⛸

fixtures/bensbites.beehiiv.com/a16z-wants-invest-consumer-ai.md

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+# a16z wants to invest in consumer AI
+
+**[The abundance agenda by a16z](https://gamma.app/docs/a16z-Consumer-Abundance-Agenda-ieotbnzbxj81biu?mode=doc\&utm_source=bensbites\&utm_medium=referral\&utm_campaign=a16z-wants-to-invest-in-consumer-ai)** **:** What does a16z, one of the top VC firms, think about AI and the upcoming transformation in consumer technology? Well, it’s telling us upfront.
+
+## What’s going on here?
+
+a16z releases its abundance agenda for investing in consumer AI.
+
+![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/b27b5a0d-6dfb-41e1-b8be-8e98d8abf0cb/image.png?t=1707313062)
+
+## What does that mean?
+
+So, in simple words, a16z’s shabang is: AI will explode personal creativity, productivity and relationships. This will give rise to consumer companies which will grow insanely fast and have high user retention. a16z is all up for funding such ideas.
+
+They highlight some major focus areas for each of these enhancements:
+
+- **Creativity + Productivity:** Content generation, AI native content editing and tools that do stuff.
+
+- \*\*Companionship + Social:\*\*AI as a companion/friend and AI as tool to connect with friends, partners etc.
+
+- **Personal Growth:** AI for education, personal finance or wellness.
+
+The document has more details on each of these and additional resources to go deeper.
+
+## Why should I care?
+
+If you’re a founder rebuilding in these niches or in general an AI consumer company, you know that there are investors who believe in the space. If you’re a builder looking for ideas, take notes, a16z’s spilling the tea (can you see? I’m trying to be GenZ.)
+
+The agenda has got their thesis, their way of investing, contact of consumer AI partners from the firm and much more. [Check it out.](https://gamma.app/docs/a16z-Consumer-Abundance-Agenda-ieotbnzbxj81biu?mode=doc\&utm_source=bensbites\&utm_medium=referral\&utm_campaign=a16z-wants-to-invest-in-consumer-ai)

fixtures/bensbites.beehiiv.com/ai-helps-read-ancient-roman-scrolls-buried-volcano.md

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+# AI helps read ancient Roman scrolls buried after volcano.
+
+Remember the Vesuvius Challenge? The challenge by Nat Friedman to read Herculaneum scrolls which were charred by a volcano nearly 2,000 years ago. [The tech nerds have done the job](https://scrollprize.org/grandprize?utm_source=bensbites\&utm_medium=referral\&utm_campaign=ai-helps-read-ancient-roman-scrolls-buried-after-volcano), with the help of AI.
+
+## What’s going on here?
+
+The Vesuvius Challenge gets its first grand winner, reading old Roman scrolls with AI.
+
+![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/0e208c2e-68c2-4740-b49a-f79a00f2b438/image.png?t=1707214370)
+
+## What does this mean?
+
+The Vesuvius Challenge dished out a grand prize of a cool $700k to the team of Youssef Nader, Luke Farritor, and Julian Schilliger! Their submission recovered more than 2000 characters from the scrolls (the goal was to recover 4 columns of 140 characters each.)
+
+Btw, wanna know what the part recovered in the scroll says? The author is thinking if the things that are available in lesser quantities afford more pleasure than those available in abundance. He thinks that’s not the case and writes:
+
+*as too in the case of food, we do not right away believe things that are scarce to be absolutely more pleasant than those which are abundant*
+
+Bloomberg has amazing coverage of the [backstory of the challenge.](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-ai-unlock-ancient-world-secrets/?utm_source=bensbites\&utm_medium=referral\&utm_campaign=ai-helps-read-ancient-roman-scrolls-buried-after-volcano)
+
+## Why should I care?
+
+Think about it: if AI can read ancient, crispy scrolls, what can't it do? Yeah, it's about Roman Empire now, but tomorrow? Who knows!
+
+Maybe figuring out medical mysteries or even understanding signals from outer space. It's showing us that AI's not just for support chatbots and spreadsheets; it could help us solve some of the biggest puzzles out there. It's a wild ride, and AI's just getting started.

fixtures/bensbites.beehiiv.com/analysing-intercoms-ai-strategy.md

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+# Analysing Intercom’s AI strategy
+
+### Their focus on product, pricing, people and content
+
+![Author](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/user/profile_picture/fc858b4d-39e3-4be1-abf4-2b55504e21a2/thumb_uJ4UYake_400x400.jpg)
+
+[Ben Tossell](https://bensbites.beehiiv.com/authors/fc858b4d-39e3-4be1-abf4-2b55504e21a2)\
+February 08, 2024
+
+👋*Hey, this is Ben with a* ***🔒*** *subscriber-only issue* ***🔒*** *of Ben’s Bites Pro. A weekly newsletter covering how businesses are using AI.*
+
+*If you’re not a subscriber, here’s what you missed recently:*
+
+- *[How Deel uses AI in its business](https://bensbites.beehiiv.com/p/deel-uses-ai-business)*
+
+- *[How Sandwich Video uses AI internally](https://bensbites.beehiiv.com/p/sandwich-video-uses-ai-business)*
+
+- [*How to get your team to use AI; insights from Stripe, Zapier and more*](https://bensbites.beehiiv.com/p/get-team-use-ai)
+
+*Subscribe to access these and all future & past posts.*
+
+[<button>Subscribe to PRO</button>](https://bensbites.beehiiv.com/upgrade)
+
+I’m exploring how to implement AI in businesses and today I’m looking at Intercom’s AI strategy.
+
+Intercom — a leading customer support platform — is sharpening its focus, quickly becoming an AI-first company.
+
+While Intercom has been integrating AI in its products for several years, since GPT-3’s release, they have started radically changing many aspects of the organisation.
+
+This analysis provides a glimpse into how Intercom is positioning itself as an AI company, by focusing on 4 key areas:
+
+- Product
+
+- Pricing
+
+- People
+
+- Content
+
+Here’s a brief timeline of their AI adoption:
+
+**December 2017**
+
+Fergal, a machine learning strategist turned VP of AI at Intercom, spoke about the product implications of AI, noting:
+
+Simulating natural human conversation is a challenge. We’re definitely not at the stage where we have a system that’s intelligent and can hold the context of a conversation.
+
+Creating a machine learning system that’s fit for users continues to be tough. Often you can build a very powerful machine learning system that will do 90% of a task well enough, but then you’re left with this remaining 10% that prevents it from entering the wild.
+
+**October 2020**
+
+Resolution Bot was born.
+
+We had seen the magic of a couple of real end users having their questions successfully answered by a bot, and we knew time spent improving accuracy with real machine learning wouldn’t be wasted
+
+**December 9th, 2022**
+
+Des and Fergal discuss ChatGPT (launched on 30th November) and its implications for customer support.
+
+Our technology interfaces are gradually becoming more conversational, and we’re just starting to see the quality of natural language understanding get good enough to unlock them.
+
+**January 31st, 2023**
+
+Intercom unveils its first experiment with generative AI—powering Intercom Inbox with GPT 3.5.
+
+We sketched out a few AI-powered features we thought could be useful, went into production, and put a beta version in front of 160 customers.
+
+The ability of GPT-3.5 to edit and change text makes it very valuable for customer service, and it can already handle tasks such as summarizing text and adjusting tone.
+
+we built a feature and did a couple of rounds of iteration with a summarization feature in the inbox. You could just press a button or use a keyboard shortcut to basically say, “Hey, I want a summary of this feature, put it on my composer so I can lightly add to it.” It’s not perfect. You might need to add a little bit to it, but it’s a huge time saver.
+
+It normally takes 3 minutes to write a summary, but with this new feature, it takes ~10 seconds.
+
+**February 2nd, 2023**
+
+Fergal and Des hosted another podcast discussing ChatGPT's impact on their industry and its benefits.
+
+GPT may disrupt the customer service industry, but if automation increases the agent’s productivity, it can ultimately unlock capabilities that enhance their value to the business.
+
+They mentioned they were prototyping some new big features.
+
+we have a wave of other features in prototype form that are not quite there yet – big-ticket value things – but we think we see a line of sight to that
+
+**March 14th, 2023**
+
+Fin was announced.
+
+The big goal, though, was creating a GPT-powered chatbot that could answer customer queries directly. To do this, it needed to be able to harness the power of large language models but without the drawbacks posed by “hallucinations”. Initially, we weren’t sure how long it would take to crack this problem, but now, with the release of GPT-4 by OpenAI, we can reveal that we’ve built a chatbot that can reliably answer customer questions to a high standard. We’ve called it Fin.
+
+We’ve reduced hallucinations by about 10x, building constraints that limit Fin to queries relating to your business, based on a knowledge base you trust.
+
+**April 2023 onwards**
+
+They produced more content about the impact of AI on customer support roles.
+
+Yes, customer service teams will get smaller. This is inevitable, but it isn’t the doom and gloom people project. Many teams have high staff turnover, and constantly open roles, and this will reduce pressure. It will give managers more time to invest in growing their people.
+
+The customer service job will get much more interesting, and rewarding. Reps will only deal with more complicated questions, or really important customers. The job will still be about human connection, empathy, but also deep problem solving. Reps will have more time to provide the excellent customer service they are striving for.
+
+New types of jobs will emerge in the customer service team. The customer experience that blends AI and reps needs to be designed, to be orchestrated. And it needs to be analysed and improved.
+
+They produced a report on AI trends in the support industry (and have since [released a 2024 version](https://www.intercom.com/campaign/customer-service-trends-2024?utm_source=bensbites\&utm_medium=referral\&utm_campaign=analysing-intercom-s-ai-strategy))
+
+- 67% of leaders plan to invest more in AI the year ahead
+
+- 71% of support leaders believe that customers will expect AI-assisted customer service in the next five years
+
+- 71% of customer support leaders believe AI gives companies a competitive advantage
+
+Since then, they’ve released a lot of content on building AI products, AI's impact on customer support and its benefits, and industry surveys for insights.
+
+They’ve cemented themselves as an AI-first product company, sharing their learnings and helping their industry.
+
+Let’s see how they’ve done it by focusing on product, pricing, people, and content.
+
+## Product
+
+## Subscribe to Ben's Bites Pro to read the rest.
+
+Become a paying subscriber of Ben's Bites Pro to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content.
+
+[Upgrade](https://bensbites.beehiiv.com/upgrade)
+
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