My AI Product Philosophy

by mm guo

Let me talk about my philosophy of AI products.

What has always interested me is the combination of two things:
The first is voice as an interface. A voice system is the most natural interface for interaction between people and AI. How users should anticipate using it, and how they can be guided into a bounded range of intents within just a few steps, is an interface question. GUIs answered these questions before. Voice, as a new interface, needs new solutions. How should we understand this new interface? We can look at it in layers. For convenience, we can provisionally think of a voice system as having two layers, analogous to “software” and “hardware.” Its software is the system’s level of intelligence: accuracy and ease in routing intent and responding. Its hardware is the immediate experience of the AI’s responses: the interplay of interaction details such as UI, style, timbre, length, frequency, and latency.

Then there is recording as memory. The boundaries of context define the boundaries of the outcome after an intent has been handled. But these boundaries have their own specific thresholds. Only within this range can the outcome be controlled and carry meaning. What kind of entry point would let people enter the system with little friction, in a way that stays aligned with the purpose carried by their intent at that moment? What kinds of needs would lead users to keep generating new input? As time passes and events unfold, how should these inputs be managed and organized so that they yield meaningful causal connections and correlations, which can then be used to produce outcomes? These are some of the hardest questions we face when turning context into memory.

My work so far explores different combinations of some of these elements, and it is still at a very early stage. But I have always had a goal in mind: to bring together these two aspects I care about most and make a product about “relationships,” an interaction system with a history and a recurring dynamic that keeps it going. Voice as an interface lets intent enter the system. Memory, as a space where data keeps connecting people with people, people with machines, and machines with machines, allows the past and present to continually form new connections. Intent can be processed into meaning. Meaning gradually forms relationships, and the relationships that have already formed then participate in the next creation of meaning.

The AI product I truly want to build is the ongoing formation of relationships, from intent to meaning.