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cony co - founder and CEO Jesse Lyu is n’t afraid of death … the dying of the companionship , at least . He told TechCrunch that the company is a inauguration whose fortune may be swayed by the whimsy of multibillion - clam rivals — but that ’s no reason to give up and go home .
seem onstage at StrictlyVC LA , Lyu explained his rather philosophical plan of attack to the threat of Google , Microsoft , or Apple come to crush them . ( Quotes have been light edited for clarity . )
Rabbit ’s r1 , the scoop AI helper that attract considerable hoopla after its debut at CES , is certainly an original proposition . Half the size of a sound , the gimmick acts stringently as a voice - powered helper but is capable to remotely operate your apps and perform complex action as well as response interrogation and carry on a conversation like ChatGPT . He described the two parts as “ wrapped ” and “ action . ”
“ I had this vision many years ago , really 10 year ago , but the technology was n’t ready . This is the first time in history that a machine like this is in reality potential , ” say Lyu .
He excuse that he had been scheme by the capability of LLMs to understand words and spirit and that with the manifest versatility of transformer - free-base systems , it was raw to seek to get them to perform actions as well .
Can a striking intention rig rabbit ’s r1 pocket AI asunder from a gaggle of practical assistant ?
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Their solution is the “ large action manikin , ” which is trained on 60 minutes and hours of actual users interacting with popular apps : “ Spotify , Uber , Expedia , DoorDash , you name it . We have the top 800 highest absolute frequency apps . Then we set up this nervous symbolic web and postulate this AI , which now we call declamatory action example , to survey those clip , but material body by soma . The idea is that symbolically , the AI will be finally bright enough to extract all the buttons , all the element , and then we can basically build a logic to automate . ”
The spoken language part is still run on third - party LLM inspection and repair like Perplexity , which seems to be make a bid to take advantage on Rabbit ’s success , offer a class of free service on top of whatever the r1 provides . I suggest that the API costs and other considerations could represent a danger to the startup ’s solvency .
“ First of all , we ’re not losing money by selling r1 , which is a very , very , very meaning achievement , especially for new startup on gen 1 . We ’re not die to be belly-up by sell more units . I give all the citation to my ironware team of amazing guys for being able to essentially negotiate down the role and the BOM [ flier of material ] costs , ” he said . “ We ’re really near to 100,000 ordination . Two days before the keynote I I tell my team , it will be really nice if we can sell 500 units on day one . But we sold 18,000 . ”
As for a subscription , Lyu just does n’t see it as working , specially when the dissertation of the gadget is cheap and wide-eyed . Though he did mention that users will be able to discipline and sell their own app - specific manakin later on , and Rabbit would take a deletion of that , but cautioned that this is a long - term plan with no specific yet .
Lastly , when confront with the fact that the biggest , richest society in the world are pass 1000000000 to get ahead in AI , Lyu provided an almost Zen perspective on the prospect of being crushed under the heel of Google , Microsoft , or Apple ( whose CEO Tim Cook just said will “ break novel earth ” on AI this year ) .
“ I ’m not delusional , to suppose that we ’re not a startup . We are a inauguration , ” he said . “ I mean , the first example I ever learned from Y Combinator two years ago is that 99 % of startup will die . If your wit as an entrepreneur is , ‘ Oh , I have a brain approximation , and I can guarantee this will ferment , no matter what all these Big Tech companies adjudicate … ’ I mean , you ’re delusional . There is no such thing like that . The reality is a startup is a survival game , and you well pass your time focusing on your own clobber . ”
“ They ’re gon na do what they ’re gon na do , and I ’m gon na do what I ’m gon na do , right ? There ’s got ta be some laminitis , when they heard Apple is doing Apple Cars , they stopped , right ? They just cancel . Now what ? I believe it ’s good to have this level of rival that ’s only going to help us originate faster , or die quicker , which is the nature of startup . It ’s either or — I do n’t know yet . But I ’m trying my good — like I say , it ’s a survival secret plan . ”
you’re able to watch the full panel below .
