3 SALESFORSALESFORCE FUTURESCE FUTURES ANTICIPATING PERSONAL AGENTS: VIABILITY Finally, and perhaps most crucially, OpenAI’s ambitious efforts to link their incumbents already possess the model with UI and distribution seems distribution channels, including the more promising. For an upstart to win in most-used hardware, apps, and websites the personal AI space, they will need to through which to deploy personal AI solve the distribution problem and become solutions. These established companies, a platform. This is no easy feat. A look at while far from perfect (some further the history of technological innovation than others) also have established reveals a pattern where excitement about practices around privacy, content decentralization and openness runs high moderation, security, and ecosystem early in the innovation cycle, only to give governance—including the power to shape way to more centralized options once interoperability standards—that may give companies figure out ways to make money them an edge grabbing market share in off centralization. It’s also notable that a complex, multi-agent world. according to reporting by the Financial Times, Amazon, Microsoft and Google The Humane and Rabbit demos accounted for two-thirds of the $27bn mentioned in the previous section raised by AI startups in 2023. capture our imagination because they hint at the possibility new upstarts may shake Any new platform would have to get big up an ossified consumer tech landscape. enough, fast enough to fend off acquisition We imagine new hardware, new platforms, and establish its position. None of this is and new modes of interaction. News such to say that upstarts can’t emerge and knock as the rumored hardware collaboration the tech giants off their pedestals. It’s between OpenAI and former Apple Head early yet. Perhaps personal AI disrupts of Design Jony Ive only adds to our sense some sectors and categories while of anticipation. sustaining others. Before we get too carried away, in our WHO PAYS FOR THESE THINGS: opinion, Humane and Rabbit compete SERVICES > ADVERTISING? primarily on UI, betting they can deliver The business model of the internet is something so compelling consumers will powered by advertising, but we don’t really abandon their existing devices and jump know how ad-supported revenue will evolve on board. Less certain is the quality of in a personal AI world. Could advertising data these companies have access to, how as we know it today disappear entirely? effective their models are, and how much Because personal agents are so their distribution can scale. Less certain is intimately connected with their users, the quality of data these companies have the value exchange will be more access to, how effective their models are, explicit and examined than it is with and how much their distribution can scale. today’s applications. ISSUE 1: PERSONAL AI | 22