Topic
60 facts from 7 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
1995
Bret Taylor compares company AI agents to the 1995 website, saying that in 1995 existing digitally meant having a website and a Yahoo directory listing.
“if it were 1995, you know, if you existed digitally, it meant having a website and being in Yahoo directory, right?”
2005
Taylor says his rewrite of Google Maps cut the JavaScript bundle needed to show a map to about 20 kilobytes uncompressed.
“we got it down to like twenty K uncompressed, which is pretty impressive in this day and age”
2009
According to the hosts, FriendFeed founders Bret Taylor and Paul Buchheit invented the like button before Facebook adopted it.
“Brett Taylor and Paul Buchite. Ugh. Invented the like button.”
2009
Bret Taylor was an early Google engineer who founded the social network Friendfeed, sold it to Facebook in 2009, and then served as Facebook's CTO.
“He was an early engineer at Google before starting Friendfeed, a social network he sold to Facebook in 2009, where he then served as CTO.”
2023
Sam Altman was reinstated soon after his ouster, some board members left, and Bret Taylor became OpenAI's board chair.
“Soon after, Sam was reinstated and some people left the board. This was the tense moment when Bret Taylor came on as the board's new chair.”
Undated
Bret Taylor was integral to the creation of Google Maps, according to Reid Hoffman.
“In fact, he was integral to the creation of Google Maps.”
Undated
Bret Taylor later became Chief Technology Officer at Facebook.
“Later, he'd be named Chief Technology Officer at Facebook and work in another office building with a storied Silicon Valley past.”
Undated
Sierra is a conversational AI platform that helps consumer brands build branded conversational AI agents.
“So Sierra is a conversational AI platform, which is a very big concept, but we have a very specific focus, which is helping consumer brands around the world build branded conversational AI agents.”
Undated
Reid Hoffman disclosed that he is an investor in Sierra and a longtime colleague and friend of Bret Taylor.
“And just to note, I'm an investor in Sierra, and I consider Bret a longtime colleague and friend.”
Undated
Bret Taylor says the marketing profession has changed so much in twenty years that it is almost data science now.
“Just think about what it meant to be a marketer twenty years ago versus a marketer today.”
Undated
Bret Taylor recalls being struck by DALL-E's avocado chair image in the summer before ChatGPT was released.
“the moment with the avocado chair, I don't know what when that was. There was it was the sort of summer prior to ChatGPT.”
Undated
Bret Taylor states that OpenAI's mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.
“So the mission of OpenAI is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.”
Undated
Reid Hoffman says Bret Taylor's earlier startups FriendFeed and Quip were acquired by Meta and Salesforce respectively.
“with FriendFeed, which went to Meta, and Quip, which went to Salesforce, what were the startup lessons that you would give the Masters of Scale audience?”
Undated
Bret Taylor describes early Google as vertically integrated, building everything from data centers to the search engine.
“it was a very vertically integrated company, the way it built data centers all the way through the search engine.”
Undated
Bret Taylor says Facebook's 'move fast and break things' culture meant giving people permission to iterate and experiment.
“the sort of maligned now move fast and break things, but I actually think at the time, what that really meant was giving people permission to iterate and experiment.”
Undated
Sierra has allocated some of its equity to issues around job displacement and reskilling, according to Bret Taylor.
“And at our company, Sierra, we've allocated some of our equity to be devoted, uh, to issues around job displacement and reskilling.”
Undated
Bret Taylor's book pick is Endurance, the story of a team trying to reach the South Pole that got stuck for years and survived.
“It's a story of the team that was trying to reach the South Pole and got stuck for years and survived in some remarkable feat of human endurance.”
Undated
Bret Taylor and Sierra co-founder Clay Bavor have an internal bet about when conversations with company agents will be mostly personal AI agents rather than people.
“we have an internal bet about when the conversational traffic to our company agents will be more personal agents than people”
Undated
Taylor says he struggled to scale his role as Facebook's chief technology officer until Sheryl Sandberg gave him blunt feedback that led him to loosen his sense of professional identity.
“I was struggling a bit as chief technology officer of Facebook, and I was struggling with basically scaling.”
Undated
Bret Taylor says a typical phone call to a call center costs about $13 to service, and that AI can reduce this to well below a dollar.
“for most phone calls, it's call it $13, you know, to to service that phone call. Now, with AI, you can bring down that cost to well below a dollar, you know?”
Undated
Cost per contact is a key service-team metric measuring the all-in labor and technology cost of fulfilling a customer contact such as a phone call.
“one of the key metrics for most service teams is their cost per contact, which is like, what is the all-in cost of the labor and the technology to fulfill that phone call?”
Undated
Bret Taylor expects personal AI agents to be built mainly by very large consumer companies such as Apple, Google and OpenAI.
“the domain of personal agents is probably of the very large consumer companies like Apple and Google and OpenAI and others that have big consumer brands.”
Undated
Bret Taylor cites Harvey as an example of a persona-based AI agent company that serves a legal function.
“there's companies like Harvey that, you know, serve a legal function.”
Undated
Bret Taylor says most software for the past two decades has been rules engines, implemented as source code or low-code platforms, and that AI moves business software toward goals and guardrails.
“broadly speaking, most software systems for the past two decades have been rules engines that execute really quickly, whether the rules are implemented as source code or perhaps in a low-code platform.”
Undated
Bret Taylor predicts only a relatively small number of companies will do pre-training, the capital-intensive part of building foundation models.
“we'll end up with a relatively small number of companies, um, doing pre-training, uh, you know, which is the really capital-intensive part of of model building.”
Undated
Bret Taylor compares outcome-based pricing for AI software to the advertising shift from impression-based ads to cost-per-click ads.
“reminds me a little bit of going to from impression-based ads to cost-per-click-based ads.”
Undated
Bret Taylor explains that instruction tuning, which makes large language models conversational, lets them reflect back the sentiment and tone of the person they are talking to.
“because of instruction tuning, which is the mechanism of making these large language models conversational, they'll naturally sort of reflect back the sentiment and tone that you have”
Undated
Bret Taylor says the number one reason for bad customer experiences is waiting, and that instant AI responses address this.
“The number 1 reason people have bad customer experiences is they had to wait.”
Undated
Bret Taylor says an AI agent can be updated on a new product at the push of a button, while retraining 5,000 call center agents would take far longer.
“think of how long it would take to retrain, you know, 5,000 agents in a call center about that new product. Well, you can do that with a push of a button with AI.”
Undated
Bret Taylor argues that over roughly the past 15 years the smartphone has absorbed most adjacent technologies and made it hard for other consumer devices to reach scale.
“the smartphone has come to basically consume all, you know, adjacent technologies.”
Undated
Bret Taylor says OpenAI is unusual among AI organizations because it is a nonprofit driven by its mission.
“OpenAI is a unusual organization compared to most in the AI space because it's a nonprofit.”
Undated
Bret Taylor was chief technology officer at Facebook, co-CEO of Salesforce, and is now chair of OpenAI's board.
“He was also CTO at Facebook, now Meta, co-CEO at Salesforce, and now serves as chairperson at OpenAI”
Undated
Rana El Kaliouby says Bret Taylor started a company that was sold to Facebook and another that was sold to Salesforce, where he became co-CEO.
“You started and sold a company to Facebook, so you spent some time there. You started another company and sold that to Salesforce and became the co-CEO.”
Undated
Bret Taylor says Clay Bavor is his co-founder at Sierra, and that they studied which areas AI would affect first before choosing customer service.
“So Clay Bavor, my co-founder, and I spend a lot of time thinking about what are the areas that will be impacted first.”
Undated
Bret Taylor says Sierra's thesis is that within five to ten years the main way people interact digitally will be conversation with AI.
“Our thesis is the same thing will happen with conversational experiences. Uh, that in five or ten years, the main way we will interact digitally is by having a conversation with AI.”
Undated
Bret Taylor says earlier chat models were developed using a technique called instruction tuning, which helps explain why they are empathetic out of the box.
“the earlier chat models were developed was with this technique called instruction tuning.”
Undated
Bret Taylor argues that cutting the cost of a customer conversation by one or two orders of magnitude could let brands hold far more conversations with customers.
“if you can bring down the cost of a customer conversation by one or even two orders of magnitude, how many more conversations can you have with your customers?”
Undated
Bret Taylor says some Sierra customers call the customer experience leaders who manage their AI agent 'AI architects', a new kind of role.
“a lot of our customers call their customer experience leaders who work on their AI agent, the AI architects”
Undated
Bret Taylor says AI may displace some jobs, as the automated teller machine displaced the role of a bank teller, though he does not know the net effect on customer service employment.
“all forms of AI may displace some jobs, just like the automated teller machine, you know, displaced the role of a bank teller.”
Undated
Bret Taylor says nuclear energy lost society's trust through multiple incidents, which he uses as a warning for AI.
“because there's been multiple moments of violating society's trust, uh, society sort of revoked our license to to invest in nuclear.”
Undated
Bret Taylor led Twitter's board during Elon Musk's takeover and became chairman of OpenAI's board after Sam Altman was fired and rehired.
“he led Twitter's board during Elon Musk's takeover and became chairman of the OpenAI board after the firing and rehiring of Sam Altman”
Undated
Bret Taylor says he announced he was leaving Salesforce within days of ChatGPT's release.
“I happened to announce I was leaving Salesforce within a few days of ChatGPT coming out.”
Undated
Bret Taylor says he decided to start Sierra during a lunch with Clay Bavor, whom he had known for twenty years, without having planned to found a company together.
“ended up having, uh, lunch with Clay Bavor, who I'd known for twenty years and not planning to start a company with him”
Undated
Sierra charges most customers a fee only when its AI agent autonomously resolves a case, according to Bret Taylor.
“we charge only for outcomes. So for most of our customers, that means when the AI agent autonomously resolves the case that you called about or chatted in about, there's a fee for that.”
Undated
Bret Taylor says Sierra does not charge when its AI agent has to transfer a conversation to a human.
“And if the AI agent has to transfer to a real person, it's free.”
Undated
Bret Taylor estimates that answering a customer phone call costs roughly ten to twenty dollars in labor and technology.
“say it's somewhere between ten and twenty dollars to answer the phone”
Undated
Bret Taylor says large language models reduce the cost of a phone call by roughly two orders of magnitude.
“you bring down the cost of a phone call by not one, but two orders of magnitude”
Undated
Bret Taylor says some Sierra retail customers let shoppers photograph damaged goods and have an AI agent approve a warranty claim immediately.
“We have retailers where you can take a photo of your damaged goods and immediately adjudicate a warranty claim”
Undated
Bret Taylor says voice is already a bigger part of Sierra's platform than text, although voice launched only the previous November.
“voice is already a bigger part of our platform than text, uh, which is kind of remarkable since we launched it in November of last year.”
Undated
Bret Taylor says Sierra fine-tunes existing AI models but does not pre-train its own.
“We do a lot of fine-tuning. We don't pre-train any models.”
Undated
Bret Taylor says a single response from a Sierra agent typically requires twenty or more inference calls to AI models.
“For any given message for to one of the agents on our platform, probably twenty plus inference calls just to generate one response.”
Undated
Bret Taylor says current AI systems already meet the definition of artificial general intelligence he would have used three years earlier.
“I think we are already at what I would have defined AGI at three years ago.”
Undated
Bret Taylor defines superintelligence as AI that is more intelligent than humans, and says the term matters for safety research.
“Superintelligence, I think, literally just means that it is more intelligent than humans.”
Undated
Bret Taylor cites Pets.com and Webvan as famous failures of the dotcom bubble while arguing the internet still produced giants like Amazon and Google.
“a lot of people think about the flops like pets dot com and WebVan.”
Undated
Bret Taylor notes that many companies that built out fiber in the early internet era went bankrupt, but the fiber was later used by others.
“the people who built out fiber in the, um, early days of the internet, a lot of them went bankrupt, but that fiber ended up getting used”
Undated
Bret Taylor says a story about him rewriting Google Maps over a weekend is mostly true and a little embellished.
“there's this like story that goes on around me about rewriting Google Maps, and and it's like, mostly true and a little embellished, like many great stories are.”
Undated
Bret Taylor cites the film Hidden Figures, about women who did the math calculations for the moon landing, as a parallel to software engineers facing automation.
“Hidden Figures. It's a great Disney movie about the, uh, putting people on the moon, but in particular, the women who did the math calculations to do it.”
Undated
Bret Taylor criticizes the MIT study on enterprise AI spending, saying it conflated companies building their own AI software with companies buying ready-made AI products.
“That study, I don't know the basis for the, um, data in that study. I think it was problematic because it conflated people building their own software with AI and buying solutions off the shelf.”
Undated
Bret Taylor says Sierra has a roughly 100% success rate moving customers from proof of concept to going live.
“We have, uh, basically 100% success rate with our customers doing a proof of concept and going live with our platform.”
Undated
Brett Taylor is chairman of OpenAI and founder of Sierra, a customer service AI agent startup.
“I had a conversation with Brett Taylor, who's the chairman of Open AI, but the founder of Sierra, which is another customer service agentic startup.”
Episodes