Andrew Lee: How AI will Shape the Future of Email

In episode 118 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Andrew Lee.Andrew is co-founder and CEO of Shortwave, a company dedicated to building a better product experience for email, particularly by leveraging AI. He previously co-founded and was CTO at Firebase.Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here or reach Daniel at [email protected] to The Gradient Podcast:  Apple Podcasts  | Spotify | Pocket Casts | RSSFollow The Gradient on TwitterOutline:* (00:00) Intro* (01:43) Andrew’s previous work, Firebase* (04:48) Benefits of lacking experience in building Firebase* (08:55) On “abstract reasoning” vs empirical capabilities* (10:30) Shortwave’s AI system as a black box* (11:55) Motivations for Shortwave* (17:10) Why is Google not innovating on email?* (21:53) Shortwave’s overarching product vision and pivots* (27:40) Shortwave AI features* (33:20) AI features for email and security concerns* (35:45) Shortwave’s AI Email Assistant + architecture* (43:40) Issues with chaining LLM calls together* (45:25) Understanding implicit context in utterances, modularization without loss of context* (48:56) Performance for AI assistant, batching and pipelining* (55:10) Prompt length* (57:00) On shipping fast* (1:00:15) AI improvements that Andrew is following* (1:03:10) OutroLinks:* Andrew’s blog and Twitter* Shortwave* Introducing Ghostwriter* Everything we shipped for AI Launch Week* A deep dive into the world’s smartest email AI Get full access to The Gradient at thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe