Opinion
Simo: Grocery automation initiatives fail due to economics, not technology
“A big part of why you know, these kind of automation initiatives have failed is not because the technology is not good and not there. It's because The economics are actually very hard to make work.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Simo: Sick people will rely on AI for cures within 10 years
“A lot of sick people
Are gonna rely on AI to get cured in the next 10 years.”
Insight
Simo: Generative AI eases software, but connecting software to atoms remains hard
“The way I kind of see this trend of generative AI is that everything software is going to become a lot easier and lower barrier to entry, but the translation between software and atoms is still very hard.”
Insight
Simo: AI can summarize research for doctors who skip latest studies
“Most doctors do not read the latest research. That's something that can be solved through AI. Like, AI can do a great job summarizing the latest research that your doctor is actually current.”
Insight
Simo: E-commerce unnaturally forces humans to search using keywords instead of intent
“If you take a step back and you think about commerce online, it is very bizarre that we have forced human to train themselves to express their commerce needs in the form of keywords.”
Insight
Fidji Simo: Enterprises need both centralized and federated AI teams to succeed
“You can't expect every engineer to go super deep to understand everything that's going on. But at the same time, if you keep generative AI just in a centralized team, it's not going to impact all of your products. So you really need the combo of the two to mak…”
Disclosure
Simo: Instacart will open its fulfillment network as a third-party platform
“In the future, I want to make that available kind of as a platform, because you could imagine any nutrition app, any apps that's doing like anything that has to do with food or even commerce tapping into this network and making it available to like, Basically …”
Insight
Simo: Conversational search exhibits clearer commercial intent than keyword queries
“And these are placements that are, you know, gonna be really interesting for advertisers to tap into because, again, there's a much Clearer expression of intense and just a keyword and things that didn't exist before.”
Opinion
Simo: AI healthcare bottleneck is clinical workflow adoption, not the technology
“I think it's all about like adoption, like on the healthcare side, I think it's all about adoption in the clinic and in the real workflows of doctors. And so the technology is there. It's more about like How do you embed that into clinical workflows in a way t…”
Assertion Supported
Fidji Simo: Instacart grew 4x in 2020 before her CEO tenure
“I joined Instacart in 20, 21, and it was a very interesting time because the company had forex the year before.”
Assertion Supported
Simo: Instacart tech powers Publix, Kroger, and Schnucks websites
“Instacart was also a retail enablement company, meaning that we weren't just building the Instacart app. We were actually building technologies for our grocers. You know, when you go to Publix.com, Kroger.com, Schnucks.com, like that's Instacart technology tha…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Simo: Instacart processes one billion AI-powered search queries per quarter
“We do a billion searches a month, a quarter, sorry. And you know, it's all powered by AI.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Simo: Instacart has suggested one billion AI-powered item replacements
“We have suggested a billion replacement at this point. And like, that's all powered by AI.”
Disclosure
Instacart deployed internal assistant 'Ava' for engineers to use GPT-4
“We've also deployed an internal assistant called Ava so that all of our engineers can leverage the GPT-IV models in a lot of what they're doing, but do that in an assisted way that helps them figure out how to integrate that.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Simo: Instacart marketing team used AI to create 200 animated characters
“I think it's going to impact productivity well beyond engineering. A lot of people are talking about, you know, making software development easier, but I'll give you some other examples like our marketing team, for example, created an entire library of animate…”
Assertion Supported
Simo: Instacart aggregates over 80,000 stores across 1,000+ retailers
“The fact that Instacart has aggregated, you know 80,000 stores, more than a thousand retailers means that we can create these magical experiences where you ask the software, you know, things in a natural language, And food shows up at your door in two hours.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Simo: Instacart data shows omnichannel shoppers are more valuable
“We have actually have data that shows that customers who are omnichannel customers are more valuable than the online only customer or the Offline only customer.”
Disclosure
Simo: Instacart has rolled out Caper smart carts at Kroger, Sobeys, and Wakefern
“We have a K-pop cart rolled out at Kroger, Sobeys, Wakefern”
Assertion Supported
Simo: People spend more time watching food content than cooking
“In fact, people spend more time watching food contents than ever cooking it.”
Assertion Supported
Simo: There is a 14-year lag from research discovery to clinic
“There is actually a 14 years delay between
A new discovery, a new research discovery, and that impacting the clinic”
Fidji Simo