The Exchanges

Q Like I think for For us, you know, we're deep into the tech world. It, it sort of makes sense to be wearing an AI around, but there is an argument, you know, looking at history, that it's, there have been attempts to do it, and it hasn't worked. Thinking about the Umane pin, for instance, or the Google Glass. So, what do you think is different about this time?

A I mean, I think the biggest thing is that, at the core, it's a good-looking, comfortable, stylish pair of glasses. I mean, it's the reason we're partnering closely with SLR Luxottica. They're our partner we've been working with for years. They're the makers of Ray-Ban, Oakley, they have many other brands, um, both owned and licensed. They have a number of stores. They are experts at lenses, experts at manufacturing, and working with them It's because they deeply understand what it means to have a good looking, stylish, comfortable pair of glasses that works well for people. And that is the core of what we're trying to do with the glasses. And so we've, we've launched the Ray-Ban Wayfarer was the first. Then we had other Ray-Ban styles. We've launched the Oakley Meta Vanguard, which are sport, the Oakley Meta Houston's, which are lifestyle Oakley's. That's just the beginning of what we want to be a really broad selection of brands and styles and SKUs. We want them, everyone's face is shaped differently. Uh, everyone has a different sense of style, and we need to make sure that they're comfortable, and people like how they look at them.

AI assessment note: “at the core, it's a good-looking, comfortable, stylish pair of glasses.”

Q out. You can just run them on device. So, you know, Meta is an interesting company because it's in the middle of doing that big build out, but it also has devices that I would imagine someday would want to run An AI model on device. Can you talk a little bit about that balance and sort of does one eventually cancel each other out or do you need both?

A Well, the, so the, um, servers and data centers that companies are building out, Meta included, and there's two kind of core functions that those serve. One is the training of the models, and so that certainly happens in data centers, and that's where it's gonna continue to happen, and that's where a lot of the investment is going right now. And the other, you know, as you say, it's running the inference. So it's when you're using the model, where are those models running to Answer the prompts or to agentically help you with tasks. Um, the, the former, I think the model training, I think is going to consistently run in data centers on where inference is served. Um, there's a number of reasons to try to move that to devices that are not in data centers. Um, one is the latency and reliability will be better. You know, you've used apps on your phone and the more things are local. The less network interruptions or low bandwidth or, you know, packet loss can cause issues. And so that's one reason to do it. Second is cost to the user, you know, and you're paying the fees to whether you're, whatever assistant you're using right now, you know, a lot of those fees are because it costs real money to be, um, serving you.

AI assessment note: “One is the training of the models... And the other... running the inference.”

Q interesting to hear you say, okay, use case number one is the speaker. Use case number two, photo video. Um, is the reason why AI is below that because, is it because the AI isn't good enough yet? What do you think is holding AI back? I mean, if you think about the power that people say AI has, you would imagine that it should be use case number one.

A The potential of AI is undoubtedly way higher than anything else right now. Just, if you just look at the sheer rate of improvement in the industry, it is abs, it's mind boggling. I think for a lot of people when, for a lot of people still, when they're looking at AI, it looks like a blank canvas on a wall. It's like, it's like if I handed you a piece of paper and a marker and said, all right, make me something great. Kind of don't know what to start with. Um, and so part of what we're doing while we start with auto capture and we'll have some other, um, things launched shortly that are very relatable. It's just trying to give people easy to understand, easy to use things with AI. And over time, you'll be able to do more and more complex, uh, and advanced tasks that really take advantage of the underlying capabilities. I think people are still learning how to best use AI. I mean, it started as in general, it started as a tool to help you write things. And I think now you're seeing people are coding with it in new and crazy ways. You're starting to see agents and agentic behavior take off where you can give the AI a goal and it will go accomplish something for you while you're not actively prompting it. So I, I think we're seeing that progress happen quickly. And we believe that wearables will be the best form factor, uh, eventually for the AI. Because they're always with you, t…

AI assessment note: “when they're looking at AI, it looks like a blank canvas on a wall”

Q So, is your thought then, again, if, just, I'm trying to flesh out the product vision here. If you have a pair of glasses like this with you while you're, while you're working, right? Which I guess is the case for you right now. You could just say something to it, and then some agentic Engine on the back end will be able to do these use cases for you.

A That's, yeah, I mean, that's a pretty good articulation of it. Um, I mean, I think of it in two ways. One is, and it's in two directions. One is, um, as I'm going through my day, and there's something I, you know, a lot of, it's funny how many people in tech decide that the thing that they need to invent at their next startup is a, like, a task app to just help you, you know, track the things that you need to do. And I think instead, as things come up, like, oh shoot, I forgot to, you know, I forgot to send out the email with the details for the game, or I forgot to send out a birthday invite for, you know, my kid's birthday coming up, you can just say, hey, I forgot to do that, draft it for me, and I'll look at it tonight. At some point, you can say, send it on my behalf, but I think we're still kind of in a draft version. I think that's, that's one end of it. The second is, I like to describe, it's, You know, imagine if you had the perfect person sitting right next to you who will whisper in your ear, At the right time. So, like, you know, my wife is very good at, you know, elbowing me. Like, if I'm about to say something that I'm gonna regret, my wife is really good at letting me know that I'm about to do that.

AI assessment note: “That's, yeah, I mean, that's a pretty good articulation of it.”

Q is it seems more than more than, uh, in this more than other, uh, types of computing, um, It's kind of winner takes all. That, that might be my, my perspective. Like, if you're gonna have an agent that you so trust with everything, you're probably gonna have one. Doesn't that sound right? Like, it's like you'll have one inbox. It doesn't really work to have multiple, multiple email addresses.

A I think, There's a number of reasons why I think you'd use, why many people use one assistant more than many. I mean, one is you pay for each of them, and so you probably want to pay for fewer rather than more. Second, like, the more, um, you work with it and it learns about you, the better it'll perform, you know, outside of underlying capabilities. So I, I do think that people will, for the most part, choose one assistant, but they may also choose one assistant for different tasks. I mean, I'm sure I'm a bit of an outlier since I'm right in the middle of the technology, but I use a bunch of different assistants, and I use different ones for different things that I'm trying to do. That could be point in time, uh, based on what's, what's better at what right now, and maybe that'll consolidate as, as the models mature, but we are very focused on, we, we want our glasses to be the ones that offer people the Broadest selection of brands and styles that we think people will like to wear and in making our software the best. And we've been, I mean, there are other devices in the market, but we have been, um, we believe there's gonna be a lot more competition coming than I think that we've been, than we've faced, than we faced to date. Part of it is that a lot of people have tried to build glasses And it didn't work out at first, ourselves included. Our first, our first launch didn't …

AI assessment note: “I do think that people will, for the most part, choose one assistant”

Q lot of what they do to be able to take action for them. And I'm thinking again, like if I'm at my work computer all day long and have a pair of, you know, these optics on with my prescription, Maybe there's going to be new use cases for me. So have you thought through those and how does that sort of fit into your vision of building AI wearables?

A I mean, I think there's a lot of, I mean, the, when you think about, so when you go from AI the way that we've experienced it to agents, that leap is that instead of prompting the AI saying, write me something that does this or write code that does this, you can give it a goal and it will figure out how to accomplish that. So you can say, um, I'm trying to debug Why, I mean, here's a coding one, I'm a software engineer by background, so please bear with me, but I can say something like, um, the behavior I get when the battery is low Doesn't feel right. It currently says this when it's low on battery in my ear, and I would like to change it to this. And the agent can go and figure out where, you know, what piece of code, uh, that's defined in and how to adjust it and create a diff that you can then prepare to submit as an engineer. The advance to, uh, OpenClaw is you see, um, you see a few things. One is that you're able to, what engineers would call Uh, creating a cron job, but you're able to schedule things that happen regularly on your behalf. So, for example, every day at, um, In the middle of the night right now, I have, well, every Sunday right now, I have my claw go and help create a schedule for the week that I then send to our nanny, which has, you know, the kids schedule each day of the week and does that automatically. It's scheduled, which is a new thing. And the sec…

AI assessment note: “when you go from AI the way that we've experienced it to agents”