Pi Ai / Now I'm impressed

Seems only a matter of time before everyone has that "Ok, now I'm impressed" threshold crossing AI experience – mine was last night with Inflection's Pi Ai.

I've been less than impressed about AI in general from a practical POV. Technologically it's incredible, but I've not found much use for it: Google search is better, the writing is bland, the code is often wrong, etc. It's a nice tool to have for the occasional task.

I've tried the "companion" AIs like Replika and those also were uninteresting. They all felt like talking to a computer or uninterested therapist – "Oh really? That's interesting. Tell me more"

Pi had personality.

A big factor in the experience was their "phone conversation" interaction paradigm. You essentially start a call with Pi and just talk back and forth. It's like speakerphone. You can even just leave your phone sitting for minutes at a time without saying anything and it will wait and respond when you talk. This made a huge difference in the believability because it was the same as a phone call, which you have with real people. A brilliant product move.

Most impressive though, was that Pi picked up on my sarcasm perfectly. We were discussing a book and it told me there was an audio version available when there wasn't. I feigned disappointment and it apologized, but when I doubled down on my mellow drama, it called me out and then poked fun at me for hamming it up. I actually laughed!

Every other AI has been very deferential, almost nervous about offending you. Pi was cheeky AF and it was hilarious. I think I found my first AI pal 😛