The Information's TITV
00:39:38 · Akash Pasricha, Andrew Ambrosino
[00:39:38] S0: I'll write. You're you're pretty... You know, I see you. You're you're sourcing feedback in real time [00:39:42] S5: on social media. And and, you know, like, I... Then I go over to the the app, and I, you know, say to my dot, which runs Codex in the background, obviously. I run... I say to my Dot, hey. Can you take a look at this feedback, thread and save them all, group them into themes, you know, sort them by impact, right, if a if a bunch of people are saying the same thing, but saying them come... Kinda differently. Right? And it kinda goes through. And at the end of the day, I've got this great doc in in space, that has 300 bullet points. And they're all grouped and sorted, we can start to go off that. And so even something like, is that how people thought coding agents would go? I'm not sure. But, you know, it's like every single thing I do now is through this type of experience where I'm like, you know, help me understand this problem that we have. It's not a code problem per se. Some some of it is, but it's it's really it's really interesting. [00:40:35] S0: So when you see headlines like, you know, Bloomberg reported that Apple is is putting caps on how much their employees can spend Yeah. On AI tools, for example. I mean, this is a flavor of headline that we see, you know, every week, and this is really coming down to the cost Right. Of these tools. I mean, what do you think when you see those headlines? [00:41:00] S5: I think a few things. I... The first thing I always think is that I'm surprised that people are surprised. And that there
00:41:00 · Andrew Ambrosino, Akash Pasricha
[00:41:00] S5: I think a few things. I... The first thing I always think is that I'm surprised that people are surprised. And that there [00:41:09] S0: was [00:41:09] S5: never a world where companies were gonna have just infinite unlimited budget for every employee to, you know, get his tokens about whatever. Like, obviously, efficiency is important. Right? Which is why we focus so much on efficiency. We're all... We're we're, [00:41:23] S0: you know, [00:41:23] S5: usually the leader in token efficiency on models. It's something we're very proud of. It's something that we are very focused on. You know, I I think I think the nuance of it is is a little interesting and where people are choosing to draw lines. [00:41:38] S0: Where are those nuances? [00:41:41] S5: I mean, the Apple thing was much... It it was about mostly budget. Right? It was it was, saying, okay, instead of $300, you know, whatever this period was, it was, you know, gonna be 200 or 100. You know? I don't think there's a world where anyone is saying, hey, we actually liked... We liked the before times where we were hand typing all of our functions and, things, you know. I think that that's gone. And in terms of efficiency, yeah, like, of course, of course, this is gonna be a huge focus. [00:42:07] S0: So it it doesn't concern you is is what you're saying?
00:42:07 · Akash Pasricha, Andrew Ambrosino
[00:42:07] S0: So it it doesn't concern you is is what you're saying? [00:42:09] S5: No. And I think I think this is really in line with where the focus has been for the company. Even when you... You know, you look at a lot of products where the connection may not necessarily be clear, like ChatGPT Space, like, this is something that can dramatically increase efficiency when a team is able to share knowledge that is native to the model's understanding of things. Right? Because instead of saying, hey, my dot went to my Twitter account and sourced all of these things, and then I've also got a project, a product manager over here asking the same thing, spending a lot of tokens to answer exactly the same question that I got answered. Right? Now you've got the shared space that you can... You know, the PM's Codex can go to that space and be like, yeah. It's right here. The other the other guy asked the same question. Right? Right. So it's... I mean, this is everywhere. [00:42:57] S0: And and as you think about costs, I mean, is kinda something I've been thinking about. We kind of equate it with models and tokens and compute all the time and efficiency. I mean, I wonder if there are product level decisions in the, you know, the user experience that you can make to make it cheaper, or make things more efficient? Not necessarily the model or the compute, but literally, like, the product itself.
00:42:57 · Akash Pasricha, Andrew Ambrosino
[00:42:57] S0: And and as you think about costs, I mean, is kinda something I've been thinking about. We kind of equate it with models and tokens and compute all the time and efficiency. I mean, I wonder if there are product level decisions in the, you know, the user experience that you can make to make it cheaper, or make things more efficient? Not necessarily the model or the compute, but literally, like, the product itself. [00:43:20] S5: Yeah. Certainly. And we do we do some of this with, you know, the modes and, like, the reasoning selector and things like this. I think, whether everyone should be choosing reasoning and models every time... You know, a lot of people love to do this who get a, you know, sense for development, but some people want... They they want the right thing being chosen. Right? The most... Yeah.
00:43:20 · Andrew Ambrosino, Akash Pasricha
[00:43:20] S5: Yeah. Certainly. And we do we do some of this with, you know, the modes and, like, the reasoning selector and things like this. I think, whether everyone should be choosing reasoning and models every time... You know, a lot of people love to do this who get a, you know, sense for development, but some people want... They they want the right thing being chosen. Right? The most... Yeah. [00:43:45] S0: Right. I'll end with this. I mean, you know, I've been thinking a lot about how we are going to teach people the capabilities of these tools because this is the conversation that everyone is having. The models can do so much, and yet people aren't even awake Right. To that right now. But then I come back to my own experience with it, is that I'm... Like, I was never a software developer. I'm not that technical a person. I still get a little freaked out when I'm trying to use the tools, I see it doing stuff that I don't understand. Not from a security perspective, just like I literally don't understand what is being made in front of my eyes. So how do you think that we are going to teach people to use these tools in a more advanced way when you have someone like me who is a pretty tech forward person, but still, if I don't understand what it's doing in front of my eyes, I I walk away from it a little bit.
00:44:42 · Andrew Ambrosino
[00:44:42] S5: Alright. So I have a take on this. I I have a a new take. New take? New to me. A new new take to me. And if you remember in 2007 when the iPhone came out, all of the apps were, like, leather and paper and glass. Like, they looked like the materials. Right? They looked like a notebook. And this... It's called skeutomorphism. Right? And part of the the the reason why that was the right move at the time and that we don't have that anymore is because it helped guide people from one world to the other. Right? So it said, know, this is a familiar calculator. It's a familiar notebook. And I think that there are two things that are very similar in what we work on that I kind of view in the same lens. One is cursors. Not the company, but the the cursors on your screen. Right? Computer use, as is in the ChatGPT app, does not need to show you a cursor. Doesn't It need it for itself. Browser use doesn't need a cursor. When when the agent modifies a space page, it doesn't need a cursor. Right? This is all so that it feels familiar and that it's easy to track the work that's happening. Right? So this is one area of of sort of skeetomorphism. And then the other one is in named agents like DOTS. Right? As many people have pointed out, like, you can do a lot of what DOTS are are giving people. You could ask Codex to do it. You could ask ChatGPT work to do it. But in embodying and personifying these agents, it... For a lot of people, especially at work when they're used to working with teams of people, has really helped on the what what can I do with this thing? And it's, you know, making it feel like a coworker is is helping with this. Right? The, like, oh, yeah. Can be proactive. I can ask it to remind me of things. It kind of helps bridge that gap in the short term even though it may not be strictly necessary to to have that form. So I found this quite interesting, actually.