Magic+ • Hacker News Board

Re: Magic+

#431

Post by mrdrozdov » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:08 PM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #166

paul wrote: post #106

A lot of skepticism here, which is understandable given the somewhat unbelievable scope of what they are promising. I'm a very active user of Magic+, so I'll give my perspective. (and of course I've been working with them from the beginning at YC, so you're also free to discard my opinion as biased) For me, Magic+ is basically the impossibly good personal assistant, kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man, or Emily in The De…

>but my expectation (as an investor) is that as the tech improves they will be able to bring down the price while maintaining or even improving the quality of the service Call me skeptical, but where exactly is the tech involved? Currently this is just text messages going to people + people doing the things. One possibility would be through AI (a bit of a weasel word most of the time, honestly), but Google and Apple…

"Get me a pepperoni pizza," is a phrase anyone with some basic nlp chops should be able to understand using freely available code. Here's an example that could get you started but on a different domain. http://deeplearning.net/tutorial/rnnslu.html

Google, Facebook, many other companies (perhaps not Apple) publish many of their research findings and a lot of innovation is coming straight from academia.

To answer your question more directly, the hardware, software and data required to run an effective machine learning platform is getting cheaper and more powerful every year, which should drive down price if they can replace human tasks with AI solutions.

Re: Magic+

#432

Post by rm_-rf_slash » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:09 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #415

davecraige wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mike, As you know I had a very bad experience with Magic as well. I worked for you for free for a week and on boarded 63 new customers for you. You guys arbitrarily deleted my account, and abruptly shut off my autopay donations to numerous charities we had set up together. Then you went silent and wouldn't return any of the ten messages I sent to you asking for access to my personal records and information regarding…

I'd be interested in seeing the founders respond to this. We have stories like this every now and then with various companies, and here's something that makes me wonder: assuming that both parties are neither evil nor stupid (which I think is fair assumption in most cases), how exactly such situations happen? There's a lesson for every founder and manager hiding here.

I was screwed over by some startup founders that tricked me into working for free under the guise of "demonstrating mastery of Rails" and "proving my culture fit," but I wouldn't call those guys evil, just jerks.

So how does a situation like that happen? You justify it to yourself to cut corners in order to succeed, and because you're a job creator in America, you're entitled to respect in the end.

Re: Magic+

#433

Post by corin_ » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:10 PM UTC

voltagex_ wrote: post #332

exadeci wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even need to be that rich to have an assistant 24/7: Personal Assistant™ Offers MasterCard® Black cardholders the convenience of a personal assistant, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Going beyond the service of a concierge, Personal Assistant is available to free up time for busy cardholders, with services such as: Child care services (such as pick-up and drop-off at school). Pet care. Personal shopper (dome…

Crap, this could have really saved me over the last month - what's the catch? Have you used something like this? I think my last card had it (calling it "Concierge") but my current bank doesn't mention it anywhere.

Typically cards with extra features either (at the low end) charge a monthly fee or (at the higher end) have minimum requirements such as a minimum net worth for the holder or a minimum monthly or annual spend through it. Lower end would normally be a small fee and fairly basic bonus features (travel insurance, gadget insurance, airport lounges) while I'd expect any half-decent concierge service to be aimed at attracting richer customers. The minimum worth/spend requirements basically mean the extra services offered are there to attract people who will give the card creators more % by spending more money, giving them enough profit to offer free services.

Re: Magic+

#434

Post by cooper12 » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:18 PM UTC

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #383

rand1012 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of VCs read HackerNews...

Enough to dominate the top of the front page for 10 hours? And populate the comment section with numerous high ranked glowing/apologetic comments? This is the sort of activity that usually accompanies massive news that rallies wide community interest or support, not a niche service that only a handful of extremely rich people should seriously be interested in, even on a site like HN.

I saw that the post had 400 comments so thought it would be something huge. Turns out its Yet Another Personal Assistant hidden behind a UI. There really isn't that much to discuss about it which hasn't already been done to death by all the Facebook M posts.

Re: Magic+

#435

Post by morgangiraud » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:20 PM UTC

What if i ask magic+ to ask magic+ for a time consuming task. Since i'm not asking magic+ myself anymore, should i pay anything apart the 2 minutes it took to ask magic+ from the inside?

Re: Magic+

#436

Post by corin_ » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:29 PM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #326

cookiecaper wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not going to hire Magic+ for 40 hours per week. Many services are $100/hr or more, they're just rarely billed out that way, because people have this reaction. If you have a moderate amount of disposable income, you can afford to have simple requests filled by Magic+ for $15-$30 (10-20 minutes of personal assistant time) several times a month. The viability of the product for a solid middle class user really just…

> If you have a moderate amount of disposable income, you can afford to have simple requests filled by Magic+ for $15-$30 (10-20 minutes of personal assistant time) several times a month. Well, except that--as the grandparent post said--the minimum buy is $1000 for 10 hours. That puts it well outside "casual purchase, might come in handy" and into "must have a specific, long-term use in mind" for the typical middle-c…

Yeah... I would be up for trying it (if they now or in the future allow European customers), and could imagine liking it enough to be willing to put in $1000 to last me a while, but not without trying it for a few $10s first.

Maybe they are choosing to price out those of us who would use occasionally but not often, or maybe it's an acceptable downside to benefits they get from having other people pay that lump up front. (For example, maybe they've found that in the first $200 of spending people aren't convinced, but if they're forced to spend another $800 then they start to appreciate the service more and are less likely to stop using it.)

Re: Magic+

#437

Post by pjc50 » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:34 PM UTC

Aoyagi wrote: post #423

>SHARING OF YOUR INFORMATION >We may share your personal information with: >Third-party vendors and other service providers that perform services on our behalf, as needed to carry out their work for us, which may include identifying and serving targeted advertisements (...) >Other companies whose products or services may be of interest to you ... That sounds pretty bad even if it wasn't so vague. This is a bloody pre…

If they log in as you to a third-party website (e.g. so they can change your calendar as in one of the examples), that information could be used by the third party to serve you targeted ads.

For example, if you ask them to get your Macbook fixed, and put a reminder in your calendar for when it's ready, that may result in you being served Apple ads.

Re: Magic+

#438

Post by OliverJones » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:43 PM UTC

Sorry for the snark, but...

How about a service that answers texts like, "where can I find a warm place to stay tonight?" or "please get the welfare department to correct their mistake and reactivate my food stamps."

Re: Magic+

#439

Post by Aoyagi » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:53 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #437

Aoyagi wrote: post #423

>SHARING OF YOUR INFORMATION >We may share your personal information with: >Third-party vendors and other service providers that perform services on our behalf, as needed to carry out their work for us, which may include identifying and serving targeted advertisements (...) >Other companies whose products or services may be of interest to you ... That sounds pretty bad even if it wasn't so vague. This is a bloody pre…

If they log in as you to a third-party website (e.g. so they can change your calendar as in one of the examples), that information could be used by the third party to serve you targeted ads. For example, if you ask them to get your Macbook fixed, and put a reminder in your calendar for when it's ready, that may result in you being served Apple ads.

That's one way to interpret it, no doubt. But as I said, the vagueness is a part of the problem (as I see it anyway).

Re: Magic+

#440

Post by madaxe_again » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 2:03 PM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #166

paul wrote: post #106

A lot of skepticism here, which is understandable given the somewhat unbelievable scope of what they are promising. I'm a very active user of Magic+, so I'll give my perspective. (and of course I've been working with them from the beginning at YC, so you're also free to discard my opinion as biased) For me, Magic+ is basically the impossibly good personal assistant, kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man, or Emily in The De…

>but my expectation (as an investor) is that as the tech improves they will be able to bring down the price while maintaining or even improving the quality of the service Call me skeptical, but where exactly is the tech involved? Currently this is just text messages going to people + people doing the things. One possibility would be through AI (a bit of a weasel word most of the time, honestly), but Google and Apple…

I sincerely hope the strategy isn't "find the cheapest human labor possible"

As evil as it seems, that's probably a sane strategy - as actual automation eats the job market, the number of unemployed, or those seeking multiple/alternate employment, will rise. These will more and more comprise displaced white collar workers. This will make the employment market a buyers market (moreso than it is already) and will result in decreased labour costs.

So - call me cynical, but if that's their plan, it's robust - if potentially evil - at least it'll be providing employment.