Agents may expand purchases without triggering bank runs

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 40:00

   But we don't know what that's going to look like going forward. Right. Well, maybe on that, what do you think is overhyped versus underhyped in terms of everything that's happening? I mean, in general, my rule of thumb is that Silicon Valley overhypes things, but then the rest of the world underhypes things. So everything here, every conversation is AI. And it feels like you go to Iowa, nobody's talking about AI, but then you show it to them like, holy shit, how is this real?

2. 40:25

   Because they tried it three years ago, and I just bought a new Tesla, and I remember I had an old Model 3. I think this is a good metaphor for what we're talking about. Like I had an old Model 3 in 2017 with self-driving. Didn't work at all. It was a joke. Eventually got, you know, got a different car. And now it's like, it actually works. But I was skeptical because I was used to the 2017 thing. Yeah.

3. 40:47

   Right? And I feel like a lot of that is playing out with AI right now where if you had tried ChatGPT with all the hallucinations and everything in 2022, you're like, oh, it's a cute toy for like writing poems or doing my homework in English class or something, this is not going to actually buy things for me. This is not going to write code. It does all these things right now. So I guess what do you think is underhyped versus overhyped in terms of everything that's going on?

4. 41:09

   Yeah, so maybe I'll start with overhyped. Like I don't think we're going to get a bank run on savings deposits where agents are going to sort of maximize yield and move my money around between different accounts. a perfect example. I am a very happy Mercury personal account customer. I'm also a Chase customer. And, you know, ideally I should put all my savings in Mercury where I get a very good savings rate. And then at the last moment when I have to make bills, sort of pay bills, I'll move over the cash to, you know, over to my existing bank Chase. But their bill pay just works better And it has more integrations and I have more kind of setup. So I think there's enough friction in the world where we won't see some of the crazy volatility in financial services. I think maybe what's underhyped, there is a lot of demand that is unmonetized.

5. 42:12

   and this is both at the sort of part of the world where you could expect more GDP an example of this is we actually have a group cycling WhatsApp group and we have a person on that group who every, I don't know, it seems like every six months when our friend Seth comes up with a new recommendation for what tires to get because he looks at rolling resistance and every time he does this I'm like oh I should remember to buy those tires because they're safer But I only buy it, you know, every sort of, you know, two years.

6. 42:41

   If my agent was in that group chat, I would be buying tires every time Seth makes a new recommendation. You're dramatically under-monetized on your bike equipment, Alex. If the agent could find things that could help you with cycling and just bought them for you, there's more GDP coming out of Alex on cycling. Right. That is under-hyped. At the same time, agents are going to save us money. So, like, you know, there's probably many places where I'm either, I have some subscription and it's just been a hassle to cancel or I did some trial and I forgot about it.

7. 43:18

   So, I think agents will simultaneously save us money, maybe use that savings to help us buy, you know, buy sort of, you know, new items. So, I think we have yet to experience the always-on nature of these agents. And as far as I can tell, human desires and needs are infinite. So there's always something else that I will want. And so I think that is, that's underwired.