Appenzeller: AI user interfaces are specializing into interactive copilots and async plugins
Guido Appenzeller · What Is an AI Agent? · May 2, 2025 · at 7:44
Guido Appenzeller is an infrastructure partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). He analyzes how AI user interfaces are splitting into interactive feedback loops and asynchronous background agents.
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“It seems like we're seeing to some degree a specialization of user interfaces in sort of two directions, right? There's, let's say, a cursor or something like that, which really emphasizes the tight loop between the user, the tight feedback loop between the user and the LLM and the thing I'm working on. Right. So I'm, I want immediate gratification when I do something, you know, and sort of response time matters. Then there's more the backend as, you know, source code management system type plugins, where it's more about throwing something over the wall, or maybe answering a couple of questions, and then you try to maximize the amount of time the agent can work independently.”
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