Some Big News With OpenAI...
On October 6th this year, OpenAI showcased their Apps SDK and Agent Builder products among a few others. Apps SDK can basically be thought of as an App Store for plugins and functionality within the ChatGPT app. Agent Builder is their drag-n-drop agent builder.
Why this is huge news
How people use the internet is changing dramatically and quickly. Continuously over the next few years how users shop, research, socialize, and everything inbetween, will shift from the web-based experience to an AI-based experience. Now, I can hear some contrarians already...
"But, this already was the case with Mobile development in the 2010's!"
To me, this feels similar but on a dramatically different ramp and experience. Having lived that shift from web to mobile during the 2010's, it largely felt like the web-based experiences were just ported into the smartphone skeleton. Sure, the UI is different, but beyond that a web app and a mobile app effectively ask the same thing of the user... the user is in the driver seat and their effort is required to accomplish whatever task or reach whatever their goal is.
AI offers an almost sort of delegation of the user's effort. Agentic AI will be expected to interact with information and other applications on behalf of the user. If a user asks their AI model of choice to "create a full itinerary for a trip to Iceland and book my travel accordingly.", why should they then be bothered with clicking through different buttons and forms ever again? This delegation of user effort in interaction online fascinates me and I think will be one of the things companies worldwide will feel before they know it. In fact, on an episode of the Breakeven Brothers Podcast, my brother and I discuss that Google AI Overview that pops up on the top of Google searches has negatively affected companies in terms of the clickthrough rate on their ad spend and traditional SEO efforts. Businesses need to be where their customers are... and customer behavior is on the move-quickly.
Here's the link I will be spending some time on reading this week likely twice, along with the Agents SDK. The Agents SDK is important because it is the engine that powers the Agent Builder tool. Being adept and skilled in both can only be a good thing.
Here is the Apps SDK and here is the Agents SDK for your own perusal.
Some Personal Growth
Alongside keeping up with the latest in AI tech, I picked up two books recently that focus more on self-development for some areas that I believe can always be improved on, public speaking, and customer service.
On public speaking
I picked up a book by author Mike Acker titled Speak With No Fear to work on presenting in a more polished manner. I put a lot of content forth online these days that I also would umbrella under 'public speaking' and I've come to appreciate over the years that the "how" the message is delivered is as important if not more important than the message itself. If you lose your audience, they lose the plot, and your presentation loses the whole purpose. In an enormous sea of content, algorithms, AI-slop, getting your content out and presenting it well seems too important to not get better at.
On customer service
Out of a recommendation I saw on LinkedIn I picked up the book Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. The book is about a famous NYC restaurant that doubles, triples, or maybe even some league beyond, on doing whatever it takes for their customers. Seeing the recommendation on LinkedIn immediately resonated with me because I view our role as an accountant as highly customer service centric. This viewpoint was actually shaped oddly enough by a real estate podcast I listened to between Chris Powers and Richard Fertig Powers Pod. Richard's perspective on hospitality somehow translated to how I felt about accountants providing services. I will spare the details for a different post, but in short Richard talks about the power of 'creating an experience for clients' versus a transactional relationship with a customer. I'm excited to read this one and continue to iterate on how I show up and provide service in all areas of my professional life.
Thanks for making it this far! I’d love to hear what you’re learning this week too - connect with me on X Bennett Bernard - X and LinkedIn Bennett Bernard, CPA.