brexton

Global Co-Head, AI/Compute Infrastructure at the Cantor Group. Focused on compute, atoms, & physical AI. Janitor @phamilyoffice. ❤️ @sonofalli

[brexton @brexton]

@0x_aut Watching things, playing things, listening to things, gambling, gossiping

[brexton @brexton]

Rant that no one asked for:
My general take about consumer AI is that 99% of the things we've seen so far are super far-removed from reality

Most people feel like they don't have money to spend right now, so the use-cases around agents booking flights or trips or booking reservations or shopping just don't appeal to the average American consumer

I would argue that things that consumers purchase or "do" frequently enough (like ordering on Amazon, or calling Ubers, etc.) were obvious/annoying enough/frequent enough use-cases where we built amazing software UI/UX over the last decade that's been optimized to near ultimate efficiency that adding AI or agents on top would actually be making it *less* efficient. Like really *worth-it* use cases are generally "one-clickable" by great consumer products/platforms already

There's a lot of magical moments/wow factors/sci-fi things with agents that come from super annoying workflows (like booking flights or wrangling personal errand stuff in gmail or etc.) but are just not frequent enough for the average person. They're actually the long-tail. For example, 20% of the world's population has flown on an airplane at least once in their lifetime, meaning 80% of people globally have never set foot on a plane. Only 11%-15% of the global population flies in any given year!

This is not me saying that consumer AI is dumb, I'm actually extremely excited and optimistic, but it kind of goes back to things we've always known about consumer, which is:
1. Save/make consumers money
2. Make consumers entertained or famous
(And, of course, vices)

Even like, regardless of your views on prediction markets/sports betting, I think you have to understand that comes from a place of the average person feeling like they 1) don't have enough so 2) they want to do what they can to jump the socioeconomic rungs

Anyway, there's an extremely *wide* space of opportunity and I'm very excited to see the absolutely insane new AI/innovative stuff that builders come up with, but also I really want to see things that aren't just dressed up versions of 2010s prosumer/productivity software (and the problems that came with it)

P.S. The 90/10/1 rule still applies to consumer: most consumers want to *consume* (and lurk) rather than create!

[brexton @brexton]

@0x_aut For what

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@sonofalli :(

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@sonofalli As God intended

[alli @sonofalli]

help someone just referred to my husband as “the compute guy” and it’s going to his head

[brexton @brexton]

@AravSrinivas THE PEOPLE WANT SOVEREIGN COMPUTE

[Aravind Srinivas @AravSrinivas]

You can now run Perplexity Computer fully local on your Mac with no cloud based inference, without WiFi too. Enjoy!

[brexton @brexton]

@holyn @faionur Yes pls 🥺

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@nicochristie @0interestrates @BrainsAndTennis Let’s go!!

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@ZhengWeiji61756 Well ok I think so I just don’t think the average person is booking flights frequently

[brexton @brexton]

@ericzelikman Insane!! Will try ASAP

[brexton @brexton]

@1a1n1d1y DM!

[brexton @brexton]

@pratyushbuddiga I 100% agree, I’m currently obsessed with luxury/premium software (I’m sure you can tell 😉) but I’m very ok with it not being considered consumer (and/or venture scale)

[brexton @brexton]

@FerrariJetpack Yes

[Clayton Blaha @FerrariJetpack]

it feels like everyone fails to consider that shopping feels really good

[brexton @brexton]

@vitorialima_42 Yes!!

[Vitoria Lima @vitorialima_42]

Yep I agree with that- as first gen, growing up my fam never had to (or could) book a flight on a whim, as I do instead today

Travel for most people/consumers out there is seen as a luxury and thence, there is joy in the process of booking vs seeing it as a chore. I remember the sheer joy and pride of my single mother in being able to book a flight to Paris to go to Disneyland when I was a kid- the hell she would have (or today) trusted an ai to book the 1 flight she could afford for the first time in 5 years with her wallet lol 😂

And on this: “it kind of goes back to things we've always known about consumer, which is:
1. Save/make consumers money
2. Make consumers entertained or famous
(And, of course, vices)” —> Out of the 2 use cases, ofc biggest fan of #1. In tech, for how cheesy this may come across, we have a serious responsibility, given our extremely privileged spot in society, to still try to to good (or the least harm) to the wider society.

I like to believe that with ai we can enable more and more people to find/build creative side hustles to make a better living, instead of finding creative ways to get more “distracted” from reality

[brexton @brexton]

@sugandhanisa True

[brexton @brexton]

@RogerMichelden Yes!!

[brexton @brexton]

@goodielogan But again not a frequent thing/kind of missing my point