Six months earlier, Alex was working on a coding assistant. He wanted an app that floated on the screen, capturing what he was working on in real-time. The technology was there but just not readily accessible, nor easily combined to make it work seamlessly. You had to be a decent developer, one with the skills to unlock some of these cutting-edge technologies. He just didn’t have those skills. A friend saw the presentation and sent it to Alex. They got on a call.
“Did you see it?” His friend asked.
Alex said:
“No, not yet. I saw the first three minutes, and I loved it. I was looking into this type of device.”
“There was one that I forwarded to you, it was called Pina or something.”
“I cannot remember, but it uses holographic technology to project images onto your palm, and pinching your index finger with the thumb allows you to select from a list.”
“How cool is that? They are using holographic images.”
“We talked about it in the past.”
“I didn’t look at it. Let me see if I can find it.” Alex was frantically scrolling his phone.
“This device was built by a husband and wife team, former Apple employees.”
“I cannot find it.”
“This thing was amazing, it’s your own personal assistant.”
“Yeah, this is Star Trek stuff.”
“I know right, it could order pizza and translate in real-time.”
“The problem with LLM is that it can suggest ideas but it cannot act.”
“Let me look at the video later. It’s called Rabbit?”
His friend said with excitement, “Yeah, it looks like half the size of a phone, red with an animated bunny mascot on a small screen.”
“Alright, I will look at it.”
“Blue, did you see that?” Alex asked.
That evening at Baker Street, Alex saw the presentation and got really excited. He asked Helen to watch the sales launch with him again. It was late, past her bedtime. He made an exception this time. Alex knew this device was going to start a new revolution.
Helen interrupted the presentation, “Could this thing message my friends?”
“Yes, now be quiet and watch.”
“Can I get one?”
“I don’t know; we will have to see.”
A few minutes into the presentation, Helen said, “I want one.”
“Me too, this thing is going to save your mom. She doesn’t have to be stuck looking at her screens all day. Now, quiet and watch.”
After watching the video, Helen got excited and couldn’t wait to show it off to her friends. She was imagining the excitement; the prospect of telling her friends made her happy. It’s the little things in life that are valuable; it’s moments like these that make life bearable. Alex calls it simple joy. He said good night to Helen.
He quickly jumped on a call with two other people.
“Sorry, I didn’t know we were meeting today.”
“Yeah, it’s alright, we were just watching the video you sent earlier.”
“What do you think?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the man.
“I think it looks primitive,” said the woman.
She continued, “I think it is not there yet. I’ve been looking at this technology for the past 6 months and I think OpenAI is the way to go.” Alex thought she couldn’t have been more wrong. He knew the pace of the open-source communities because he has been hands-on; the pace was overwhelming and frantic with new projects launched weekly.
Alex was annoyed, he asked:
“Well, let me ask you, do we have anything that can do what this thing can do?”
“This is something that would help you collect data, help you make sense of the research.”
“What you are working on with the spreadsheet, Rabbit can help you.”
“It will use the subscription service from ValueLine, pull the data, then compute the intrinsic value.”
“Look, we have thousands of companies to look into.”
“I’m just saying, we don’t have anything working that is better than this.”
It was late, everyone on the call was all tired from working all day.
“It won’t be shipped until the end of March,” said the man.
“Yes, until then we will still have to do everything manually,” said Alex.
“So, are we getting this thing?” asked the woman.
Alex continued, “I don’t think we can do better.”
“We don’t have time to build anything right now.”
“BTC just reached 48 thousand.”
“It just spiked up from $44 thousand.”
“I don’t want to miss out on this crypto run.”
“I think there are lots of opportunities in the equity market.”
“We don’t have a lot of time.”
Earlier before the call, Alex saw an article that suggested short sellers’ losses were in the billions at the start of the year. He said, “Coinbase shares are being shorted.”
“It is going back and forth.”
“I think there are some big players shorting the stock.”
“I don’t have the short data; I have the last month’s shorting stats but not in real-time.”
“I don’t know.”
“The price of the stock is behaving crazily.”
“We have to figure out what the investing universe is like and fast.”
“We cannot invest unless we have a complete picture of the market, and right now, we are flying blind.”
“I don’t see how we need this,” said the woman. “Sorry,” She left the call.
Alex liked working with the woman; he thought she was very talented. He also knew she had little interest in the work, especially the type of work that doesn’t pay and having to deal with someone like himself, it was too much for most people. She had over 20 years of experience running a dev house. Alex sighed with disappointment.
“Alright, let me get it, it’s not coming until April,” said the man.
Alex said, “Great, I’m so excited.”
“We just got an assistant that could help you with all of the analysis.”
“I just got a software developer.”
“Thanks, Drake.” Drake was Alex’s old friend; they went to college together and have known each other since they were teenagers.
“Let me go, I’m going to spam my family.” Alex left the call and messaged his family, asking everyone to buy one. He told his friend, this is like witnessing the first iPhone launch event.
I think this device is going to bring people back from the dead. You know, people who are always stuck on the phone with their hunchback postures and their face lit with a blue neon glow. These people are dead to the world; what is important is screen time. When you talk to them, they would look at their screen; if you ask them what they are doing, they would tell you, “I’m researching.” This research is about fact-checking you; if the facts are mentioned somewhere on the internet, never mind the source, anywhere would do. That is research. Rabbit is a revolution to me, to bring back the dead. It will not be an easy fight; our world requires an army of the living dead to fuel the eyeballs craze needed for the advertising business model peddled by the tech giants. This tiny Rabbit assistant just announced a revolt of the norm. Of course, I’m all in. I’m ready to ditch my phone right now. It will be an easy fight; there are thousands of apps and billions of dollars at stake. Tech giants need the undead for their livelihood. Nothing less than an army would be enough; they need the money for their free lunches and oversized paychecks. I’m just saying.