The Exchanges

Q And that also like, you're like sitting on a table with someone and they're like, keep on looking at their, their watch. So does this take people out of the real world in a way that, you know, might be detrimental? I mean, what do you think about the real world implications here?

A No, tremendously important question. And we, we've tried to use a tagline more present and connected, uh, the idea of, of kind of reducing the dichotomy we often feel. Um, and actually one of my, Anti-patterns that I've been telling people about for these glasses is just having to be notification services because notification services are an invitation to leave the present moment and instead go elsewhere. Like that's what a notification is intended to do. So let you know, Hey, if you want to, you could leave this physical plane and go dive into this digital surface over there. I want people to be able to do that if that's what they want to do, but it can't just be that. Um, instead though, If you think of the examples I've given, it's about adding context. And so the real difference maker between these and a phone in your pocket and all the things that are attached to a phone in your pocket is they have the ability to be aware of the world at all times. And this is where AI has been such a tremendous tailwind for our vision for these. Um, you know, we really thought early on when we were developing these, even until maybe a year ago, it was going to be holograms and then at some point later, AI. And in fact, it's going to be the opposite. The AI is going to come first. It's already come to, to the Meta Ray-Ban glasses. Um, and so for me, at least we've got this idea where, okay…

AI assessment note: “Anti-patterns that I've been telling people about for these glasses is just having to be notification services”

Q I mean, do you expect them to build something like this as well?

A I have no idea. Uh, you know, they, they keep it pretty tight, uh, down in Cupertino. They don't, they're, they're a pretty tight ship and still don't have great information on that. Um, I think they're, I think they would love to build something like this. I think we've been investing longer. I think we've believed in it more. Um, and as a consequence of frankly, Mark Zuckerberg's faith, um, and tremendous execution by a team of Thousands of people over a long period of years. I think we have a meaningful lead in a bunch of the technologies here. Uh, but you'd be foolish to count out a great technology company, one of the great all-time companies in general, uh, at Apple. Um, but my point is like, I think that the fact that they already have this phone that's in your pocket has some advantages because you've now got this device that has a bunch of compute. It has a bunch of silicon. They can do great custom silicon. They can add more to that. It's also a disadvantage, I think, in a way. Are they going to be willing to walk away from, you know, one tremendously outsized profit center in pursuit of something that is fundamentally disruptive to that profit center? Um, and if you're centering more of the experiences on the phone as opposed to on the glasses, do you make the leap that you need to make in developer platform, in interaction design? Um, because a lot of those things t…

AI assessment note: “I have no idea. [...] I think they would love to build something like this.”

Q And if it's about the API you're providing, does that mean the main interaction layer is going to be through some sort of voice AI or?

A It's hard to say at this point. I think that's voice is one verb. I don't, I think voice has a great modality for some things. It also has a lot of Vagueness to it, even amongst humans, a lot of context that's required even among humans that obviously even a, a really great agent wouldn't have for a long time if it was with you. Um, and so I think voice is probably not the only piece of it. Voice and text are part of it. I'm sure there will still be a lot of very direct manipulation interfaces for a long time to come. Um, but you can start to imagine, yes, as voice gets more developed, my ability as a developer to create value in how I manage process data or how I, you know, um, manufacture new artifacts is actually The more important thing I'm doing rather than having to also extend that to the consumer through some kind of interface.

AI assessment note: “I think voice is probably not the only piece of it. Voice and text are part”

Q So is this basically a way to just deliver the AI platform more seamlessly?

A It's not just the AI platform. I think the AI platform is what changes the scope of how we interact with it, um, from being completely reactive, which is what computers have been from time immemorial to being proactive. Um, I think it also, of course, is a super more convenient way to go ahead and manage communication and manager, like manage all the different things that phones do. Listen, use video calling again as an example. You know, this is just a terrible way to, you know, I'm holding my phone out, my hand out in front of my face. Like, my arm is literally tired. I've been doing this for eight seconds, and I'm like, I work out, man. Like, it's like, I can't. So there's a few things that are just fundamentally better on this platform. Um, and then there's a few things that I think, yeah, you can do it on the phone, or you can do it here, but if this was already on your face, you wouldn't use your phone.

AI assessment note: “It's not just the AI platform. I think the AI platform is what changes”

Q So talk a little bit about, do you see promising applications being built and, um, what happens to the big foundational model companies if this stuff is all effectively commoditized?

A Yeah, so I was one of the loudest voices internally, um, to channel, encouraging us to open source Llama one, Llama two. Obviously you see how bought in Mark is with his announcements around Llama three. Um, and the reason for that for me is like, it's a tremendous benefit to our company, whether we make the AI or someone else makes the AI good, I'm the only one who can use it in our products. And that's, we have a direct relationship with our consumers. So we can make our products better for consumers, whether we make the AI or someone else makes the AI. So that makes this, um, A compliment to us and you want to always commoditize your compliments. Um, you always want to make sure that the thing that you depend on is like cheap and getting better by a lot of people, not just by your effort and money. Um, and so strategically it makes perfect sense, but more than that, we're a technology company and we've always seen AI in particular as, um, the, the data we bring to it for our own applications, that's special to us and the application itself is special to us. But we've always with PyTorch, we've always tried to make sure that the middle piece, that the, the, the infrastructural pieces, those are for everybody. Um, and that like the, the, that makes our developers have better apps. Um, when they're on building for quest, it makes sure that the partners that we're working with, …

AI assessment note: “you always want to commoditize your compliments... it's hard to say what happens to these companies”

Q help you out, you know, as you talk to it, it will go out and do things in the world for you. Same thing with Anthropic, similar with Meta. And Apple has, again, a similar vision, although we'll wait to see what it looks like when it's in the wild. So how do you differentiate and do you agree that everything sort of converges on the central assistant use case?

A Yeah, well, I think, I think everyone's doing exciting work and we're on the very forefront of it, so it's hard to say. I would, you know, the work today, the, the business that Anthropic is doing, and that OpenAI appears to be increasingly pursuing, uh, concentrating on things under, under Greg, is an enterprise business, where they're building these harnesses, um, that, and that's where the money is, and I understand that's, they need money, so it's, it's an important place to start, where it's like, it's actually very much attached to the enterprise, um, that's like where all the revenue is, um, as a practical matter, um, and I get that, that's like, that's, that's, you know, big companies, it's Although there's a lot of money in one place. So you have a small number of sales that you have to make and you can get like larger amounts of capital. And this is a capital intensive of game that they're playing. Um, I think their major focus is definitely on these like work use cases. I think those are super valuable. Obviously we take advantage of them as well in terms of our professional work. That's not our major focus. Like our major focus is a hundred percent on how this is going to help consumers in their lives. Um, and I think The real question, I don't know that the AIs become indistinguishable from one another at all. I think there's a real question of, uh, actually you, y…

AI assessment note: “our major focus is a hundred percent on how this is going to help consumers”