AI assistants should tackle cost of living, not vacations, argues product veteran Jim Prosser
sebpaquet · x · 2026-10-09
Jim Prosser argues that if AI labs want personal assistants to reach mass adoption, they should stop marketing vacations, reservations, and party planning — problems people don't actually struggle with — and focus on the core issue facing Americans: the cost of living. He suggests agents could offer substantial help there and promises a thread of concrete ideas.
Seb Paquet endorses the framing, adding a key caveat: AI assistants should do this proactively, generating hypotheses on their own, and in a privacy-respecting way.
The exchange points to a product-direction debate: the path to ubiquitous personal agents may lie in everyday financial relief rather than lifestyle convenience.
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