Amazing Answers: Richard Socher on how You.com is Reimagining Search with AI

**Erik Torenberg** (0:00)
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**Richard Socher** (0:45)
Early 2022, all right, like we had apps that would write code for you within the search results, apps that write essays for you within the search results.
But whenever we innovated and changed the default Google experience too much, we had just like the vast majority of our users say, I'm so used to Google, I don't want another way of finding answers.
And so we kept getting pulled back to this knee. And so the most amazing surprise was when ChatChip came out, all of a sudden people got it. And it was like, wait a minute, it could just be like pure text. And we're like, been trying to sort of slowly get there, but we had to make a bigger jump. The way I think about the different modes is like the default smart mode is kind of like if you had an assistant and you just asked them to do a quick search, and in like two or three minutes, get you an answer back.
And then genius mode, you go and if you want to ask your assistant for a question that they have to be able to program, they have to search the web, and then they need to be mathematically applying to answer that question. I mean, as a kid, I also enjoyed watching Terminator. It's like a cool action movie, but it's just taken over so much of the AI narrative. And it's actually like actively hurting, especially the European Union.

**Nathan Labenz** (1:57)
Hello, and welcome to The Cognitive Revolution, where we interview visionary researchers, entrepreneurs and builders working on the frontier of artificial intelligence. Each week, we'll explore their revolutionary ideas, and together we'll build a picture of how AI technology will transform work, life and society in the coming years. I'm Nathan Labenz, joined by my co-host, Erik Torenberg. Hello, and welcome back to The Cognitive Revolution. Today I am thrilled to welcome Richard Socher, a pioneer of deep learning for natural language processing, formerly chief scientist at Salesforce, and today, founder and CEO of u.com, a company that was first introduced to the public as a new kind of search engine, but which now describes itself as an AI assistant that makes you more productive, creative, and extraordinary.
Richard has deep history in deep learning. He was among the very first to recognize the potential of neural networks in the natural language processing domain, and his work has helped shape the field as we know it over the last decade.
In this conversation, Richard takes us on a brief journey through his own intellectual history and reflects on how the field of AI has evolved in both expected and surprising ways. Before we dive deep into the u.com product itself, covering the historical challenge that they faced when trying to compete with Google, and how the rise of the AI chatbot paradigm has broadened the space of possibility for search and discovery products.
We also look at U.com's various modes, with particular emphasis on the Genius mode, and above all for me, the Research mode, which delivers amazingly helpful and thorough report-style answers, even on some remarkably complex topics.
We also briefly discuss the future of AI business models as well, including the obvious subscription and my pet theory about the AI bundle. Along the way, we touch on a number of important topics too. The limits to AI systems' reasoning ability and the prospects for the improvement that would be needed for reliable autonomy. The potential for AI to transform medicine and scientific research. Richard's case for general optimism, even though he does expect AI to drive major disruption. Why he's not worried about so-called emergent capabilities, but does take the risk of intentional harmful misuse very seriously. And lots more little topics along the way as well.
Richard is a leading thinker in the AI space, and his perspective is essential for anyone who wants to understand where this technology is going and what it means for the future of humanity. And in all seriousness, I really do recommend u.com. It has absolutely joined the ranks of the AI tools that I use multiple times each week. And particularly when I want a comprehensive, multi-page, report-style answer, I find that U.com's Research Mode is often the single best tool available today.