Anish Acharya

I think it does the exact opposite.

I think people are able to be more self-reflective and explore aspects of themselves and human relationships that they often just don't have another person to explore these things with.

And I think if you're wealthy and perhaps educated, maybe you're interested in therapy and that's like an outlet for it.

If you are like you and I, and you've got this embarrassment of social riches, and you have all these people that want to hang out with you, and you go to these dinners where you stay up late, having all these philosophical conversations, or perhaps if you're one of the relative minority today that is spiritual or religious in some way, and it's very emotionally nourishing to you, there are directions in which we can explore these things.

But I think for the majority of our society today, they just don't have an outlet.

And I do think technology can be that outlet.

Yes, and by the way, I think the whole thing is that there's got to be a level of indirection.

This is why I think contextual companions are very powerful.

Because I think for a senior citizen, it's important they have a big sense of self-respect.

So if an AI calls them every night to check in on them, well, they're going to be like, hold on, I don't need that.

I don't need to be babysat.

But if instead the AI called to check to see if they'd taken their medicine, ask them how their day was, maybe lightly flirt with them, talk about World War II, I don't know.

Like suddenly they've got a context in which they're interacting.

There's a level of indirection.

But the thing that's actually delivering is sort of spiritual nourishment.

So voice is amazing for enterprise.

I think that one, dynamic UIs and two, chat UIs are overstated in consumer.

And the best thinker on this is actually Eugenia, who founded Replica and now Wabi.

She's great on this.

And what she would tell you if she was here is that, look, most people don't want to save time.