Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah, I know it's a fun and ironic twist. Our mission from the early days was make internet business personal. And when I came back and we started to lean into AI, I started to wonder, does that mission make any sense anymore? Now, part of our lean into AI is that we had no choice not only for the business, we needed something new, but also we saw that this is the future and you can't fight the future. You must be part of it. And so okay, fuck, we're going to be part of it. And ultimately, and it's very easy to tell yourself these little stories. So, I'm open to anyone telling me this is bullshit, but when I interrogate myself, my soul and my mind, I don't think it is, when I interrogate my heart and my mind, I don't think it is. But I'm now of the belief that providing a customer with a highly engaged, instantly available expert, consistent, fast, charismatic, funny, friendly, personal agent available for literally every single customer every minute of the day around the clock is so much more personal than making them wait 2, 3, 4 days for a crappy canned response. And so that's the irony and the magic and the wonder of AI, even if it does make us ask some hard questions of ourselves and think carefully about its impact on humanity, it actually is superior at the things we describe as personal and human, relative to humans themselves. And so that's where I'm at today. Yeah, maybe it's a bunch of fancy post rationalization, but honestly that's really where I stand. I think data has shown people often prefer not to talk to humans just to solve problems that can just be solved. It's a lot of stress to try to figure out how to talk to some support agent that doesn't know anything about what's going on. Yes, and the AI is just better. Look at Waymo. So, Waymo doesn't crash. It has 3.5 times less crashes than humans. It doesn't bother you or bug you. I like to chat with an Uber driver as much as the next guy, but not always. It doesn't have hygiene problems. It doesn't take wrong turns. I mean it just doesn't do all these things that really bug people. And it's really interesting to see Uber now offer women the option to call only female drivers, and I guarantee the reason they're doing that is because women love Waymo because they feel safer. AI is so often superior and humans are going to be far better at other things. I'm pro-human, I love humans. I really want humans in the mix for all things in the rest of my life, but when it comes to practical, productive, efficient, and effective value, the glue in between the human parts of our lives, I actually want AI and robotics.…

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