Questioning whether personal agents have a real mass market
The author says no one outside tech they know uses Muse, and that even as a target user they can't be bothered to set it up, since what they really want is a robot that does laundry and dishes rather than a chat assistant.
Despite all the hype for Muse I am seeing among my tech forward friends, I don’t know of any friends or family outside tech who are using it. I’m increasingly skeptical that personal agents will be a truly massive consumer market. If Meta can’t figure it out with all the data they have at their disposal to personalize the experience, can anyone? I’m a Very Busy person so basically the ICP for these tools but as a Very Busy person I also can’t really be bothered to take the time to set them up because the total utility they provide just isn’t that high. Do I really care about getting better product recommendations or having my email inbox organized? I’m sure Muse can help offload some cognitive tasks like shopping for presents or planning a birthday party or rescheduling an appointment, but the cognitive tasks aren’t the ones I really need help with (and they also feel kinda bad to outsource, like I want to pick out my own gifts!) What I actually want is help with the real world physical stuff - help me do my laundry, do my dishes, clean the house. An affordable robot that can reliably do these tasks is the killer universal product, moreso than a personal assistant you text with.