Chris Messina: Chapter 2: Competing Bots

M-A-C-H-I-N-E-Y-E-S-R-X-I-S-T. It's Machine Yearning from Assist. It's a podcast where we think and dream about the future of AI, the talking internet, and how we are reshaping our culture. This chapter is an excerpt from our longer conversation with Chris Messina. Chris is a pioneer of practically everything that's been important over the last 15 years. He was part of the team who wrote the original Firefox. He's a co-founder of BarCamp, and he invented the hashtag. In this chapter, Chris drops a lot of bold ideas, but keep an ear out for his thoughts on the future of competing consumer and brand bots and how capitalism and AI might have some compatibility challenges. Enjoy.

Well, right. So there's a whole question of what is a brand? What is a brand going for? What is the value and purpose of a brand? A brand previously was like Coca-Cola and, you know, whether or not the thing in the bottle actually is Coca-Cola or not. We're sort of moving to a world where we trust everything implicitly because we buy it off the internet and you could put a different label on it. And I don't know, like if it's a label that I trust or recognize, I just assume it's good.

Okay, let's go deep here because this is my favorite. This is— and I feel like brands are big. So what is a brand in the future? Yeah, here's something. This is what I can't get out of my head.

Yeah.

And I want to share it. So Everyone now is building bots on the business side. Yeah, but the consumer bots, I feel like, could actually get here before the business bots, and they will actually force businesses to create bots because they will all fail if not. And so the theory is that brands exist because the brain can't remember enough, right? So I always use insurance because I think bot insurance would be cool and it would be bigger than insurance. And if I had any guts, I would do a consumer insurance company, but I don't. So some of those—

there's some people doing it.

Yeah, I'm sure it makes sense. It's clear. It's like, duh. Yeah. What I hate like this. But the other side of it is this: if in the future I think about remembering Allstate and State Farm and Geico, whatever, totally, but it's 3 out of like, say, 10,000. Yeah, I don't know how many insurance companies are— probably a lot. Yeah, I don't care. I just want to make sure the plan works. It's my preferences. It's my thing. I trust that the other customer satisfaction rating, whatever that is, and that essentially used to be the broker.

Yeah.

And so what if in the future the only brand you care about are the bots? So there's a consumer bot that I trust. It's called Factory Joe. Factory Joe's a guy on the internet. Don't really know.

Right.

But he's very, very good at listening, taking all my preferences. But with infinite computing power, he or she—

well, this is he—

whatever—

can go to all 10,000 insurance companies at the same exact time. Yep. And get me based on my 7 preferences instantly the best. One. Two is if they're negotiating a live agent, they get to see 9,999 other live agents.

I mean, it's like Samantha and Her.

And like, I would— why would you— I will always out-negotiate you. I know, not even so 1 to 10,000, but 100 to 10,000. Now I know how you treated the other 99. So all of a sudden in this world, I just trust Factory Joe. I could give a shit about Allstate. But they're going to spend bajillions on that. But the free intermediary that is the consumer bots, could that be in the future the only brand you trust?

I mean, now you understand why capitalism is actually not necessarily the right model for the AI-powered world.

Say more. You got some bold statements. I love it. No, this is— I'm like, well, I mean, why do I trust any of these brands?

Think about an efficient marketplace, right? I mean, the problem right now is that there's a lot of friction in that every merchant can't talk to every possible consumer and you can't negotiate what the best possible price is for each of the people involved. And so right now there's a lot of triage that works on ignorance. And so if you do somehow have access to an enormous amount of information and to your point, can basically lateralize the same transaction a million times over and actually lower the cost because now you're actually selling to a huge number of consumers at once. Suddenly the ways in which you would win in capitalism before don't really make sense anymore. So—

and it's the ongoing thing, right? Right.

And so that's the other problem.

Every day it's also reminding the 10,000 that they don't have my business.

I think if you replace like Factory Joe in the short term with like Alexa or Siri, especially if you're a brand, like you should be having your oh shit moment because what you just said is what's happening. And so to sort of draw this back—

So Amazon is that?

Yes.

So what?

Fuck. Yes, exactly. So what I said is true and he sees it and it's like, yeah, this is it. He's— yeah, right. So, so here's, here's what's happening. Essentially, to go back to like the original arc, right? You know, you had the internet and you, if you were a business, you're like, well, shit, I got to get on the internet. So you put up a little brochureware website so you could be indexed by Google and whatever, you know, and then eventually that website, you know, was fine and served you and there was SEO and all this other stuff. But once the App Store came out in 2007, suddenly you had to start building or thinking about native apps. And the way that you power native apps is to build APIs to your backend services. So essentially the frontend of your business is literally like window dressing, and that's not really where the value is. It's sort of like a necessary thing to do, but like mostly you're focused on your core business and there's inputs and there's outputs. And so you have an API that essentially opens up third-party access to the guts of your system.

To judge it.

Not to judge it, like to access it, to interact with it, right? You are a process. You are an organ in a body.

But the way that I judged websites with SEO, I see there's something that's going to judge the speed.

Oh yeah. Okay.

The data, the— like Alexa will be that judge. Correct.

That's right. Right. So, so whatever the judge is, whatever the system of figuring out the value or whatever it is that deals with the auction that basically says I can offer you this at this price as long as you buy this many things, right, is some backend.

That's the new service.

That's the marketplace, right? So essentially we went from these brochure static websites to APIs. APIs enable the App Store. The App Store has millions of apps. Yeah. So once you have millions of apps, to your point about brands and the purpose of brands for consumer recall, now you can't remember the apps that you have. So instead, what you can imagine or you can recall is what it is you're actually trying to do. You have a bunch of intents, a bunch of verbs, things that, you know, you're like, I need a car for some reason, or I need a car wash, or I need a house cleaner because my house is filthy, or I need a pet thing because my pet's having this experience, whatever. You know what you need in those, in those terms. And you're not going to be thinking about brands. Brands spend a shit ton of money to basically kind of co-opt the verbiage in your mind so that they can be the thing that you think of when you have that need. But increasingly there's just too many choices, right? So the reason why voice computing is so contentious and where it's the next big battlefield is because now that we've opened up all these APIs to these backend systems, you don't need apps anymore. Apps are a frontend friction that exist because of the momentary time period where we needed to still have computing happen through screens. Well, if we move away from that—

And that was the distribution at the time. Right, and it was controlled because, like, at least in the app world, like, Steve Jobs understood that to stop the spam and antivirus on this personal device, like, I need to really control that.

Basically, he looked at like Windows and was like, we're not gonna like go down that path because you have to have a phone that's reliable, doesn't crash, doesn't have viruses, and so in order to do that, we're going to create a secure computing environment. You know, which has enabled lots of different things. Yet now we're moving to a world where the apps, besides being a way of connecting to people, which goes back to like the fashion case, you know, for kids and Instagram and stuff like that, for the most part, you don't really care to download an app to like just do this one task, you know, maybe yes, there's some forms that happen or whatever. So Slack is interesting in that sense too, where you have a very slim sliver of an app surface to basically, you know, provide some information.

But the key change that you just said, which I think is not to be overlooked.

Yes.

In the past, I think of intents and I try to think of a brand, and the brand spends all their time getting in my mind so that when I think of that intent, I think of them.

Yeah. What I'm saying is that you need to start optimizing for Alexa. No, you need to switch.

I have an intent, right? And then I don't have to remember anything.

You just outsource it. You just hand it off to whatever. And this is where bionic computing is so important. Bionic computing, basically, in this case is about literally getting as close to your thoughts as possible to essentially interrupt where you have or to shrink the amount of time between the generation of the intent or the awareness of the intent coming to your consciousness and then expressing it somehow. And if you have to express it through a keyboard, that's slower than speaking it. So I'm walking around with AirPods in my head and I'm like, oh, I need to get my cat washed or something, if that's a thing you do. And so you just say it and like, right? Yeah, they're dirty. And so Siri's like, oh, I got it. I can like do that. And then like a service comes up and like they wash your cat. And great, problem solved. So Siri is part of that value chain and that experience. And so now Siri and Apple are able to have an auction about that service, right? So that's why Amazon is trying to put Alexa everywhere. It's not just about convenience. It's not just about, oh, whatever, like you can automate your home. Like, yeah, okay, well, that's nice. That's the consumer value that drives the adoption of this thing. But really it's about getting a very easy and accessible interface to all of the entire Amazon marketplace to basically marshal all of those potential intents to that enormous field of service providers and product providers so that you don't even think about the act of purchasing anymore. You just say, I want it, and it appears. Basically, it's creating a genie experience for everyone.

Yeah, I'm a brand. So what? I'm a brand. I've been killing it on the internet. I've been around forever.

What does it mean that you're killing it on the internet?

Like, I adapted the business to be like big brands, right? I adapted. I'm good on the internet. Half of our revenue comes from the internet. I figured it out, kind of.

How do people feel about you?

They like receiving our emails.

You're fucked. I mean, like, honestly, it's, it's sort of like I get like those flyers in the mail, you know, like the free, like, or like the newsprint things that everyone gets. Yeah, that's over. Like, because I have to reach out to you because, because you have to like actually show me that you understand me. And that you understand my motivations and that you're supporting me and that you're literally giving me superpowers. And if really all you're doing is you're extracting dollars out of my pocket and you're not helping me or informing me or educating me or enriching me as a person and as an individual, and I don't feel like you somehow care a little bit about me and that when I reach out to you, you're not super responsive or close to being as fun to interact with as my friends, you know? I think, I think, I mean, that's aspirationally where you should go. So I think that's where if you're a hotel chain, you don't want to think about yourself as a hotel chain. Like you want to think about you are a person who creates an experience for other people to have. And why is it that they choose you instead of talking directly to Alexa? Alexa is going to give you exactly what you want. You know, no frills, very straightforward. It's going to solve your problem. I mean, think about Amazon Basics.

Basics is the unbranded everything, right?

Well, it's the Amazon branded stuff, right? It's like the generics. What's happening is that consumers are using less brand names in their in their product queries. You know, previously you'd be like, oh, I want some Energizer, you know, AAA or Duracell.

That's it. That was like it, right?

Yeah, correct. So that's generationally for us, right? Like the Energizer Bunny keeps going. When we start thinking about doing these queries, I mean, in Google or Amazon, maybe we used to type, you know, Energizer, you know, AA rechargeable batteries. But over time, you just, you know, you do Energizer, you know, batteries or— and then eventually especially when you get to voice, you're just like, Amazon or Alexa, like, I need batteries. And what happens? Well, Amazon obviously has a competitive advantage in that marketplace and says, well, we've got AmazonBasics. They're cheaper, they're easier. We'll get them to you overnight. You know, we've got them in our forward dispatch centers, whereas these Energizer ones are going to be $2 more and they're going to take 2 days to get there. And so essentially you just start to learn to defer to Amazon's choice. And Amazon handles the entire value chain. In terms of producing the batteries and then getting them to you and selling to you. And so instead of knowing or caring about a brand, you don't need to anymore. That is the opportunity. Essentially, if we get everything, if we water everything down to its basic core function, Amazon will cover everything. And so then what's necessary and where the opportunity lies is to actually pursue the arts and to pursue expression and to pursue diversity in terms of what each brand sort of brings to the table, which is unnecessary from a functional perspective, but it's part of the overall, I guess, experience design of a product. So talk about that because you were talking about experience design and relationship design. Yeah.

What, what is that?

So like relationship design has so many components to it. There's so many different ways to obviously construct a relationship. And if the relationship is fundamentally about commerce, then the only reasons to be in touch with someone is obviously to connect to commerce. Yeah. In which case that's like a toll road operator. I mean, that's what they're there for. It's extractive to provide a very simple service. If instead there is a flourish to the relationship where there's something that's more spontaneous, you know, it's like one thing for brands to like reach out on your birthday and be like, hey, happy birthday, here's 10% off or something. It's like, no thanks, right? Yeah. It's sort of like perfunctory. It's like the least possible thing you could do.

Yeah.

Whereas if you actually add some creativity to it, some generativity, something that says, look, I saw that you've been doing this thing lately. And obviously there's some creep factor to this, but if you do it well, or if it's well designed as though a person actually sort of took the time to be like, you know, I happen to like check out your Instagram feed and like, you know, you've been like traveling a bunch lately. And it seemed like the last time you went to Hawaii, you didn't have a snorkel. So I sent you one. I don't know, like some crazy thing like that where your friend could do the same thing. Your friend could be like, look, I saw this from all the media that you produce, all the ways in which you tell your own story. And I found a way of aligning what I offer to that story, and I therefore am part of it. That to me is a way in which you can construct a virtual relationship, but that is actually meaningful.

Now, I feel like it's just— your example is like, if I'm the Four Seasons and I had some human layer and I'm really good and I'm going to connect the dots, right? I don't even get to the fucking basic level. Like, I just want to have— I think relationships are about memory and remembering context, shared context. I just want, if I had one line in a booking agent that said, "Would you like a king bed again?" I would be like, "Fuckin' sold." That's all I want. Just thank you for remembering. I feel so great.

Yeah, I think you're right. Well, so, yeah. The baseline is so basic. Yeah, you're so right. Well, and, but this also goes back to the privacy question. Like, we actually seem to want to like withhold so much information, and yet the more that we share, the more likely these other services are gonna be able to meet our needs in a way that's anticipatory, right? In a way that actually predicts what it is that you would like based on either your past behavior or the way that you've expressed yourself. So I think when you think about relationship design, it's not just like how it looks and how it works, but how it sounds and how it feels and how it resonates. And that's a whole new realm of design that I think very few schools that I know of are actually thinking about.

Interesting. You should go teach that.

I gotta figure it out first.

And that's what you, you think that, So if you are good at coining terms, right, relationship design is the one-to-one design layer that needs to be focused on and figured out for messaging and voice as an interface. Yeah, I mean, conversation is the media, right?

So, so obviously the service is a big part of it. Service design has been going on for a while, but relationship design is— I think it, it spreads out. It's the tentacles that sort of evolve from the service itself, because service design is a design in which it works for everyone.

Sure.

And relationship is a design that works for me.

That's right. That's great. Yeah, it's very personal. It's personalized, it's personal, it's relatable, and it's at the scale of the individual.

Fascinating.

All right.

Hey, thank you very much. This was— this was what— this is my— one of my favorites. Thank you for coming by today.

Yeah, man. Thanks for having me.

Alright, thanks for listening. Get in touch on the Twitter @assist. DMs are open. We're super interested to hear who you think should appear on the podcast. Please subscribe so you never miss an episode and share this with someone who cares about how we make sense of these changing times. Machine Yearning is made by Paul Chufo and Michael Alsesser for Limina House. Have a great day.

Machine learning.