Latest / Agentic Conversations (formally mlops.community) / The Latency Goldilocks Zone Explained
Transcript
- 0:00Recommending something that I know about the user is
- 0:02relatively So who we're here with today,
- 0:19fellas? What you guys doing?
- 0:22I'm Rafael. I'm head of innovation at I
- 0:25Food. Danny Wilbert, Brazilian, 37
- 0:27years, born and raised in Belarizonte.
- 0:30I have two kids, David and Isabel.
- 0:33I am a husband of Maria Lisa. I'm a data science manager.
- 0:38That food has been in black food since 2025, right And I have a
- 0:44background of data science, even when data science or yeah, it
- 0:48was not called like that, right. So I started with my career as a
- 0:52data as a developer and then I had the opportunity to go all
- 0:56over through the history, the recent history of data science,
- 0:59like analytics, data science, machine learning, optimization.
- 1:04So and now I'm currently working at the intelligence part of the
- 1:07ILO which is our hyper personalization for requests of
- 1:12the users. Yeah, tell me more about ILO.
- 1:14Well, ILO is an experience where it's a different than than when
- 1:18you go for the I food app, right?
- 1:20So it's a conversational agent where you can request for
- 1:24anything that is even something very simple like a pizza or if
- 1:29you want some romantic dinner with two people.
- 1:31But my wife, she doesn't eat onions, for example.
- 1:34So ILO is a solution that gets your your request, understands
- 1:40who you are, what are your preference, what are your
- 1:42desires and gives you the best options at the moment.
- 1:45Is it doing it proactively already or is it still that I am
- 1:50actively asking ILO things like question, answer?
- 1:53Right now we are doing this reactively, right, But we are
- 1:57doing the plans in the future. There is one specific part of of
- 2:01the of the process that we are trying to we are using which is
- 2:05the undecided users flow. Some of the users, they already
- 2:09use that, right. So you are on the app, you are
- 2:11working on that, right And you receive some suggestions and
- 2:15recommendations for that based on this same intelligence.
- 2:19So we are starting to think about how to practically
- 2:22recommend things for the users. But these are like digging under
- 2:27the hood. I'm always fascinated,
- 2:29especially with recommender systems, how different this is
- 2:33from a traditional recommender system.
- 2:37Well, when we talk about recommendation systems, is the
- 2:39whole world, right? I mean everybody, every single
- 2:42company is trying to see how can I understand you, how I know who
- 2:49you are and what is the best product for you at that moment,
- 2:54right? It's not that different.
- 2:57I mean recommendation systems is something that we've been
- 3:00trying. I mean there's a lot of people
- 3:02around the world trying to do that, right?
- 3:05So we are getting like all the the knowledge that we have
- 3:08previously from our data and we are experimenting different
- 3:12things on that, right. So we have a model which we call
- 3:15LCM that is kind of a summarization and a joint of
- 3:21lots of, we have different ways of that we can recommend in IO
- 3:25we use the base of the LCM which is which has the the full
- 3:30characteristics of the user to understand what is the best
- 3:36request, what is the best dish for you at that time, right.
- 3:40So it's not that like that there.
- 3:44Of course there is the innovation part, which we're
- 3:46trying different things with people have never tried before
- 3:49and we are. We are constantly evolving and
- 3:53thinking how we can recommend the things for the user.
- 3:55Right. Is it?
- 3:56Is it like you're using a traditional machine learning
- 3:59model and then you're adding a little LLM on top with
- 4:03sprinkling some flavor on it? Not necessary right to seeing
- 4:06the the technology we are using. We are using everything that
- 4:10it's available right now, plus the innovation part.
- 4:13So what is the innovation part? AI itself, right?
- 4:16I mean by AII mean if we talk about AI, people that have never
- 4:21know about what AI did think that AI is only LLMS, is only
- 4:26this generative AI, right? But AI is beyond that.
- 4:30There's a lot of techniques that are a lot of things that Gen.
- 4:35AI is just one part of this whole world of the AI and the we
- 4:39we use a set of different techniques to understand how can
- 4:43we do a recommendation, right? But that's not that that's
- 4:46tricky, right? That's depends, for example if
- 4:50you're a guy that have only ordered Japanese food in your
- 4:53life, right? What do you like that sushi?
- 4:56Yes. What?
- 4:57What? What would you expect to
- 4:59recommend to you? And sushi all day.
- 5:02Miso soup and maybe a little bit of ramen.
- 5:06All right, but does that mean that you are the guy that only
- 5:09eats sushi 24 hours per day? That that's the challenge of
- 5:12your commendation because you. Need a California roll with that
- 5:15cream cheese for breakfast? In Brazil, we put cream cheese.
- 5:18We put like the snacks on the top of sushi.
- 5:21You put some sweets, some cheese, but.
- 5:24Granola. You put some granola on top with
- 5:26a little yogurt with your sushi. Well we put like guava which is
- 5:31the the guava thing and I tried it I've.
- 5:33Heard about Brazilians disrespect and all kinds of
- 5:36traditional cuisine with the pizza.
- 5:40We have strong enough pizza, which is good you.
- 5:42Are you have like the Nutella and banana pizza?
- 5:45I've heard about that. You got the little pizzas like.
- 5:48It's famous there, right? Yeah.
- 5:50But that's the thing, we got one case where the user really liked
- 5:54Nutella and Banana like there was.
- 5:57I mean, most of the orders from the user that were related to to
- 6:00sweet things, right? And the recommendation that that
- 6:05we provided was the pizza that was a sweet pizza, right?
- 6:09The user like it, of course. But The thing is how can you do
- 6:14a challenge that is beyond your own knowledge for the user?
- 6:17How can you extrapolate that step out, right?
- 6:20And this is what we are doing. This is what we are.
- 6:23We are constantly testing, right?
- 6:24I see. And you've built a profile about
- 6:26someone because that's what that's all you know about them
- 6:30when they interact on your app. But you want to know, if we were
- 6:33to offer them something new, how can we do that in a way that
- 6:38it's going to be a little bit more successful, or at least
- 6:41we're not just firing blind? Correct.
- 6:43Recommending something that I know about the user is
- 6:45relatively easy, but how do I recommend something that I don't
- 6:51know if they use it will like or not.
- 6:53And that's the difference that we're working on.
- 6:55It's a bunch of different techniques, different tools,
- 6:58trials and errors. How do we do the market fit?
- 7:01How do we make sure that for the person that likes only sushi,
- 7:06you are going to like that? How for the person that for
- 7:08example, like gourmet dishes, it will differentiate.
- 7:14It's a trial and error, right? It's always a trial and error at
- 7:17the end and. But are you creating new
- 7:20clusters? In the recommendation world,
- 7:22right, Your challenge is to make sure how close and I am as a
- 7:27person to a group of persons. Yeah, Right.
- 7:30And not only that, how close I am to the person that that is
- 7:35close to a restaurant that is close to another dish.
- 7:39Yeah. So how do I get the shortest
- 7:42path between me haffa and a burger close to my city or here
- 7:49in Amsterdam, Right? And there is no there is no
- 7:53rocket rocket size. There is no.
- 7:57Easy way, bullet. Silver bullet, yeah.
- 7:59There's no silver bullet for that.
- 8:00It's trial and error, right? You see, the thing about IO is
- 8:04that how can we serve, how can we do the product for thousands
- 8:13of million of people that have so many different food tastes,
- 8:18so many different characteristics?
- 8:20What he or she likes. What's going to harder that is
- 8:24some people are more prices sensitive or not.
- 8:27You cannot build just one product for that that fits all.
- 8:30You must make sure that you parts of your products will be
- 8:35adjusted depending on the profile of the user, right?
- 8:39I cannot recommend. So if I'm a guy that doesn't
- 8:42like sushi or that like pizza for example, but I can only have
- 8:4810 rice to spend today, I cannot recommend a pizza that is worth
- 8:53like 200 rice because I'm not going to buy it.
- 8:56So I need to understand not only your characteristics of what
- 9:00your tastes are, but your economic profile, what you were
- 9:05aiming to to buy, what is historical purchases, how do you
- 9:09compare itself to your other users in order to get you the
- 9:12best recommendation? So, OK, I also want to talk
- 9:15about the idea of the jet skis that you were mentioning before
- 9:22and how you've got these jet skis that are in a way the
- 9:27experimentation and innovation arm of ifood Breakdown.
- 9:32What it what this concept is for me and then also like what has
- 9:38come out of it? Jet skis, it is part of our
- 9:41culture. You know, it's, it's a big thing
- 9:43for ifood. So the concept regards the
- 9:48ambidextrous organization. You know, you have like ifoods
- 9:52doing hundreds of millions of orders per month.
- 9:56So it's a big ship and a big ship is very hard to maneuver.
- 10:01So the jet skis, it's about testing, testing things very
- 10:07fast. And if it doesn't work out,
- 10:09that's fine, you go to another thesis and try it again.
- 10:13So The thing is you need to do it fast, cheap a lot, but once
- 10:21you find something, you invest big.
- 10:24Always dream big, start small, but start right now and very
- 10:27fast. So we created big revenue
- 10:31streams for the company in the past two years by doing this
- 10:35whole business units such as the fintech business, grocery
- 10:38business, ifood clip. They all wore jet skis in the
- 10:42past. So it's part of the way we do
- 10:46things. The core business sustained the
- 10:50whole thing, of course, but you need to invest part of the
- 10:56resources and expect big term returns on the on the, you know,
- 11:01on the long term. So that's the whole thing.
- 11:04Yeah. It's a little bit like the power
- 11:05law, like VC investing where they'll invest in 100 different
- 11:09companies and one or two of them hit, but they hit big and
- 11:13there's not really a cap on how how big it can go.
- 11:16And so you were able to create the whole fintech unit and now
- 11:21ILO is one of these big bets that you're making.
- 11:26Yeah, exactly. We are shifting from using ifood
- 11:30to search from an item to be suggested an item for you.
- 11:38We try it with half a million users right now and we started
- 11:46finding some interesting things like is 16% faster to complete
- 11:53an order from a search to a checkout with IO than ifood
- 12:00product search when we benchmark Because you can send an audio
- 12:04saying OK, I want a pizza and he knows what pizza you like and
- 12:10you can play by pics in WhatsApp like very fast and the pizza
- 12:15beers in our house. So it's faster and it's as we
- 12:19benchmark it's 35% higher. The probability that a search
- 12:24became a cart addition as well. So we are finding some
- 12:29interesting results. We still have some things that
- 12:34we are struggling like scalability, some costs, and I
- 12:38think everybody that's working with AI are facing some, you
- 12:42know, challenges. And of course, there's the
- 12:46product market fit that we still need to shape behavior because
- 12:50people use ILO as they use I food and they're not striking
- 12:56the, you know, the whole potential that this thing could
- 12:59be like complex credit, such as I want a pizza that could be
- 13:05delivering 40 minutes should cost less than 50 reals.
- 13:10And I want actually a order for two people.
- 13:14One is vegetarian, the other one's meat.
- 13:17So if you want to acquire this within the apps, it's
- 13:20impossible. Yeah, that's more just like
- 13:22filters, right? Don't you think that could be
- 13:24done with some kind of traditional filtering UI?
- 13:29Maybe. But you know, the graphic
- 13:32interface I think does not bring the same value as conversational
- 13:39in this particular case, because you can send an audio, say
- 13:42whatever you want and in a four seconds this will come back as
- 13:50A4 images of exactly what you want.
- 13:53Yeah. And that is the other part,
- 13:55which is the concept of what is important to me depends on what
- 14:01I use the user, right? So if you're just saying I want
- 14:04a cheap burger, for example, if you just use the traditional
- 14:07filter as well, we're just going to sort by and get like the
- 14:11lowest burger that we have. But that's, that's not kind of
- 14:14the case for most of the users. The concept of what is shipped
- 14:17to me is different than than what is shipped to you.
- 14:20And there is always a boundary between what is cheap and what
- 14:23is a good quality, right? So if I want, for example, a
- 14:26cheapest snack, for example, if either just sort by, I will
- 14:30receive this like very $1.00 one euro thing be like this is your
- 14:34snacks. The user will say this is not
- 14:35what like is not what I want. I like those 200 realized
- 14:39pizzas. Depending on where you are,
- 14:42that's not so expensive, right? But there is this boundary
- 14:45between quality and price. And everyone has this different,
- 14:50different, Yeah, that's the, let's just say boundary, right.
- 14:53So if you just use the traditional filters to sort by
- 14:56the user will take a long time to well, I want to filter by 30
- 15:00AIS, but didn't like, not like this.
- 15:02But look, well, I don't want something that is far from my
- 15:04home. So when we use IO, every single
- 15:09aspect of what is good to the user is already combined and
- 15:14analyze it to give you the best solution, right?
- 15:17So some people, they like some things that are close to your
- 15:21house, some people don't, some people they are very rating
- 15:26oriented for the machine. So IDLE can have the capability
- 15:29to understand every single parameter of your decision and
- 15:33combine that to give you the best best solution.
- 15:36You mentioned that you don't have those complex search
- 15:39queries or people don't understand that they can ask all
- 15:41of those things of it. So you almost have to do that on
- 15:46your side. We have a a very substantial
- 15:48quantities of users still ask for simple things, right?
- 15:51So we can we do analysis of our data all the time.
- 15:54So yes, this is correct. Like if the users still are not
- 15:58able to understand the full capability of of what, what Ali
- 16:01can provide because this they are used to a different cafes.
- 16:06So most of the users for example, where they're asking
- 16:09for a piece, they just just say pizza.
- 16:11What do we do in the background? We take the pizza.
- 16:14We understand your weights of different types of parameters.
- 16:19We get to your profile, we get to history.
- 16:22We understand how, how, how are you are positioned in the
- 16:27relationship between restaurants, items and personas.
- 16:30It will say, well, this guy is price sensitive.
- 16:34This guy doesn't like something that is far from your home, but
- 16:38he doesn't like this type of pizza.
- 16:41And these are the possibilities for you.
- 16:43And then when the user choose something, we learn from that to
- 16:47say, well, this is this is what the user asked for.
- 16:52Whether like like it or not, if we made a mistake, we will
- 16:55correct and we refix it until we get the perfect solution for
- 16:59you. And you know one thing that is
- 17:00it's kind of funny. The first PR lunch we did with
- 17:05IO, there's like a query that you can type tell me, tell about
- 17:11me and I love you answer who's you inside Eiffel based on your
- 17:17preference and so on. So it's kind of creepy when you
- 17:20do this on WhatsApp because you don't need to do anything.
- 17:23You just add the number and say, tell me about me.
- 17:26We got this number. We have the the whole structure
- 17:28authenticate. We know who is you and by the
- 17:30LCM profile, we answer this and people got more.
- 17:35I mean like war moment, you know, super ended like excited
- 17:42when they saw their profile more than the recommendation itself
- 17:46of this thing. I really know who I am.
- 17:49It knows my dirty secrets that I.
- 17:50Ordered something like. Chocolate at 12 at night when
- 17:53I'm really hungry. Yeah, Yeah.
- 17:54Do you feel like the consumer behavior is going to change?
- 17:59Like, are you making a bet on the fact that in a year and two
- 18:03years after we've been experiencing chat bots across
- 18:07all of our app usage, we're going to start asking more of
- 18:11it? Because I noticed with myself
- 18:13that I'm constantly trying to push the limits of what I can
- 18:18get out of my chat experience. So do you think that folks are
- 18:23now going to start saying, I want a pizza, but I want it
- 18:26delivered in the next 30 minutes?
- 18:28I want to make sure that it's a, you know, Neapolitan pizza and
- 18:33that search filter or that like deep query understanding is
- 18:39going to be put on to the user or you feel you also are like we
- 18:44always are going to have that work of having to figure it out
- 18:48to make it quick. You know, that's the $1 billion
- 18:51question. I guess like I, I actually
- 18:56doesn't know if the the customer behavior is going to shape in
- 19:00that way. I bet some part of it, yes, but
- 19:04some part we would just, you know, be on a Friday night in
- 19:08your home and start scrolling the app and doesn't know what to
- 19:12eat. They do this in a bunch of
- 19:14platforms. Netflix I Food.
- 19:17Totally TikTok. There's too many options, you
- 19:19know, So I know it's about facilitating this in the end,
- 19:24like I don't know what to eat. That's OK, just open this and
- 19:28type anything or just say I don't know what to eat.
- 19:31And we also something you're going to find something out, you
- 19:33know. Well, you're the perfect person
- 19:35to talk to about this. I asked Nishi.
- 19:38I was so excited because when he was working on, I can't remember
- 19:43what he was like, maybe ILO. I was like, Nishi, dude, you
- 19:46know, what I would love is a Tinder food experience.
- 19:52Like if I could just swipe right or swipe left for food.
- 19:56You give me a picture and I say yes, no.
- 19:59And then at the end I get to say like, all right, I've swiped yes
- 20:04on all this stuff. Which one do I actually want to
- 20:07add to my cart? And you're giving me all kinds
- 20:09of options. Maybe there's Thai food, there's
- 20:11sushi, there's this or that. And I'm there doing.
- 20:14It we actually build this, you know.
- 20:16And did it work? Did it?
- 20:17Yeah, it was a complete failure. You know we are getting like
- 20:20very promising results with this.
- 20:23Like I cannot disclosure because we are testing like very small
- 20:29right now, but it's very cool because we're combining the
- 20:32recommendation and the interface, the graphic
- 20:36interface, the both in experience.
- 20:40And you know when you say recommend me something to lunch,
- 20:44it's very open. You can do like a bunch of
- 20:47things, right? And people will start like
- 20:50swiping. And in the end, there's like a
- 20:54kind of a battle, like a price. You can see the price range.
- 21:01You can see like how long to you?
- 21:03You can test, Yeah, how long it's going to take.
- 21:06And in the end, you selected the one, the the favorite one, and
- 21:10you can go to to check out. Yeah.
- 21:13And when you think about that, let's go back to the to this
- 21:16hypothetical Japanese guy who always eat Japanese food, right?
- 21:21The guy's not Japanese. They only use Japanese food.
- 21:23For example, the teenager mode experience.
- 21:26Let's call that act, right? I can have the benefit of
- 21:30showing some things that are different than Japanese food.
- 21:33And secondly, if the user like it or not.
- 21:36So imagine the the, the, the richness of information that we
- 21:39have. So we can like break this
- 21:40barrier of the user always order Japanese food.
- 21:44So now we know that there are other types of food that the
- 21:47user might like. So we also enrich and learn from
- 21:50this experience to give better recommendations in the next
- 21:53time. Yeah.
- 21:54I also want to talk for a minute about this idea of latency that
- 21:57you were mentioning yesterday, because I think it's fascinating
- 22:01how there's almost like a Goldilocks zone now when we work
- 22:06with LLMS that if it's too fast, we think that we didn't get the
- 22:12best LLM and so we don't trust the response, correct.
- 22:17But if it's too slow, you get bored or you just think like,
- 22:21oh, this, it got stuck in the loop and maybe it can't actually
- 22:26do it depending on the task, I guess because now we let Ralph
- 22:30do things for weeks. Yeah.
- 22:32You see, The thing is that since AI is very general today and
- 22:38people are using that in their everyday life, it's the same
- 22:42thing as if you were talking to someone and you you say a
- 22:46question and the person immediately react to your
- 22:50question. So if you do a complex question,
- 22:52for example, what disease I have, for example, just say,
- 22:56well, we have a flu. I will look at you and say,
- 22:59well, are you really sure about that?
- 23:01You didn't hear what I am when you don't hear my, my, my, my
- 23:05symptoms and so on, right. On the other hand, if I say,
- 23:08well, what type type of disease do I have?
- 23:11And you keep looking at me and say, let me think about that,
- 23:16Give me a week. And I say, well, does this guy
- 23:18really know what is about? Right?
- 23:21So that's, that's the same analogy as AI, right?
- 23:23So if you are really, really incredibly fast, you might, I
- 23:29think the general perception is that you did not think enough to
- 23:33bring me the answer, right? But if you you're, if you're
- 23:36stuck on that on thinking thing, thinking and thinking and the,
- 23:40the question is not that complex, you think, well, I
- 23:44cannot trust you because you might bring me some bad, bad
- 23:47results, right? Of course the latest is latest
- 23:50thing is latest is is is the things that who works with AI
- 23:56like sleeps and wake ups think well, I should improve my
- 23:59latest, I should improve my latest because the user.
- 24:03Every engineer will drop exactly.
- 24:05Let's get faster. But there's a boundary, right?
- 24:07So the there is a study from Computer Supportive Comparative
- 24:14work. It's something like that, that
- 24:16it was in 2022, that was on the first survey that said that,
- 24:21well, what is the perception of the user?
- 24:23So from kind of 0 to something like 4, it's like a little bit
- 24:28robotic. From 4 to 16 is something that I
- 24:32can accept because seconds, 4 seconds, yeah.
- 24:36Well, 4 seconds is OK. Depending on that depends on
- 24:39your question, right? To say what is my name?
- 24:41And if you take 8 seconds to reply to your name, say, well,
- 24:46that's not a good AI. But if you we are talking about
- 24:49complex questions, if it takes a little bit time, like 8 seconds,
- 24:54it's, it's very acceptable, right?
- 24:56Of course, as I said, there is the latency and there is a
- 24:59perception of latency. So when you look at your any
- 25:03type of generalities AI platform, right?
- 25:08So we have the streaming part where it like this is being
- 25:11constructed. So you that's that's not that
- 25:15takes more, but you are going to see the the results being coming
- 25:18on your screen. If there are some tools that
- 25:23even the AIS did do that already.
- 25:26So when you are looking for something that is something
- 25:29well, showing that, well, I'm looking that for you.
- 25:32I'm collecting information, I'm collecting the data.
- 25:34So the problem is if you do not show anything to the user, like
- 25:38even like an icon, the user see, well, that stuck.
- 25:42That was a bug. There was a problem on that.
- 25:44But if you show something that's it's true going on, the
- 25:48perception will change completely, right?
- 25:50And also that depends on the channel that you were working,
- 25:53working with. For example, WhatsApp, right?
- 25:56WhatsApp used to be a very asynchronous channel.
- 25:58Well, I just type someone and then I just Scroll down and they
- 26:01just do something. Oh, I got a message, I'm going
- 26:04to reply. So if you were working on
- 26:06WhatsApp, you can take a little bit more because you were
- 26:09expecting this to be be more like a synchronous.
- 26:12However, if you were on a voice mode, for example, where you are
- 26:16calling in, you're calling an AI that should be very fast.
- 26:19But the challenge is how can you be very fast but the with the
- 26:26same intelligence as if you were working on WhatsApp?
- 26:29Yeah, you have to construct those systems differently,
- 26:32correct. The the thing that you talk
- 26:35about with perceived latency is so true.
- 26:39I actually have two data points on that.
- 26:41One is back in 2022, we had a product manager from you.com on
- 26:48the podcast and he was saying that for them, they saw user
- 26:53engagement or they stuck around much more if you would ask the
- 26:58user a trivia question while the site was loading.
- 27:03And becauseyou.com I, I never actually used it, but I think it
- 27:07was kind of like perplexitysorryyou.com for that
- 27:12one. But the whole idea was that it's
- 27:16going to take a while for us to populate this page while we're
- 27:20doing that so that you just don't see a scrolling wheel and
- 27:23then you get bored after 2 seconds.
- 27:25If we ask you some trivia questions, or we ask you, or we
- 27:30write a poem for you about your query, then you have something
- 27:33to do while you're waiting and it distracts you.
- 27:38Yeah. And that's so true that like a
- 27:41lot of AI squads, they are divided in two teams,
- 27:45intelligence and and experience, but they work within the same
- 27:50goal, for example, user retention or, or they're taken
- 27:53and etcetera. So when you're saying like about
- 27:56user retention, then you will say, OK, I can get to 4 or 5
- 28:01seconds of latency and the experience is quite to say, OK,
- 28:04how can I retain people while they are waiting and they will
- 28:10create an experience for doing so.
- 28:12For example, on WhatsApp, I can say, hey, thanks for coming
- 28:15back, I'll know that you like etcetera, etcetera.
- 28:19I'm thinking about it just one second, I'll answer it.
- 28:22Or for example, in a graphic interface within the app, I can
- 28:25do this with the load bar like going very fast and people say,
- 28:30well, that's fast and then take a little bit more time while you
- 28:33like an image of wow, I always cooking something, you know, and
- 28:38then the food appears so. Yeah, For me, I really like
- 28:41that, the experience side, because you got to get creative
- 28:45and you got to think about how can I retain folks?
- 28:48What can I serve them to keep them engaged?
- 28:51That's very tricky because you know, you can think about a
- 28:55bunch of things like, for example, voice tone, like an
- 29:00agent voice tone. Voice is a whole different
- 29:02beast. It can be like adapted to
- 29:05different scenarios, different, you know, kind of needs, kind of
- 29:10perceptions. Yeah, you almost have to have
- 29:13two different systems because what you were saying with the
- 29:16latency requirements and the experience of a voice agent
- 29:21versus the GUI or versus WhatsApp, you can serve them in
- 29:28the same way. For device, you cannot take too
- 29:32much to answer for something, right?
- 29:34So you must find the boundary between what can I leave away?
- 29:41What can I, what can I say? What can I simplify in terms of
- 29:48my whole intelligence to make sure that the user will have a
- 29:52very good experience, but not the perfect one, right?
- 29:55But still the the experience that the user will like, right?
- 29:59You see the when you look about the AI, I mean, think about the
- 30:03AI, right? You have your idea, you build
- 30:05your agent, but when you try to productize it, so you have much
- 30:09more than the agent. You have the back end that you
- 30:13you consume your data, you have the front end that you show your
- 30:16data, you have the all the interfaces, you have the whole
- 30:20infrastructure, right. So one of the things that if I'm
- 30:24serving in an app, I don't require that too much data
- 30:27processing to send it like to the to the upper layers.
- 30:31Then if I do in a voice for example, right, I can simply
- 30:34say, well this is the best item, this is the description of the
- 30:38information, talk about it right?
- 30:41But if I want to render something in the front end
- 30:43layer, for example, I need to get the data to retrieve, to put
- 30:47it on the format that someone will consume that this is one of
- 30:50the stretches between those channels, right?
- 30:53On the other hand, if I I need to calibrate between, well, be
- 30:57very meticulous about the best recommendations for you.
- 31:01Take more time than you need in the, for example, in the
- 31:04WhatsApp. But when you look at the voice,
- 31:06you have to flexibilize the other thing, right?
- 31:08So instead of giving like the best real burger that has all
- 31:12the ingredients that you need that takes 5 seconds, I can
- 31:15flexibilize and say, well, this is the still the burger that the
- 31:18user like that they have these characteristics.
- 31:21But there is only one item. Just recommend that because of
- 31:25for a voice, for example, that's the same analogy as the text,
- 31:28right? But I'm going to talk about that
- 31:30eventually. But for a voice, I say, well, I
- 31:33want a burger. What do you expect?
- 31:35Well, I found a good burger for you.
- 31:37It has its characteristics. But if I read the entire
- 31:40description of the burger, you say, wow, this is really boring
- 31:43and don't like it. So for the voice, it's a
- 31:46challenge because you have to be assertive, of course, with not
- 31:49the the amount of the tails because of the latency.
- 31:52But also you need to have this is a good burger for you because
- 31:55it has a good price and it's something that you like would
- 31:58like to try it and you say yes. And then you go over the floor,
- 32:01right? But.
- 32:03Find that fascinating, especially with voice because
- 32:05you only have one channel and within interface you have many
- 32:10different data points that can OU.
- 32:11But like what you're saying with voice, you only have one channel
- 32:15to be able to add the most important things.
- 32:19Right there, yeah. And what happens if you give you
- 32:23on your voice experience the six product 6 items that you
- 32:26describe that mean it will be your hearing for 30 seconds if
- 32:30you won't like it. So you need to to find the
- 32:32calibrate that. Well, this is something that
- 32:36we'll talk about after you receive the results that will
- 32:39attract the user to buy something, right?
- 32:42This as if what was a concierge in that case, but for the text,
- 32:46for example. And that depends on what the
- 32:48user expects. So I mean the user wants
- 32:50convenience. The user wants to see things
- 32:52that are really fast, right? O if you buy, if you, if you
- 32:57just build like a whole text interface just to return text
- 33:01and the user can read this whole poem, the user won't do that.
- 33:05That's why experience is important.
- 33:07That's why you have to get those results and have to show them on
- 33:11a very visual way that the user can understand.
- 33:14They can proceed with the the the choice, right?
- 33:17But as I said, that depends on the channel.
- 33:20Yeah. Does that make sense?
- 33:22Yeah, that you guys probably saw I yesterday when I was showing
- 33:26the playground and there's like a way to style the calendar card
- 33:31that would come up in my chat that was inspired from some of
- 33:34the work that you you all did with the carousels.
- 33:37And I think there's a whole world out there of rendering
- 33:45different components. And now it came out, you
- 33:48probably saw two like MCP apps or I think Claude has apps now.
- 33:54Open AI has been doing it for a while, but just bringing a
- 33:57different experience to chat. So it's not always text like
- 34:01you're saying, because there's so many things that you can't
- 34:04really get across with only text.
- 34:07Yeah, it's a combination between image, text and, you know, kind
- 34:14of explain the reasoning, but in in a way that it shows to the
- 34:21user why you are doing but not talking too much at the same
- 34:26time, you know, saying, OK, that's what you want image and
- 34:30say that's why this is good for you, you know.
- 34:34Yeah, and you, you have to pique someone's interest and then you
- 34:36can go deeper, like you're saying.
- 34:38You just got to, especially if it was the phone, you got to
- 34:41just get on the call, tell them, OK, I got a burger 10 minutes
- 34:44away. I got another burger.
- 34:46This one you haven't tried. And then there's a whatever,
- 34:50this different kind of option over here.
- 34:54Any of these sound interesting. And then you let the person go
- 34:57deeper, because if you're trying to list off everything from the
- 35:00beginning, it would be a disaster.
- 35:02Correct. Yeah, as I said, that depends on
- 35:05the channel, right, on The Voice tone.
- 35:07For example, if you are talking to to your AI agents, you can
- 35:11have the benefit of asking some questions first.
- 35:14So I would like a burger. Which type of burger would you
- 35:16like? A chicken or a or a or a, a beef
- 35:20burger, right. Vegetarian.
- 35:21So on. Well, I want the vegetarian.
- 35:22OK, I'm going to find some more options for you.
- 35:25If you do that on the text, like 3-4 message, probably the user
- 35:30won't like it. Is that that's the same?
- 35:31That's the same idea, same logic, but the channel is
- 35:35totally different. That's why on Nile, for example,
- 35:38we have this this balance between asking things before
- 35:44refining, showing the results, or if I know enough debating on
- 35:48your intention, I can already show you this.
- 35:51Yeah, that goes back to my question.
- 35:53Like in my head, I see it as different systems completely.
- 35:56You have the app experience, you have the concierge, maybe it's
- 36:02via WhatsApp and then you have the phone.
- 36:04And are you not building 3 different kind of pillars?
- 36:11I wouldn't say that because the way as we as ILO structured
- 36:17Ilo's ready to. It's a motor channel solution,
- 36:22so it's not based on only. If I want to be more verbose or
- 36:28less verbose, everything, every aspect of the ILO can be
- 36:31configured as a remote config, for example, and it can be
- 36:34experimented. So think about that flow.
- 36:37When I'm building any type of system, I try to make sure that
- 36:41I do not do anything that is hard coded and I can easily
- 36:46flexibilize the characteristics, for example, of the of what my
- 36:51agent does, what the number of the items, what is the, the
- 36:54weight that I'm doing between exploration versus versus
- 36:57exploitation, right? So I use a very robust solution
- 37:01that we can get a whole subset of parameters and say that,
- 37:05well, for this channel, I'm going to I should perform like
- 37:09this either in the AI, in the in the intelligence part for the
- 37:13other channel, it should perform like that.
- 37:15So we can calibrate that like remotely and even test them.
- 37:19So it's not the foundational pieces, that's a for the
- 37:23foundational pieces. Exactly right.
- 37:25I mean. But at some point it branches
- 37:26out. At some point you have to make
- 37:28it very channel specific. It's more on this experience
- 37:33part, as I said, the rendering in how I'm going to, how can I
- 37:38say how I'm going to show the results to the user.
- 37:42Yes, we have pillars that have been had to be processed
- 37:45differently. But when you think about
- 37:47intelligence, I can say that well, for the voice, you can't
- 37:52have to be very fast on your response and you have to not
- 37:57talk too much. But for the WhatsApp you might
- 38:00have more results have have have more text, yeah.
- 38:05So the intelligence like overall is almost the same, but the way
- 38:09we translate it into a user experience changed very much
- 38:15from channel to channel, you know?
- 38:17But with voice like you have to use different models, right?
- 38:20And so maybe you have the foundational pieces of the the
- 38:24LCM that you have, but then later you can't.
- 38:27Or maybe I'm mistaken, the LCM doesn't have a voice mode, does
- 38:32it? Well, that depends on the
- 38:34capability of your of your model that you're working on.
- 38:40So if you have a model that can understand your voice and can
- 38:45have the reasoning to do all the intelligence behind at the same
- 38:49time, then you don't need to do these two layers.
- 38:53You can do that at once, right? So we've tried, we tried to, to
- 38:59to that's, that's another, another hint, right?
- 39:02If you are working on a voice to voice message, please do not use
- 39:07one model to just to translate to your voice and then go to
- 39:10another model to interpret from voice to text.
- 39:13Try to do this directly because otherwise you would get problems
- 39:17with that. So the the, the the
- 39:20generalistics models, they had evoluted so they can get
- 39:23different types of inputs, text, images and voice as well.
- 39:28So and our strategy depending on the channel can be relied on
- 39:33using different types of models to do the intelligence part.
- 39:37You had some moments like learnings of what you could have
- 39:42done better and can you share like what are some things that
- 39:47knowing now you would do differently?
- 39:51The first thing on the technical perspective, always going back
- 39:54to latest is that it's always data at the end, right?
- 39:57So your agent itself, you think about your agent, it's more like
- 40:02a way of taking your corporate data and process it somehow and
- 40:07use some outputs of that. But then think about that most
- 40:12of the data that you are using. It's not up to the agent to
- 40:17generate. So most of the agents that are
- 40:21corporate that would be used, they are they consume datas from
- 40:25other types of sources, from other types of areas like
- 40:30finances and anything like, but they have their own data, They
- 40:35have their own structure. SO1 good thing that it's it's
- 40:38it's a hint is that before you build your agents, try to make
- 40:42sure that when you're going to escalate your agents, you are
- 40:45totally aligning with with your data the other data owners,
- 40:50right? Because this is going to be your
- 40:52problem, but this is going to be the others problems who serve
- 40:55that. So escalation when you do about
- 40:58talk about scalability, right? You probably you're going to
- 41:02take this data from the others, you're going to go from other
- 41:05APIs and they must be aware that you you need to do that.
- 41:10So it's more like it's something between the technology part, but
- 41:13like the agreement between other types of areas that you're going
- 41:17to consume. Before you really scale,
- 41:20understand your understand the way that the data models are.
- 41:26Not only the data models, but what is the relationship between
- 41:29your agent and other parts of the companies.
- 41:34So for example, if you're being an agent that you need to get
- 41:37the Finance Report from another area, but the Finance Report is
- 41:41not ready to receive your data, your your information or it
- 41:44takes too long. But there is a there is a
- 41:46bottleneck on that. What would be the problem?
- 41:49You are going to have a light high latency on your agent, but
- 41:54because of an external party and you cannot say I cannot blame
- 41:57them and say well, this is your fault because this is a this is
- 42:01a whole solution. So if I have a data from that
- 42:04the Finance Report that takes a long time to to retrieve.
- 42:09Just make sure that you have some asynchronous process, some
- 42:12some workflows that can run in the background before you get to
- 42:16the. So the agent works fine, but
- 42:18then when we need to pull in different sources of data or
- 42:22when we need to pull in different intelligence, that
- 42:24doesn't bottleneck the agent. Correct.
- 42:28And you have to have a good a very good high quality agreement
- 42:31on that. So I'm going to consume your
- 42:33data, I'm going to consume your API.
- 42:35I'm going to do this information.
- 42:37Are you ready to receive that? No.
- 42:39Then I'm going to try to let's try to see how can we do the
- 42:44scalability without affecting the overall ecosystem I.
- 42:48Like that? One thing that is we found very
- 42:51difficult is the way you measure how the customers are
- 42:59interacting with your product. I mean, for example, you can use
- 43:05Chanel as a score to find product market fit, but if you
- 43:09are targeting a specific kind of user in Brazil, if you ask how
- 43:14are you going to feel if this this product doesn't exist
- 43:17anymore? People do not understand this
- 43:19kind of question and they just answer wrong and you got the
- 43:23wrong feelings about your. Product because they answer
- 43:25like, oh, it's going to be devastating to my life.
- 43:28They think it's going to be too much or they think it's going to
- 43:31be less. So there's a bunch of people
- 43:34saying they like but they do not like and people saying that they
- 43:37do not like but they actually like.
- 43:40So the first thing you use as a judge then you need to deep dive
- 43:45the conversation itself because people say I hate this
- 43:49recommendation but why? How the agents actually work
- 43:54with you for you hate this or even worse people you know they
- 44:01have a problem with I don't know ifood because every company has
- 44:07a problem with a customer and they report this problem by
- 44:11using idle so it's. Like a customer support bot all
- 44:15of a sudden. Yeah, yeah.
- 44:17And that's tricky also because what are you going to do with
- 44:21this? If you answer nothing, probably
- 44:25the client will think you are dumb.
- 44:27Did you learn how to create that handoff really quick to customer
- 44:30support? Or we are, we are right now
- 44:32thinking about this. But you know, the main point is
- 44:39when you are building conversational agents, it's it's
- 44:47not easy as you might think to understand, like truly
- 44:53understand how your customer really feels about your product,
- 44:59how like for real, like what necessity you are, you know,
- 45:05truly addressing. You need to like interview, ask
- 45:11questions, see conversations like on the detail.
- 45:16Yeah, we found this in the hard way.
- 45:19And I could see from the customer's perspective why they
- 45:23would want to use ILO to report different problems that they're
- 45:31having with the app, because it's like the chat experience
- 45:34for me as a user, I think chats chat.
- 45:37And when I interact with different chat bots, usually I
- 45:41ask it anything and it will generally be able to handle what
- 45:48I'm asking it, right? I don't think of, oh, there's a
- 45:51customer support chat bot that I have to go to.
- 45:54There's a food chat bot that I have to go to.
- 45:56I don't verticalize it like that as a user, I just think, oh I'm
- 46:00going to chat and tell them that this is messed up.
- 46:01And, and that's like a great thing for us to think about,
- 46:06which is for the user, it's like one thing I thought, right, he
- 46:11doesn't care if he's talking to a agent or any names.
- 46:15All right. So in the end, in a agent to
- 46:20agent world that everybody's talking about, it's going to be
- 46:23like, OK, I'm ILO, I'm here to take an order if you want.
- 46:27If you have a customer problem, talk with my other friend here.
- 46:31That's going to help you. All right, so I'm going to
- 46:35introduce to a bunch of friends that is a bunch of agents that's
- 46:38going to solve a bunch of problems.
- 46:40Or that's one option. Are you going to orchestrate
- 46:43everything? Yeah, that's what I was
- 46:44thinking. In one experience, one voice
- 46:48tone, one kind of messaging and say tell me whatever you want
- 46:53also to there's both options. I mean, I don't know which one's
- 46:58better. Maybe you can, you know, have
- 47:01like a friendly approach saying, OK, let me introduce you to this
- 47:05agent that's that can help you or you can dress address
- 47:11everything like. ILO does it all but behind the
- 47:14scenes and it's just the gateway to whatever you need for I food
- 47:18isn't how I would feel like it it would play out.
- 47:22But also it doesn't really matter if it's just agents that
- 47:26are doing it. If I have my agent that's doing
- 47:28my bidding, I don't really care how they get it done as long as
- 47:32it gets done. Exactly like the customer.
- 47:34He really cares like. No.
- 47:38To you know, he, he cares enough for you to standardize
- 47:42everything or just connect really quick and just solve the
- 47:45problem, you know? Yeah, right now we're in this
- 47:47period where they do care because it is me as a human
- 47:52using my time to interact with it.
- 47:55But later on, if I get an agent that can do it for me, then it's
- 47:59a different story. Yeah.
- 48:00Yeah.