Selling AI to People

Let's say you're somewhere in the field of AI. You are somewhere from AI researcher (only uses their keyboard to check their mail, every 1 minute) to AI developer (fingers rarely leave keyboard). You know what AI is. AI is simply the automation of things, under various circumstances. There are certain laborious, dangerous, prohibitively difficult tasks, so we make software or machines to do them.

If you utter "Artificial Intelligence" to a non-technical person, a completely different image appears in their mind. It's something a bit more like this:

or worse, this:

I've actually had people ask me if machines will one day "love".

The non-technical person has a completely different image of what constitutes AI than you do. The consequence of this for the entrepreneur is, if you tell someone "My software is revolutionary because it uses Artificial Intelligence!!", they will undoubtedly become excited, and then become utterly disappointed when you actually show them your software.

No where have I learned this lesson more bluntly than when I was pitching my startup to a venture capitalist.

Brief story. This was back when our software was something completely different, and we were pitching it as basically an intelligent task management system. We walked into the meeting, and by this point, all the investor knew was it involved artificial intelligence, and he was very excited. As we were giving the presentation, you could slowly see the man deflate. When it finally came time to give our demo. He watched the system assign unfinished tasks to time slots, and exclaimed "it's just putting tasks where ever there's free time." I tried to explain that no, the system is actually sorting through many constraints, and figuring out what the possible orderings there are for tasks given the goals that have to be accomplished, but he was having none of it. "This isn't...artificial" he said in disappointment.

AI is about solving problems that are too difficult to do by hand. It enables you to solve extreme, prohibitively difficult problems. For example, finding content on the internet relative to your query involves looking at TRILLIONS of pages and examining them. One person could not do it in his lifetime, so Google uses AI to do it for you. But you'll notice Google does not ever say "We use AI! Come use our search engine!" They just solved a problem no one else could nearly as well, and let this fact speak for itself.

A similiar sentiment has been expressed recently by the infamous Ted Dziuba, one of the creators of Pressflip (formerly Persai), a new content recommendation site:

How Does it Work?

That's a good question. After dealing with angel investors, VCs, users, and anybody who isn't an engineer, the answer in my mind is, nobody gives a shit. Really, nobody cares about your algorithm or how revolutionary you think it is. All people care about is a system that shows them things they want to read.

I'm here to tell you, man, that is right on.

Your software is not revolutionary because it uses Artificial Intelligence. Your software is revolutionary because it is able to solve a problem that was until this moment not solved. *That* is what you must pitch.

A Note about Competition

Remember my company, Method in Mind? Our first product is called Operatus. Hooray! Much more on this in the coming weeks. In discussing Operatus with some early customers, I discovered an interesting thing that some fellow entrepreneurs might find interesting. I was talking idly about social networks (Operatus is *not* a social network), and so of course mentioned Facebook and MySpace, at which point they displayed this expression on their face conveying "I....you just made those words up."

This highlights a very important point. Your competitors are not actually your competitors until your customers know about them. When you're advocating your product, you are in an excellent position if yours is the only solution they know about, and they only know about yours because you're telling them. Having a website, and having a foothold in the public mind, are two very different things.

For example. Suppose you've got this great idea to make a great mass emailer for companies (then you are a horrible person). Perhaps, you did the Google search and were disheartened by the existence of your competition. However, if you stroll down to your boss' office, I doubt they would be able to name even one of these companies.

At the extreme other end, suppose you've got this great idea to make a great mp3 player. You tell your mom, the complete non-technophile, and she tells you "You mean you want to make an iPod?" Yeah, the competition's got a good foothold there.

On coffee vs. cocaine

Well, I know that coffee does wildly varying things to different people. For me in particular, though, I become more focused, more willing to work on difficult things, and in general turns me into a raging optimist. Cocaine, on the other hand, makes you do downright unreasonable things. Well, so I'm told. In this instance, coffee has given me powers. And with these powers I have gone and started a company, Method in Mind.

And this, is the beginning of many stark changes, here and elsewhere. First of all, for those of you that don't know already, I've quit my job at Institute for Creative Technologies to work on Method in Mind full time. My god, I did what now?

Second, I'm sure you've noticed already, but what little posts that I've been able to squeeze out since the god awful shift to hourly-wage status have been decidedly non-game related. The reason for this is my interests moving more broadly into the general application of AI methods to software in general, as opposed to games in particular. That deserves a little discussion.

I love games. I know many of you love games also. As someone once seriously considering a career in the video game industry, I had to ask myself the following question: Will you be satisfied in a job that entails engineering a better way to entertain people? Is creating digital entertainment personally fulfilling?

For me, the answer is no. What I feel most, and what I think attracted me to AI in the first place is, I want to make software that helps people, that increases their quality of life. AI can go a long way in doing this, and that is precisely the investigation that my company, Method in Mind, has undertaken.

What can AI do for people...Today?

Now, do not misunderstand. I would be pleased as punch to create AI that is used in games. It will simply be as a part of a larger effort of applying AI to software in general. I think that along the way, Method in Mind definitely will create technology that will really benefit the game industry. In fact, as I've discovered in talking directly to developers, the only way real AI innovation is going to make it into games is through an independent company making the whole game themself. That is why, eventually, I plan to release a game developed through Method in Mind.

And now that I'm no longer working for the man, expect the posts to be coming fast and furious.

Mmmhmm.

Interview with Will Shipley!

There's an interview right here with Will Shipley, founder of Delicious Monster and OmniGroup. These are the two companies I immediately cite when someone tells me "I was not aware there was such a thing as a Mac-only software company" as an example of companies making totally kick-ass software. Highlights from the interview:

• Will Shipley was fired from OmniGroup!
• Regarding entrepreneurship, luck is most useful if you are prepared to take advantage of it.
• Q: Do you have any advice for aspiring developers like me? A: Yes: write code. Write lots of programs. All the time. Do anything, and give it away.

  You’ll be amazed how much excitement even the simplest of programs generates. I built my reputation by writing freeware apps, and I recommend that approach to everyone.

On sticking it to the man --- advice from Dick Dale

More useful, powerful words are seldom spoken.

Why Not to Start a Startup

Or rather, the most commonly cited reasons for not starting a startup, and why most of them are bad reasons. The new article by Paul Graham. Some highlights:

• The median age of a founder is 27. Actually, that's how old the founders of Sun were when they started their little company.
• Knowing nothing about business is not a good reason to avoid starting a startup. Just worry about making something people like. When you've got lots of people looking at your site, you can always figure out how to monetize it. On the other hand, if your site is a piece of useless crap all the business knowhow in the world will not help you.
• Investors do not hold past failed startups against you. In fact, this is viewed as good experience.

Paul Graham is a fellow filled with good advice about startups, and occasionally drops these inexplicable, indecipherable, bizarre opinions on things (like Lisp, in which he says Lisp is the most awesome of the awesome, the badassingest of the programming languages, the tool that will give you the unfair business advantage. However he can't tell you why, because it's inexpressible in your "words", for some reason. Pah, I say.) However, you can't argue with the fact that he's a successful entrepreneur, with the investment organization Y Combinator that has a success rate of something like 25%. So, there you have it.

Making Startups With and Without Money

If you check out this presentation by Max Levchin delivered several weeks ago as part of UIUC's reflections/projections distinguished lecture series, you noticed that his theme was "start a startup now now NOW!". One of the main reasons for doing so that he mentioned was this phenomenon of the "overhang" regarding venture capital companies. Essentially, this is the phenomenon wherein VC's have more money than they know what to do with, and are actually looking for companies to invest in. He argues that we are in such a time right now, and so get out there and make a company. This New York times article (oh get over yourself and click the link) seems to confirm that we are indeed in such a state, although for a different reason than you might expect. Some companies (e.g. Meebo, Reddit) are even turning VC's down and deciding to finance their company on a shoestring (Meebo did it on credit cards for god's sake!).