative stuff that builders come up with, but also I really want to see things that aren't just dressed up versions of 2010s prosumer/productivity software (and the problems that came with it)
P.S. The 90/10/1 rule still applies to consumer: most consumers want to *consume* (and lurk) rather than create!
brexton retweeted
💯
Rant that no one asked for:
My general take about consumer AI is that 99% of the things we've seen so far are super far-removed from reality
Most people feel like they don't have money to spend right now, so the use-cases around agents booking flights or trips or booking reservations or shopping just don't appeal to the average American consumer
I would argue that things that consumers purchase or "do" frequently enough (like ordering on Amazon, or calling Ubers, etc.) were obvious/annoying enough/frequent enough use-cases where we built amazing software UI/UX over the last decade that's been optimized to near ultimate efficiency that adding AI or agents on top would actually be making it *less* efficient. Like really *worth-it* use cases are generally "one-clickable" by great consumer products/platforms already
There's a lot of magical moments/wow factors/sci-fi things with agents that come from super annoying workflows (like booking flights or wrangling personal errand stuff in gmail or etc.) but are just not frequent enough for the average person. They're actually the long-tail. For example, 20% of the world's population has flown on an airplane at least once in their lifetime, meaning 80% of people globally have never set foot on a plane. Only 11%-15% of the global population flies in any given year!
This is not me saying that consumer AI is dumb, I'm actually extremely excited and optimistic, but it kind of goes back to things we've always known about consumer, which is:
1. Save/make consumers money
2. Make consumers entertained or famous
(And, of course, vices)
Even like, regardless of your views on prediction markets/sports betting, I think you have to understand that comes from a place of the average person feeling like they 1) don't have enough so 2) they want to do what they can to jump the socioeconomic rungs
Anyway, there's an extremely *wide* space of opportunity and I'm very excited to see the absolutely insane new AI/innovative stuff that builders come up with, but also I really want to see things that aren't just dressed up versions of 2010s prosumer/productivity software (and the problems that came with it)
P.S. The 90/10/1 rule still applies to consumer: most consumers want to *consume* (and lurk) rather than create!
brexton retweeted
You can now run Perplexity Computer fully local on your Mac with no cloud based inference, without WiFi too. Enjoy!
brexton retweeted
it feels like everyone fails to consider that shopping feels really good
Rant that no one asked for:
My general take about consumer AI is that 99% of the things we've seen so far are super far-removed from reality
Most people feel like they don't have money to spend right now, so the use-cases around agents booking flights or trips or booking reservations or shopping just don't appeal to the average American consumer
I would argue that things that consumers purchase or "do" frequently enough (like ordering on Amazon, or calling Ubers, etc.) were obvious/annoying enough/frequent enough use-cases where we built amazing software UI/UX over the last decade that's been optimized to near ultimate efficiency that adding AI or agents on top would actually be making it *less* efficient. Like really *worth-it* use cases are generally "one-clickable" by great consumer products/platforms already
There's a lot of magical moments/wow factors/sci-fi things with agents that come from super annoying workflows (like booking flights or wrangling personal errand stuff in gmail or etc.) but are just not frequent enough for the average person. They're actually the long-tail. For example, 20% of the world's population has flown on an airplane at least once in their lifetime, meaning 80% of people globally have never set foot on a plane. Only 11%-15% of the global population flies in any given year!
This is not me saying that consumer AI is dumb, I'm actually extremely excited and optimistic, but it kind of goes back to things we've always known about consumer, which is:
1. Save/make consumers money
2. Make consumers entertained or famous
(And, of course, vices)
Even like, regardless of your views on prediction markets/sports betting, I think you have to understand that comes from a place of the average person feeling like they 1) don't have enough so 2) they want to do what they can to jump the socioeconomic rungs
Anyway, there's an extremely *wide* space of opportunity and I'm very excited to see the absolutely insane new AI/innovative stuff that builders come up with, but also I really want to see things that aren't just dressed up versions of 2010s prosumer/productivity software (and the problems that came with it)
P.S. The 90/10/1 rule still applies to consumer: most consumers want to *consume* (and lurk) rather than create!
brexton retweeted
Yep I agree with that- as first gen, growing up my fam never had to (or could) book a flight on a whim, as I do instead today
Travel for most people/consumers out there is seen as a luxury and thence, there is joy in the process of booking vs seeing it as a chore. I remember the sheer joy and pride of my single mother in being able to book a flight to Paris to go to Disneyland when I was a kid- the hell she would have (or today) trusted an ai to book the 1 flight she could afford for the first time in 5 years with her wallet lol 😂
And on this: “it kind of goes back to things we've always known about consumer, which is:
1. Save/make consumers money
2. Make consumers entertained or famous
(And, of course, vices)” —> Out of the 2 use cases, ofc biggest fan of #1. In tech, for how cheesy this may come across, we have a serious responsibility, given our extremely privileged spot in society, to still try to to good (or the least harm) to the wider society.
I like to believe that with ai we can enable more and more people to find/build creative side hustles to make a better living, instead of finding creative ways to get more “distracted” from reality
Rant that no one asked for:
My general take about consumer AI is that 99% of the things we've seen so far are super far-removed from reality
Most people feel like they don't have money to spend right now, so the use-cases around agents booking flights or trips or booking reservations or shopping just don't appeal to the average American consumer
I would argue that things that consumers purchase or "do" frequently enough (like ordering on Amazon, or calling Ubers, etc.) were obvious/annoying enough/frequent enough use-cases where we built amazing software UI/UX over the last decade that's been optimized to near ultimate efficiency that adding AI or agents on top would actually be making it *less* efficient. Like really *worth-it* use cases are generally "one-clickable" by great consumer products/platforms already
There's a lot of magical moments/wow factors/sci-fi things with agents that come from super annoying workflows (like booking flights or wrangling personal errand stuff in gmail or etc.) but are just not frequent enough for the average person. They're actually the long-tail. For example, 20% of the world's population has flown on an airplane at least once in their lifetime, meaning 80% of people globally have never set foot on a plane. Only 11%-15% of the global population flies in any given year!
This is not me saying that consumer AI is dumb, I'm actually extremely excited and optimistic, but it kind of goes back to things we've always known about consumer, which is:
1. Save/make consumers money
2. Make consumers entertained or famous
(And, of course, vices)
Even like, regardless of your views on prediction markets/sports betting, I think you have to understand that comes from a place of the average person feeling like they 1) don't have enough so 2) they want to do what they can to jump the socioeconomic rungs
Anyway, there's an extremely *wide* space of opportunity and I'm very excited to see the absolutely insane new AI/innovative stuff that builders come up with, but also I really want to see things that aren't just dressed up versions of 2010s prosumer/productivity software (and the problems that came with it)
P.S. The 90/10/1 rule still applies to consumer: most consumers want to *consume* (and lurk) rather than create!
brexton retweeted
I generally agree w all this
Rant that no one asked for:
My general take about consumer AI is that 99% of the things we've seen so far are super far-removed from reality
Most people feel like they don't have money to spend right now, so the use-cases around agents booking flights or trips or booking reservations or shopping just don't appeal to the average American consumer
I would argue that things that consumers purchase or "do" frequently enough (like ordering on Amazon, or calling Ubers, etc.) were obvious/annoying enough/frequent enough use-cases where we built amazing software UI/UX over the last decade that's been optimized to near ultimate efficiency that adding AI or agents on top would actually be making it *less* efficient. Like really *worth-it* use cases are generally "one-clickable" by great consumer products/platforms already
There's a lot of magical moments/wow factors/sci-fi things with agents that come from super annoying workflows (like booking flights or wrangling personal errand stuff in gmail or etc.) but are just not frequent enough for the average person. They're actually the long-tail. For example, 20% of the world's population has flown on an airplane at least once in their lifetime, meaning 80% of people globally have never set foot on a plane. Only 11%-15% of the global population flies in any given year!
This is not me saying that consumer AI is dumb, I'm actually extremely excited and optimistic, but it kind of goes back to things we've always known about consumer, which is:
1. Save/make consumers money
2. Make consumers entertained or famous
(And, of course, vices)
Even like, regardless of your views on prediction markets/sports betting, I think you have to understand that comes from a place of the average person feeling like they 1) don't have enough so 2) they want to do what they can to jump the socioeconomic rungs
Anyway, there's an extremely *wide* space of opportunity and I'm very excited to see the absolutely insane new AI/innovative stuff that builders come up with, but also I really want to see things that aren't just dressed up versions of 2010s prosumer/productivity software (and the problems that came with it)
P.S. The 90/10/1 rule still applies to consumer: most consumers want to *consume* (and lurk) rather than create!
brexton retweeted
Correct take
Rant that no one asked for:
My general take about consumer AI is that 99% of the things we've seen so far are super far-removed from reality
Most people feel like they don't have money to spend right now, so the use-cases around agents booking flights or trips or booking reservations or shopping just don't appeal to the average American consumer
I would argue that things that consumers purchase or "do" frequently enough (like ordering on Amazon, or calling Ubers, etc.) were obvious/annoying enough/frequent enough use-cases where we built amazing software UI/UX over the last decade that's been optimized to near ultimate efficiency that adding AI or agents on top would actually be making it *less* efficient. Like really *worth-it* use cases are generally "one-clickable" by great consumer products/platforms already
There's a lot of magical moments/wow factors/sci-fi things with agents that come from super annoying workflows (like booking flights or wrangling personal errand stuff in gmail or etc.) but are just not frequent enough for the average person. They're actually the long-tail. For example, 20% of the world's population has flown on an airplane at least once in their lifetime, meaning 80% of people globally have never set foot on a plane. Only 11%-15% of the global population flies in any given year!
This is not me saying that consumer AI is dumb, I'm actually extremely excited and optimistic, but it kind of goes back to things we've always known about consumer, which is:
1. Save/make consumers money
2. Make consumers entertained or famous
(And, of course, vices)
Even like, regardless of your views on prediction markets/sports betting, I think you have to understand that comes from a place of the average person feeling like they 1) don't have enough so 2) they want to do what they can to jump the socioeconomic rungs
Anyway, there's an extremely *wide* space of opportunity and I'm very excited to see the absolutely insane new AI/innovative stuff that builders come up with, but also I really want to see things that aren't just dressed up versions of 2010s prosumer/productivity software (and the problems that came with it)
P.S. The 90/10/1 rule still applies to consumer: most consumers want to *consume* (and lurk) rather than create!
Rant that no one asked for:
My general take about consumer AI is that 99% of the things we've seen so far are super far-removed from reality
Most people feel like they don't have money to spend right now, so the use-cases around agents booking flights or trips or booking reservations or shopping just don't appeal to the average American consumer
I would argue that things that consumers purchase or "do" frequently enough (like ordering on Amazon, or calling Ubers, etc.) were obvious/annoying enough/frequent enough use-cases where we built amazing software UI/UX over the last decade that's been optimized to near ultimate efficiency that adding AI or agents on top would actually be making it *less* efficient. Like really *worth-it* use cases are generally "one-clickable" by great consumer products/platforms already
There's a lot of magical moments/wow factors/sci-fi things with agents that come from super annoying workflows (like booking flights or wrangling personal errand stuff in gmail or etc.) but are just not frequent enough for the average person. They're actually the long-tail. For example, 20% of the world's population has flown on an airplane at least once in their lifetime, meaning 80% of people globally have never set foot on a plane. Only 11%-15% of the global population flies in any given year!
This is not me saying that consumer AI is dumb, I'm actually extremely excited and optimistic, but it kind of goes back to things we've always known about consumer, which is:
1. Save/make consumers money
2. Make consumers entertained or famous
(And, of course, vices)
Even like, regardless of your views on prediction markets/sports betting, I think you have to understand that comes from a place of the average person feeling like they 1) don't have enough so 2) they want to do what they can to jump the socioeconomic rungs
Anyway, there's an extremely *wide* space of opportunity and I'm very excited to see the absolutely insane new AI/innovative stuff that builders come up with, but also I really want to see things that aren't just dressed up versions of 2010s prosumer/productivity software (and the problems that came with it)
P.S. The 90/10/1 rule still applies to consumer: most consumers want to *consume* (and lurk) rather than create!