News Summary

• Ang Li, co-founder of agent software biz Simular, was skeptical about the usefulness of machine learning, or artificial intelligence.
• The production team between 2017 and 2019 would often say, "machine learning never works in production" That was all before OpenAI released ChatGPT on November 30, 2022.
• Li anticipates adoption in industries like insurance and healthcare that have a lot of repetitive computer work involving filling out forms.
• In 2023, when Li co-founded Simular with Jiachen Yang, he said he told people the company was building agents.
• But people didn't understand, and tried to convince him to call them assistants.