**The Human Touch: New Startup “People” Takes on AI Coordination (Because Chatbots Just Ain’t Cutting It)**
You’ve probably noticed that AI chatbots have gotten pretty good at answering questions, summarizing documents, and even solving math equations. But when it comes to the messy, real-world task of collaborating with others? Forget about it. That’s where People, a new startup, comes in. Founded by a team of tech veterans from Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, and Google DeepMind, People is on a mission to create a “central nervous system” for the human-plus-AI economy.
So, what’s the problem with current AI? Well, it’s great at specific tasks, but when it comes to collaboration – getting people on the same page, assigning tasks, and keeping everyone aligned – it’s a total headache. That’s because AI models are focused on specific tasks, like answering questions or generating code, rather than understanding human social dynamics.
People’s pitch is to create a new model that’s all about social intelligence, not just data retrieval or code generation. They’re working on a new foundation model structure that can handle complex, real-world tasks like coordination, communication, and collaboration. And, as Andi Peng, one of the co-founders, puts it, “We’re ending the first paradigm of scaling, where question-answering models were trained to be very good at explicit verticals… Now we’re coming into what we consider to be the second wave of adoption, where the average user or consumer is trying to figure out what to do with all these things.”
So, what’s the product going to look like? The People team is still working on it, but they hint at something that could replace multiplayer or multi-user contexts like Slack or Google Docs. The team is designing the product alongside the model, so as the model improves, the interface and behaviors can evolve to make sense.
But, of course, there are risks ahead. People will need significant funding to train and scale their model, which means competing with the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon for compute resources. And they’re not just competing with other startups – they’re coming for the top players in the AI space, like OpenAI and Meta.
Despite the risks, People’s ambition is to rewrite the rulebook on how humans work with AI. They believe that a new model that can understand humans and AI tools is essential for the future of work. And, with a stellar team and a clear vision, they might just be the ones to make it happen.
So, what’s the bottom line? People’s mission is to create a new model that can help humans collaborate more effectively with each other and with AI tools. And, if they succeed, it could be a game-changer for the future of work.
