In short
Podcast Episode Notes: This Week in Startups - E1828 Episode Summary In this episode of This Week in Startups, Jason Calacanis interviews Dan Siroker, CEO of Rewind AI, about their new product—the Rewind Pendant, a wearable AI device that records conversations. They discuss the implications of this technology on privacy, ethics, and social norms, diving deep into both the potential benefits and concerns it raises.
Key Topics Discussed Introduction to Rewind Pendant
- Concept: A wearable device that records everything a user sees and hears, aiming to augment human memory.
- Background: Siroker experienced hearing loss and sought ways to enhance human capabilities through technology.
Privacy and Ethical Concerns
- Covert Recording: Debate about the ethics of recording conversations without the consent of all parties involved.
- Trust Issues: Calacanis argues that this technology could lead to significant trust violations in relationships.
- Public Reception: Siroker believes that societal norms will evolve to accept such technology, similar to the acceptance of telephones.
Comparisons to Existing Technology
- Google Glass: Lessons learned from the backlash against Google Glass regarding privacy and user acceptance.
- Humane AI Devices: Concerns about other competitors like Humane not prioritizing privacy in their development.
Design Considerations
- User Experience: Emphasis on making the technology easy to use without cumbersome interactions (e.g., asking Siri).
- Privacy Features: Discussion about potential features like voice fingerprinting and the notion of consent via verbal opt-in to recording.
Thoughtful Development of Personal AI
- Feedback Mechanism: Siroker expresses the need for continuous feedback to build a product that respects privacy.
- Legal and Ethical Standards: Discussions about how the product aligns with legal standards and the higher moral expectations users may have.
The Future of AI and Memory
- Vision of Perfect Memory: The goal of enabling users to have perfect recall of their interactions, enhancing communication and relationships.
- Social Media Feedback: Acknowledgment of mixed public reactions, including humorous takes on the potential for misunderstandings in relationships.
Key Takeaways
- Privacy Concerns are Paramount: The conversation highlighted the critical importance of privacy in the adoption of new technologies.
- User Consent is Essential: Ensuring that users can manage how their data is recorded and shared is vital for ethical practices.
- Public Acceptance Will Evolve: Historical precedents suggest that societal norms change over time, and new technologies can eventually gain acceptance if developed thoughtfully.
- Feedback is Crucial: Continuous engagement with users and critics will be essential for refining the product.
Conclusion The episode encapsulates a lively debate on the intersection of technology and ethics, emphasizing the importance of privacy as wearable AI devices become more prevalent. Both Calacanis and Siroker provide compelling arguments for the potential benefits and drawbacks of such innovations, underscoring the necessity for responsible development.
Follow Dan Siroker
- Twitter: [@dsiroker](https://twitter.com/dsiroker)
Additional Resources
- Codecademy: [Try Codecademy Pro FREE for 14 days](http://codecademy.com/TWiST)
- .Tech Domains: [Get featured on This Week in Startups](https://startups.tech/jason)
- Squarespace: [Create a website with a discount](https://squarespace.com/TWIST)
Future Episodes Listeners are encouraged to tune in for more discussions regarding tech innovations and ethical implications in the startup world.
---
This markdown file summarizes the key points from the podcast episode, highlighting the discussions and the importance of privacy in technology development.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00And I like you, don't get me wrong, but I think you're so misguided in this. because if we went and asked 100 people this question, I don't think you did this. If you did, you would get 100 people who would be so infuriated. It would be such a violation of trust, what you've described, that they would break up lifelong friendships over it. This Week in Startups is brought to you by Codecademy. Build the future you want to see with Codecademy. Codecademy Pro helps you learn everything you'll need to shape what comes next in the tech space. Try it free for 14 days at codecademy.com slash twist. .techdomains has a new program called startups.tech, where you can get your company featured on This Week in Startups.
0:48Go to startups.tech slash jason to find out how. And Squarespace. Turn your idea into a new website. Go to squarespace.com slash twist for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code TWIST to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain. All right, everybody, welcome back to This Week in Startups. We had a great episode, episode 1745, back in May with a really interesting founder. His name is Dan Siroker. He is the CEO and co-founder of Rewind AI. You probably remember him because, hey, this is a really clever idea. What does Rewind AI do? recorded everything on your screen in a given period of time, then it creates a searchable index for you seems like a great idea.
1:37But as we talked about on that episode, hey, maybe there's some privacy issues here that we need to think through. And some of those have actually come to pass in terms of zoom, people are using things like gong and other services to record calls. And now zoom even has built into it the ability to not just record phone calls, calls like we're doing right now with the recording button flashing in red on the top left, but also create ai summaries of the call and transcripts so the world's changing pretty quick and privacy is an issue right and what if you're having your desktop recorded and somebody sends you a confidential message and now it's in your archive forever then legal issues discovery all of this led to a great episode really mind-blowing but dan wasn't done nope dan had to keep pushing the envelope so uh this week uh or maybe even last week he uh he released something called um the rewind pendant what is that it's a little um device you wear around your neck like a pendant it is what he said it is and the device is designed to record everything and do what he's doing on your desktop so i thought hey this is chaotic and insane uh i had some strong feelings on it maybe people took them a little bit too seriously um but we've seen this movie before um there have been a number of people who've tried recording pendant type things and obviously the police wear them and uh we we've gotten normalized to police having them because they're giant and they flash red but this one was a little different dan so welcome back to the program and let's uh let's hash it out here you got a you got a bold vision why did you choose to put this out in the world.
3:15And just to be clear, this isn't an April Fool's joke in October. It is not. And thank you, Jason, for having me on. And yeah, it's definitely not an April Fool's joke. So the idea behind the pendant came out of the experience I actually had 10 years ago going deaf, losing my sense of hearing and then gaining it back again when I tried a hearing aid was magical. It felt like getting a superpower. And ever since that moment, I've been on a hunt for ways technology can augment human capabilities and give us superpowers. That led me to memory. Memory, just like our hearing, gets worse as we get older.
3:48People actually forget about 90 % of what they experience after a week. And so the start of the company was trying to answer the question, if there's a hearing aid for hearing and glasses for vision, what's the equivalent for memory? We started on the Mac because that's a great place to capture that you see, what you hear. And that has done tremendously well. We've been very proud of that. We launched on iPhone and then we're going to, by the end of the year, we'll actually be on Windows. And when we built this product, we built it with this vision in mind of capturing everything you see saying here in a privacy first way.
4:19So if you recall, the Mac app stores it everything locally, you know, if we as a company gets subpoenaed, there's nothing we can hand over, it's all stored locally, it's all encrypted. And we felt like this technology, this idea of a personalized AI was only going to work, it had a privacy first approach. And so as we think about what it means to be a personalized AI, it means there's far more to life than just what happens on your Mac or windows or iphone there's this world out there that's the real world and if we could capture that in a way that respected your privacy and i'm happy to talk at depth what we're doing for that then we could really deliver on this vision where you and i can meet and i can remember every conversation we've had it's living my life with perfect memory and that was the experience i had of going deaf and getting a hearing aid is not just getting the power back to hear but realizing how bad it had gotten and that's what we want to do for memory help people realize how bad their memory had gotten and enable them to live life with perfect memory.
5:07Okay, great, noble mission check. And I had the same experience when I started losing a little bit of my eyesight and started wearing glasses. I didn't even realize that things were blurry until you put them on. So I'm in alignment with you on that. But now comes the expectation of privacy. And so great that it's encrypted, but what about the other person who if you're recording my iPhone or my desktop and I'm talking to them on something like Signal and they think they're having a private disappearing message but you are overriding that by screen recording it now obviously there's third-party tools to do that or i'm wearing this pendant in the real world and obviously people can have and have it's been the plot of many a thriller that somebody has a pen that records uh but here you know we've got a startup company that's trying to normalize this you're trying to make this mainstream that is the goal here.
5:58That's how you're presenting it. So what is your concern about a couple of examples I gave, I think my signal conversation or whatever I use for encrypted, disappearing messages is no longer encrypted. And not only is it not encrypted, it's indexed and searchable. So you've you've basically hacked my signal. And you've covertly done that. And then any other app that I'm using, or in the real world hey this pendant is tiny this is different than and it's tiny by design obviously it's the size it looks like of like a large pill or something maybe the size of a quarter or two and so this to me feels very covert it's the opposite of wearing a police recorder so those are two examples but two examples i'll give so how do you think about those two examples Yeah, I loved how you started with the word normalize.
6:54And I think this is where looking at history can really help us 150 years ago, the telephone came about, and you'd probably be surprised to realize that the most common complaint was the invasion of privacy. And it wasn't because now we're just accepting the telephones are, you know, normal. But it was because the first version of the telephone you had to go to the general store for and people could overhear your conversation. Even if you brought it to your home, these eavesdropping switchboard operators could hear your conversation. Yeah. And that's the stage we're at with personalized AI, we need to build technology that overcomes the proverbial eavesdropping switchboard operator to make it so that you don't have a choice between convenience and privacy, you get all of the benefits of personalized AI, and your data is private.
7:35So let me give you some concrete examples. One of the ways the pendant can work is it allows you to actually do digital fingerprinting or voice fingerprinting of the speaker. So if you were to speak and I were to speak, it identifies us differently speaker diarization. And only if somebody has verbally opted in to being recorded, would it actually be persisted on the device. So if I were running my day, I could wear it, I could have conversations with myself, I could if I did a great job of active listening, maybe I echo back what you're saying, but not a single word of what you say until you verbally opted in would be persisted.
8:05All right, everybody, we all know technology is moving at a blistering pace. We talk about it here every week, especially AI and Codecademy's goal is to help you stay ahead. And so if you've got some experience or you're brand new to coding, Codecademy is going to offer you everything you need to build your tech career. You want to build that tech stack. You want to build your skill stack. And you specifically want to gain skills in AI, full stack engineering, data science, cybersecurity. Twist listeners can try Codecademy Pro free for 14 days. We all know the world's changed. Large percentage of people, they don't think that college is the most important factor when hiring people.
8:41They want to know about specific vertical skills. So listen, when you got to lose two weeks free to check out everything Codecademy has to offer. This includes 400 courses covering everything from in-demand languages like Python and JavaScript to new courses in generative AI, large language models, and more. You're going to get step-to-step guidance on your career path, learn how to do real-world projects to build your portfolio. They're even going to help you with interview prep so that you nail that really important interview. And listen, once you get the job, you can work towards your next promotion, which is really what you should be doing.
9:11When you get that job, you should be looking at, hey, who's my boss? How do I get their job? Who's their boss? How do I get their job? Well, it's going to be experience and it's going to be skills. Codecademy is going to help you with both of those. Start your free trial today. Visit codecademy.com slash twist to try Codecademy Pro free for 14 days. That's codecademy.com slash twist. But you think you should be able to covertly record half the conversation? You want to live in that world. I think that's okay. I think being able to record myself. Covertly. in a conversation recording myself that's crazy dan why would it be crazy to record myself in a conversation to do it covertly would be incredibly rude and unethical uh if any of my you would never be you will lose all your friends if you did that do you have friends i don't have many friends okay well i mean i'm asking this in a joking way but i'm kind of serious if you covertly recorded me as a friend uh covertly recorded yourself in conversation with me you would no longer be my friend and if i asked 100 people if i asked 100 people your friend covertly recorded their half of the conversation and they have it for all time indexed and they've been doing it for a year you know what they would do they would never speak to you again and that would mean 100 out of 100 the word covert is your word i didn't say we should covertly report people you said you just said you would absolutely have no problem recording your side of the conversation with and you only said permission to record my side so maybe you're changing your position here would you feel you need to get permission for me to record your side and not my side well first of all i wouldn't hide the fact that i'm recording the conversation so just at the outset that's why it's a device that you wear it's not a device in hearing aid which is with this device work if it was under a t-shirt uh it would not no so and really you sure about that would it work if it was like because if you wear one of those recording pens just in like your jacket in your shirt pocket it works i mean it's designed to work that way so but i think you may be overblowing the risk here i think there are 1.5 billion you know smart recorders like this one being used and sold every year not a single you know not a single moment of outrage or as far as i can tell so that's because they're large and they have a recording flashing red light on them and the people who created them have thought this through and they're so large you have to press a button make a clicking sound and then start recording that's how they're designed they're not designed to be passively recording all the time like your device well okay i think that's first of all not true there's plenty that are much smaller than what we're thinking there are spy cameras yes and if you have a spy camera you recorded something this is what we're smaller than we're thinking.
11:51I don't know that model, but there are spy cameras. And if you did those and you did that with a friend, they would never speak to you again. And if you did it with certain people and they found out, you would get your ass handed to you. I guess, what is it that you're saying that you're so worried would get captured in a conversation with a friend? This is what insincere people who want to take away your privacy say. What are you worried about? What are you worried about? If you're not committing a crime, what are you worried about? What if I tell a joke and the standards change? Or what if I had a couple drinks?
12:20and i said something and it came out the wrong way and now you have that recording forever and now you use it uh as a leverage over me in the future but to be clear this is why people don't want me recording myself how can i record myself and cancel you could have a conversation with me and then you could say hey jacal um hey how do you feel about this person that person this person and then now you've got a whole transcript of all these questions you asked me And then you could say back to me. Oh, so you don't like that person. You don't like John or Jane. Yeah, I totally don't like them either.
12:53And just by recording your side of it, you would have an incredibly damaging transcript of you confirming to me facts. And the person would then know by insinuation that I didn't object to them. And then I would feel that you had covertly recorded me. And this was a gross violation of my privacy. and if i asked 100 people hey your friend's been recording their side of every conversation you've had with them not yours don't worry you have nothing to worry about i guarantee you 100 out of 100 people would not be friends with that person and they would be absolutely pissed off and this is why i worry and and when you tell me you don't have friends i don't know if you're saying that to be cheeky or if you i'm running a 20 person startup i have three young kids and you know i just don't know i was like i don't know if that's a joke or i don't think yeah it is a bit of a joke i don't think my friends would like it i definitely i don't know i mean i have friends who have asperger's who might say like i really don't know how to relate to humans yeah um but this shows i think um and i like you don't get me wrong but i think you're so misguided in this because if we went and asked 100 people this question i don't think you did this if you did you would get 100 people who would be so infuriated it would be such a violation of trust what you've described um that they would break up lifelong friendships over it 100 guaranteed well i'll say we didn't ask 100 people we actually asked a thousand people we asked a thousand people in the united states with a income over 100k about a product like the rewind pendant okay and we asked them a series of questions including how much they would pay for it uh and the that's partly how we price the product is recognizing the the market opportunity there are 4 000 people who you know are deranged lunatics this is your phrase the people who might like this product who free ordered the product.
14:32And like, I'm not trying to dismiss the privacy concern. I just think there are times in technology when new technology comes about. And it's easy to criticize the first version wrecking. And by the way, it's not out in public. I'm not saying we're ready. I'm not saying the product is something that I'm proud of. I think the product that we ship and when we ship it, it'll be a product that will check all of the boxes when it comes to privacy. Because the last thing we want to do is do what Google Glass did for wearables. We want to do for AI personalized AI. We think the only way to build a personalized AI that wins in this market is one that is privacy first.
15:02The example I gave you of recording one side of the conversation, just one of many, another is just to summarize the conversation. You don't seem to recognize my point and you're calling me a Luddite basically. So you're framing me as a Luddite, which is a great debate tactic, but it will not work with me because I've been at this for a lot longer than you. You don't get to just frame me as a Luddite because, oh, I'm against progress and, oh, operators no sorry dan you still haven't answered the question if a hundred people were told that their friend was recording their side of the conversation you glossed right over that and went to pricing so let's pause for a second have you actually answer that question would you be willing to ask a hundred people would they how would they feel if their friend covertly recorded just their side of the conversation would you be willing to do that with your survey data send the same thousand people i'm happy to ask that question i don't want to build a product that does that.
15:52My goal is not to build a product that covertly records your side of the conversation. That was your that was your ask is, would you would this product be able to covertly record the conversation? And in just like this can covertly record a conversation and record your side of conversation, which is worse than the product we're offering, by the way, is not the product that I'm there are spy cameras. Yes. And they're illegal in some states, right? And they're they're, these are things that not are not these are kind of the underbelly in in the world of devices, you're like a venture backed startup, like a major venture backed startup.
16:25This is why I think you're super misguided. And you're using selectively the history of people being opposed to technology, as opposed to being truly thoughtful about it. No, no, no, to be clear, to be clear, the example of the telephone, I wasn't trying to call you Luddite, I think people were right to be complaining about the privacy of the telephone. Okay, the very first telephone wasn't private enough. I think people make the mistake of thinking the privacy is at odds with convenience. I think Facebook did the world a big disservice by actually making that true. But if you look at the telephone, the only way it went mainstream and became normalized, which is what you're asking about, was once it realized how to build a telephone without an eavesdropping operator, without an eavesdropping switchboard operator.
17:04Would you put a large red light whenever it's recording on the tip of the pendant? If that's what it took to be privacy first, we would. And I'm not against it at all. And I'll tell you, we're very, very early in this project. And part of the reason we're talking about it Why did you rush it out? We rushed it out because right now the conversation is being had about wearable AI. And I'm worried that the other companies out there, like Humane, aren't taking a privacy-first approach. I'm worried that they will tread the well-torn path of scorched earth that Google Glass did. And I want to make sure that the conversations about privacy, not about convenience.
17:42And I don't want them to be pitted against each other. So look, am I for a big red button if that's what it's going to take to build a privacy-first solution that normalizes personalized a is something ai is not at odds with uh your privacy absolutely i'm not against that so you rushed it out because there's other competitors and you wanted to at least get a flagpole out there yes i would have loved to wait i didn't have that opportunity i couldn't have waited to announce it until that explains i think why i that explains why my reaction to it was this isn't thought thought out well enough if we were at a party you're wearing it next year uh and it's around your neck eight people at a dinner party do you think you have to hold it up to the other seven people and say everybody i'm planning on recording just my side of this conversation but if any of you would like to record at this dinner party you're part of the conversation so i could have a permanent record of this and a transcript and a summary um can you each say i consent to recording and your name do you think that should be the best practice i think I wouldn't bring this to dinner party, first of all.
18:42So that's not the use case I'm focused on. I certainly would. You would advise people that this should not be in social situations. Well, I don't think that's where you get the most value. I think for me, I get the most value. So you would advise people do not wear this in a social situation? No, I would advise it wear it in situations where it's going to be valuable to you. For me, conversations with my spouse are a perfect example. I think she and I would have a much better connection and communication if I could go back to and remember the things she's reminded me of this plenty of times, if I could remember everything she said to me.
19:08And certainly, I think most for me most relationships how long you've been married dad long enough to know that it's important to remember what your wife has said okay i'm just gonna be really and this is gonna be like pulling up the transcript of your wife and yours previous fight you really want that to exist in your relationship i do three years ago does your wife want this to exist have you run this by her yeah in fact i was gonna tell you three years ago my first vision for this was this wearable device and i described this in detail to her and i was terrified because you know why i thought i would finally win an argument with her yeah and her response shocked me she loved the idea she thought that i could finally yeah and i would encourage you to ask your partners as well would they go through yeah and you'd i honestly i was surprised by the answer because i and this is the perfect example where having perfect memory can make communication make relationships better because it's not about you said like most conflict will come from a misunderstanding of of the the premise of the facts i actually think and i don't have it yet i believe that our relationship will be better if we actually were able to communicate and remember what the other person said i certainly would wear this right now there's a lot of couples who are going to get in a big fight over the existence of this that's part of probably one of the most interesting replies you got back on social media was this whole back and forth about spouses getting in fights or arguments and hey let's pull the transcript because that is kind of like a standard joke i'm sure there's a saturnite live skit uh you know there's a dave chapelle from 10 years ago with this stenographer everywhere you go and yeah it's pretty hilarious um okay stop doing what you're doing right now i've got some great news for you dot tech domains is giving twist listeners a platform to show off their startups and that platform is this week in startups it's a new segment we're calling pitch it to jcow so go to startups.tech slash jason and you can apply The only rule is you have to have a.tech domain name to get featured in this new segment.
21:05So this week, I received a great pitch from Biltrix.tech, which you can see if you're watching the video. Biltrix.tech has built an energy data platform which provides simple, easy-to-understand energy information, and it eliminates the need for spreadsheets and paperwork. And Biltrix Smart Alerts will notify customers about any abnormal energy usage. How clever. it's a game changer for sustainability consultants building managers and more so here's your call to action if you want to get featured like build tricks just did on this week in startups go to startups.tech slash jason and apply today and get your dot tech domain while you're there that's startups.tech slash jason and fill out the form to apply so let's talk about that social issue uh when google glass was worn in public uh it created cried a brouhaha.
21:55Are you old enough to remember that? And woman was punched in the face. So yeah, I was one of the first wearing it. Now I think I went to a conference in Europe, it was the first time there. And on it. And I think Google made a huge disservice, like I said, to the entire wearable category because they didn't think about privacy. They put out the telephone before it actually had. Yeah, which cameras, no cameras from day one. I also think I worked at Google as a product manager to start my career. I think Google's biggest mistake when building products is they view the sophistication of the technology as the most important part, not the problem it's trying to solve.
22:27So Google Glass didn't solve a problem. That was the first problem. The second is as it tried to build a cool technology that they thought would just figure out what the problem would be over time, they completely didn't realize the impact it would have on privacy. And so I'm here to tell you unequivocally, I don't have all the answers for what the privacy first solution should look like. I'm here to say with full earnestness, that that is the key to making personalized AI right possible and socially acceptable and so i'm all ears if you think a big red button is the right or big light i'm not ideologically against that in fact if that's the thing that you think will make the the socially normed i'm all for it but i do know this evolution of technology starts with the goal of making this something that is not a choice between privacy and convenience yeah it is interesting by the way that google wanted to build just basically a platform or see if they could get the technology to actually work as opposed to hey what problem are we solving here you know sometimes there's a valid case of doing that um that whole problem could have been solved where if it was recording it had a red light on it um uh and you know if it was scanning your face it was doing that but i think it was so early as well it didn't have those the flashing red light that people expect and when people hold their phone up it's so giant and so this the form factor does i think play a key role in here to take out your iphone 13 even the small one and it's got a giant camera array on the back and you hold that up trust me people try to take selfies with me all the time uh because i'm micro famous and you know i can tell when somebody at an airport is taking a picture of me and i just wave um and they feel very like it's really awkward when they put that up and most people don't do it most people are completely respectful etc it's a giant device the footprint of this device is tiny uh and you know google glass was on your face so It was unmistakable.
24:13This thing is incredibly covert. The humane, let's talk about this. These are a bunch of Apple folks. It looks like a pendant, but not a tiny one. Yours looks like it's the size of a pill. This one, that humane one, looks like it's the size of a credit card, maybe. And it's supposed to look like, I think, the Star Trek. Oh, here we have it. So you can't miss it. I mean, if you're wearing it on your clothes, it's big. And it also has an LED that projects out. so it has lighting on it i don't know if it blinks when it's recording or if it's persistently recording what do you know about this device i saw it was at and we're showing here on the screen for the youtube folks um i mean it looks like a pretty large device it's the size of like maybe a giant saltine cracker or a pack of cigarettes almost that that size um it looks like about two inches by two inches i've had to guess so what do you think that device is and then how are they dealing with these issues yeah i mean the the introduction of this device was one of the reasons we decided to announce the pendant.
25:13And my biggest fear is it's another Google Glass. I don't yet know what the AI pendant problem solves. So that was the thing. The first thing is that there was no statement of this, the problem this long, the demo at TED was interesting. It showed some interesting use cases. It's interesting that the word AI was bolted on in the last few months. So I worry, you know, there's been leaked early pitch decks. I'm not, I'm not an expert on this by far. But my fear is that they will be as cavalier. And in particular, because several folks used to work at Apple, which also has some of this DNA of like, let's build a cool, sophisticated technology, having worn the vision pro and had eight cameras on it, like, the last thing I want is the device out there in the world that is freaking people out.
25:50And because their device is 20 times bigger than yours. Yeah, you gave me no, no, you gave me credit for them. That's not quite true. We are not nearly as good as they are in terms of hardware engineering, our product is far further along, or sorry, far further behind. So even the earliest conceptions of this will be probably not nearly as small as you're giving us credit for. So I just want yours to be single purpose and i just realized we didn't push yours on put yours on the screen so we'll pop yours on the screen right now for people watching um it's the size of the dimensions look like like i said like if you were i guess it's the size of half your thumb maybe looks like it's about the size of a double a battery so i mean that's what we're conception here which is much larger than i think maybe you're giving us credit and by the way also this form factor might change part of the form factors design is to optimize for the microphones but it's not to be covert if i wanted to build a covert recording device it would be hearing it I've been wearing a hearing aid for 10 years.
26:39I know how that feels. Bracelet. And the goal here really isn't, it's the opposite of what you're just talking about. I don't doubt your intent. Yeah, I don't doubt your intent. I don't doubt your intent. But I do think you might be a little misguided on like having this transcript of everything. And, you know, when I point out certain situations, like the absolute ludicrousy of bringing this to a social event i still don't think that you've kind of uh acknowledged how insane it would be for a human being in 20 in the in the roaring 2020s to take out a pendant and hold it up and say would you like to consent to being recorded i'm asking your permission for me to record you and make ai summaries for all time do you realize how deranged and sociopathic that would be to do at a dinner party, Dan?
27:36I don't think it's made me close to deranged. I don't know about sociopathic. And again, that's not the use case that we're trying to solve. So give me the ideal use case that you're talking about. Yeah. Personalized productivity being for me. I meet with the same people. Most of the day that my coworkers, I meet my, my spouse. It's the people I meet with over and over again that I want to, I want to have a perfect memory of what they said. I care enough about what they say that it's important for me to be able to meet my commitments. If I tell somebody I'm going to make a commitment to an action item, I want a personalized AI that's going to help me remember to do that.
28:05So why not just say, hey, Siri, take a note? Well, it part of it is it pulling out your phone, it's the inconvenience of that. It's also, you know, the ability to actually do this across devices and sort of synchronize all of my digital experiences, not just dependent in an isolation, but every interaction that I have with somebody, which is across the multiple, it's across Slack and text and Zoom meetings and in-person meetings. So it's that comprehensiveness that I think is also really critical to making it work. and also the fact that you can do it without actively, you know, hey Siri, take a note, is far more friction than, hey Jason, hey, I'll follow up later, I'll send you a summary of this podcast.
28:40I'm saying it already, the app and the device should be able to listen, just like a perfect chief of staff would do it for you, you know, if they were in the room with you, we think personalized AI can do the same and that's part of the use case we want to support as well. Yeah, see, I think this is one of the interesting things about technology. Just because you can technically do something doesn't mean you should, right? back to you know jurassic park uh like did we ever ask ourselves should we do this and i think that's where you know i feel the biggest disjoint about this um is who wants to live in a world where people are wearing these i think 99 out of 100 people would rather this doesn't exist and i and i i think the the juice ain't worth the squeeze um this is going to cause so much pain and suffering uh and so many have you ever been disposed in a legal uh disagreement yeah yeah i mean did you ever have your phone dumped in one and have people like ask for every bit of communication you've had i think i think but you're you're understanding the value understating the value of perfect memory you're assuming that our lives are about as good as it's going to get and imagining a world where you could have perfect memory and meet every commitment and be more present in every conversation, I think is a better world for some people who want it.
29:52And it's not for everyone. It's just like and I'm not calling you a little to say that the telephone had these issues, but to strike the right balance of giving you the benefit of perfect memory, the same way you have perfect vision, and perfect hearing. I think that is worth trying to build a product that gets all the social norms right and takes a privacy first approach. If you're a landing page is terrible. I'm out, right? Most consumers are it's 2023. you can't have an ugly website. Stop selling for okay or good and have great. And great means you're using Squarespace. It's out of the box, beautiful.
30:23These websites have templates made by the world's greatest designers that are going to engage your audience, let you sell anything. And Squarespace over the past decade has just added feature after feature on top of the gorgeous templates that are designed for mobile. And the drag and drop web design with their fluid engine is just perfect, easy to use, and you get built-in analytics, marketing channel analysis, sales data, all that stuff. It goes beyond page views and site visits and time and all that. And with Squarespace, you can create an online store or you can start a blog. Click of a button, right?
30:54Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. You can create a subscription business for members-only content. You're seeing a lot of that out there. It's simple. It's cost-effective. It's gorgeous. And they keep adding feature after feature after feature. That's when technology is at its best, isn't it when you pay one price, but the product gets better and better and better you get that with your Tesla you get that with your iPhone you get that with Squarespace these are the legendary brands of the internet of this era go to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch I want you to go to squarespace.com slash twist and they're going to give you 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain go to squarespace.com slash twist because they know we sent you I believe that you have good intent and I believe you're taking it seriously and I appreciate you coming on the program to hash it out and talk about it i think that makes me feel a lot better about it you're you're open to criticism here and you're open to ideas so i give you a lot of credit for that uh just on the humane device that you're competing against it has camera sensors built-in speakers and i think there's like a some kind of projector that you can put your hand down and project stuff onto it and it's giant so it's maybe the size of four batteries um if you were to put them side by side so i think uh one of the great compromises here would be for these devices to be a certain size and to have a flashing light when it's recording um that would you know and if it was worn on the outside um you know just like if a cop walks up to you you expect because you see it and it's giant i don't know if there's flash but um they're cops and i think they're it's sort of like a the fact that they're in a uniform and they're walking up to you and this is giant thing bolted to their chest with a lens i mean they're giant um i think that is important and then you know there's going to be um state laws and these vary quite significantly i remember when i was in new york you needed two-party consent for all of these and then maybe california um or maybe new york was one party consent california was two and that's why a lot of journalists in new york could record phone calls or and people in california couldn't so have you started to look into those yet or you know because you haven't launched this thing and built the software yet, you're, you're, you're just thinking it through.
33:04No, no, we absolutely have. And for our product on Mac and on iPhone and Windows, those are all very important considerations. So absolutely, no, that is first and foremost, we're focused on. Our bar is much higher than the legal bar. Like I, you know, the legal bar is one, I think the moral, social, ethical, anti-sociopathical, if that's even a word, please, please do not turn into American Psycho, Dan. It's a much higher bar. And that's why I'm thrilled that you're having this conversation. I'm thrilled you're putting my feet to the fire. I think you're, you're overstating the the public's general concern around this.
33:33But I do think you're the exceptions you're describing are exactly the situations that whoever wins in this category need to get right. And my fear is if by not asking these questions up front, companies like humane and others put a product out there that has the same backlash that Google Glass has that sets back personalized AI by another decade. Yeah. And I you know, there's a difference between personally, I am persistent recording. So I would like to make that I don't have a problem with personal AI, it's persistent recording of things that people do not know are being recorded or that are just socially um you know going to cause pain and suffering down the road you never answer my question does your software uh on desktop and phone record something like signal uh where or does it block from recording on signal yeah so certain apps you can exclude uh you can exclude or your software excludes does your software allow me to do yeah it's an option for the user to why would you let the user record when you know signal is used for privacy um that's a choice that we gave to users same thing for one password and why would you do that it's just the default choice that we set why you set the default you can't just say the default that's the default we give that you can't just say this is where again i have a problem with some of your approach dan you need to make these decisions as the person putting the product out in the world so you dan have chosen to let users covertly record signal conversations.
34:53Why did Dan, the leader of this company choose to empower his audience to by default, record covertly record signal conversations? That it's a great question. Maybe we should change that default. For example, for private browsing, if you open incognito window by default, we do exclude that. So I think it's a very fair, fair feedback. It's actually the first time somebody's asked, but I do think it's fair that we by default for conversations like signal and other end encrypted solutions. I think it's a better user experience to default excluded by default so uh feedback there you go did it and and look i'm not change log set here we go but i'm not perfect consider me you're like your pesky customer who's like i think this should change as folks matter as my wife has reminded me numerous times i'm not perfect uh it is certainly a great piece of feedback and that is if that is uh you know that's the kind of feedback i hope i'm getting to be able to make sure our product lives up to people's expectations on privacy you're wait your wife told you you're not perfect as well i have i have a record our wives have so much We should go.
Read the full transcript
35:48We should have dinner. We should do a couple's date. I promise if we have dinner, I will not bring the pendant. Okay, that's fine. But we could, if you and I were to do an investment meeting, we could totally have the pendant there. As but one example, I record our investment team meeting. And why do I record the investment team meeting? Well, I tell everybody, when we pass on the next Uber, I want to be able to go back in time. And I want to see my decision making. And I want a record of that. And so we'll record that and know that if you're here, you know, that there's a chance that recording someday could be hacked or leaked and know that you should never, ever make any jokes or say something about a founder, let's say, you know, literally, I was, I learned a lesson early in my career.
36:39was taught to me when I was in consulting. Somebody was in an elevator leaving a sales meeting and the salesperson said something derogatory about a person at the company I just met with, not realizing that somebody else in the elevator worked at that company. They let that company go through an entire sales pitch process for a multi-million dollar deal. And then at the last minute said, we were going to give you the deal, but this person said that I smell like a monkey and dah, dah, dah, dah. Therefore, we're not giving you the deal. and this was like they dragged him along for like three months is a true story um and it was legendary and that person obviously got fired i got it was a big controversy and so uh you know i had to just start explaining to people hey you got to change your behavior here i know some people might say something to blow off steam or there might i don't want to say locker room talk but there might be gallows humor or you might make a joke about somebody's startup not appropriate don't ever make a joke about somebody's startup that's their heart and soul uh and if that gets caught in you know now because we're recording it and that gets leaked that could be so damaging to you to a lesser extent our firm uh and uh yeah and if you get in an argument with somebody who cares you can get an argument but just keep it you know like you and i having a respectful argument here um i don't mind it being on tape yeah this is definitely a lesson my last startup i grew about 450 people and at some point i realized every time i speak i should assume everything i say is going be heard, and or echoed, and I should just operate under the assumption that I should never say a thing that I wouldn't want everyone to hear.
38:08And that actually was very liberating to never have to have this feeling that I say one thing to another. And, you know, there are people out there who gaslight who say one thing to another, like, I think for them, a device like the pendant would be pretty scary. But I think, for the most part, being able to actually capture these kinds of conversations, and your use case is a perfect example. It's being able to remember that conversation. So it's so critical for a firm to remember the times they pass on the last uber or the next uber uh and that's that's the value we want to create and i think we can create that value without freaking people out at the same time all right uh this has been another 35 minutes with dan the man uh rewind ai uh and i wish you luck with it uh you got my notes product notes you take them you throw them away you keep them whatever doesn't matter to me uh but i wish you luck with it and uh i thank you for engaging the conversation i think it's super productive.
38:56And I wish more tech folks would be as candid and honest and open to feedback. So you are a friend of the pod now with your second appearance. Thank you. And thank you, Jason. And I really appreciate asking the tough questions. I hope you ask it of me of everyone else. The more you can be sure. Yeah, the more I think about it, I do think we should make signal excluded by default. And that was a piece of feedback. I definitely appreciate. But things like that are the kinds of things that will make us a better company and will make this category of software better for the world. Dan, you're growing on me.
39:24We may disagree about some things, but you're growing on me. I like the fact that you engage the conversation and we'll see you all next time when we continue the conversation on This Week in Startups.
From the publisher
This Week in Startups is brought to you by…
Codecademy. Build the future you want to see with Codecademy. Codecademy Pro helps you learn everything you’ll need to shape what comes next in the tech space. Try it free for 14 days. Visit Codecademy.com/TWiST
.Tech Domains has a new program called startups.tech, where you can get your startup featured on This Week in Startups. Go to startups.tech/jason to find out how!
Squarespace. Turn your idea into a new website! Go to Squarespace.com/TWIST for a free trial. When you’re ready to launch, use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
*
Today’s show:
Rewind CEO Dan Siroker joins Jason to discuss the new Rewind Pendant AI device that can record conversations (1:08), debate privacy and ethical concerns around covert recording (9:32), and much more!
*
Time stamps:
(0:00) Jason kicks off the show
(1:08) Dan breaks down the Rewind Pendant
(8:05) Codecademy - Try Codecademy Pro FREE for 14 days at http://codecademy.com/TWiST
(9:32) Privacy and ethical concerns around covert recording
(20:42) .Tech Domains - Apply to get your startup featured on This Week in Startups at https://startups.tech/jason
(21:47) Comparisons to products like Google Glass and Humane
(24:15) Design considerations and the best use cases for Rewind Pendant
(30:09) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://Squarespace.com/twist
(31:32) The need for thoughtful development of personal AI and the value of open feedback
*
Follow Dan: https://twitter.com/dsiroker
*
Read LAUNCH Fund 4 Deal Memo: https://www.launch.co/fourApply for Funding: https://www.launch.co/apply
Buy ANGEL: https://www.angelthebook.com
Great recent interviews: Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland, PrayingForExits, Jenny Lefcourt
Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis
*
Follow Jason:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jason
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jason
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis
*
Follow TWiST:
Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin
*
Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.founder.university/podcast




