A New Team and a Plan for the Pi AI Assistant App

Pi AI Assistant

A year and a half into using several GenAI chatbot apps, Pi remains one of my most used. I’ve said this a number of times before and it is still true - Pi is the only of these chatbots that is capable of having a real, continuous conversation. That was the biggest draw for me initially and is still a big deal, but Pi has also shown to be fast and useful for most of the common tasks I have for these tools. It stands up well for research and quick answers to one-off questions in particular.

Since the ability to “remember” previous chats has been highlighted as a notable feature in ChatGPT’s latest, greatest version, ChatGPT 4o, I’ve been testing Pi’s “memory” a little over recent days. This evening I asked if it could recall the name of the company whose report on new business email compromise methods I asked it to write some guidance on for a SOC team, a query from just a few days ago. I also asked if it remembered my dog’s name. It got both right.

Just a couple months ago I wrote about hoping it was not the end of Pi, when the co-founders of Inflection (the company that created it), along with a huge number of staff, were hired away by Microsoft. Tonight I’m happy to share what seems like a bit of good news on Pi hanging around for at least a while.

VentureBeat reported on Monday that Inflection has a new team - a new CEO, CTO, COO, and a new product lead - arrivals with previous history at Mozilla, Google, Microsoft, and other big name outfits. Their report also mentioned a co-founder who did not jump ship to Microsoft - Reid Hoffman. Hoffman is the founder of Linked In and the author of the riveting book Impromptu: Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI, co-written by GPT 4.

The report also shares that the new team has a clear plan - which sounds a lot like building on Pi’s impressive conversational skills and leveling up like so:

Today, the company announces a refocused mission: To double down on its leadership in the realm of emotional intelligence within AI, at a time when industry giants like OpenAI, Microsoft and Google prioritize cognitive prowess … The new team says its commitment to what it calls “EQ”, or emotional quotient – something the team says is a crucial but often overlooked component — will set it apart in a market clamoring for genuinely helpful chatbot interactions.

I’m looking forward to seeing how Pi (hopefully) prospers under the new management team, and also to some emotional discussions about how wonderful my dog is of course.