Machine Intelligence In The Real World

I’ve been laser-focused on machine intelligence in the past few years. I’ve talked to hundreds of entrepreneurs, researchers and investors about helping machines make us smarter.

In the months since I shared my landscape of machine intelligence companies, folks keep asking me what I think of them — as if they’re all doing more or less the same thing. (I’m guessing this is how people talked about “dot coms” in 1997.)

On average, people seem most concerned about how to interact with these technologies once they are out in the wild. This post will focus on how these companies go to market, not on the methods they use.

In an attempt to explain the differences between how these companies go to market, I found myself using (admittedly colorful) nicknames. It ended up being useful, so I took a moment to spell them out in more detail so, in case you run into one or need a handy way to describe yours, you have the vernacular.

The categories aren’t airtight — this is a complex space — but this framework helps our fund (which invests in companies that make work better) be more thoughtful about how we think about and interact with machine intelligence companies.