Pollen for LinkedIn

Maker

📌

Hello, PH! Hue is a side project inspired by one of my favourite apps, Poncho, an early betaworks spin-out, and one of the first AI assistants. I've been playing with Gen AI and RAG for 18 months, and it's now entirely feasible from a technology point of view to build AI assistants for the consumer market that are customisable and deliver consistent outcomes. But what Poncho did that was groundbreaking in its time, and that is still missing from many current applications and tools, was to provide a personable service. What I mean by that, is that Poncho was proactive in surfacing highly relevant information to the user, which it did with a defined personality. That's the idea behind Hue (Poncho was sold and wound down in 2018). There's an interesting space in the upcoming consumer AI market that I don't think Apple or Alexa will fill - a personable AI assistant. Whatever Apple Intelligence delivers in terms of Siri next month, it's guaranteed to be vanilla, inoffensive and lacking interoperability - and that will create white space for experimentation. (The first version of Hue had a personality based on the Jerky Boys, which was... overwhelming). Let me know what you think!

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10mo ago

Olga iaLOVEnko

ralify

@paul_a_smith I need my personal assistant for sure. I'll try Hue. Great idea. I'd like my Hue to read my social media and understand what I'm thinking about, what are my challenges and find solutions that I probably can't see being emotional, not logical at the moment. I like the example with running. I don't use calendar for that, so Hue should be able to see the info in other apps I'm using to track my activity. Good luck with Hue and thank you for your work on that.

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10mo ago

Christofer Huber

Mailfox

Hey @paul_a_smith, this sounds interesting. To get a better understanding of how Hue can help on a day to day basis, can you give us a few tasks that the AI can help with? I saw the idea with the ESTA application. It feels like a hyper proactive reminder. Like that 😅 Also, how is Hue going to know all the stuff that's going on. What permissions and access to other apps does it need?

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10mo ago

Paul Smith

Pollen for LinkedIn

Maker

@crebuh Hi Chris! We're working across a mix of public APIs and permissions to user accounts - so in the early examples in the demo, you're seeing Hue infer insight from considering calendar activity, weather and search. There's a lot more we can do, but there's also a lot to figure out.

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10mo ago

Christofer Huber

Mailfox

@paul_a_smith nice this sounds amazing, looking forward when Hue becomes available :)

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10mo ago

Govi Chan

Congrats on the launch, @paul_a_smith ! I’m curious, does Hue store any of my information , like my name, age, job, etc., to provide more personalized content ?

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10mo ago

Paul Smith

Pollen for LinkedIn

Maker

@govichan Hi Gove, thanks for the question. We're using RAG to develop the concept of "persistent" memory and "short-term" memory to provide more contextual responses - there are some privacy challenges to consider, so we're taking our time to get it right.

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10mo ago

Govi Chan

@paul_a_smith Wouldn’t it be better if there was an input option , like a knowledge or prompt , where users could choose what information they want Hue to know? For example, I could input my name, job, birthday, etc., in advance. This way, the information is submitted with the user’s consent rather than being recorded during the conversation.

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10mo ago

Paul Smith

Pollen for LinkedIn

Maker

@govichan possibly, but you're submitting the information in response to the service prompts in the first place; if you don't provide consent to allow us to work with the information you submit, there's no way to provide the service?

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10mo ago

Govi Chan

@paul_a_smith That’s not what I meant. Have you used GPTS before? It has a “Knowledge” feature where you can add more information to supplement your GPTS. Without it, you’ll only get the basic service. This might be a direction worth considering for you.

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10mo ago

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