Like Glasses and Hearing Aids, but for Memory Itself, Just Rewind with A.I.

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Every now and again there comes around a company that could revolutionize how we augment ourselves with A.I. and Rewind.AI might fall in that category.

Mark Andreessen runs influential Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z. His bets whose successful hits have included Instagram, Oculus VR and GitHub. His first claim to fame was cofounding web browser firm Netscape, which AOL bought in 1998 for $4.2 billion in stock. a16z was of course an early Facebook backer and now are huge crypto investors. Mark Andreessen is more than a super angel investor now in the 2020s, he’s a Tycoon.

His track record is pretty good:

• Twitter
• Skype
• Coinbase
• Databricks
• Asana
• Slack
• You can see some of a16z’s portfolio?here.

What concerns me about Rewind is they could easily acquire a company like?Mojo who are working ?on contact lenses with AR and other capabilities, and truly record everything.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

What is Rewind?

Built by Dan Siroker, the co-founder and former chief executive of Optimizely, and Brett Bejcek , Rewind wants to help people with their memory. a16z invested in Optimizely you might recall.

Rewind is building a solution to this problem by locally (and privately) capturing what you see, hear, and say, and making it searchable—today, Rewind is launching a Mac desktop app.

Rewind wants to make all memory searchable.

A Search Engine for the Entire History of You

It doesn’t sound too nefarious as an app tracker for example, remote workers who want to be able to search stuff. The startup, launching this month, uses nifty tech to record how someone scrolls and chats through their day. It creates a searchable recording of what happened when, who said what during that Zoom meeting and every instance someone has ever brought up expense reporting hacks.

Just think of how much time such a search could save us at work making us more productive? You could always just find what you need for those moments when you are in a rush and need the right context and information fast.

“The content of discussions, debates and decisions are often lost forever as soon as a meeting is over,” Siroker said. “With Rewind, you never have to worry about losing this content again….you can go back to the exact moment in a meeting you are looking for by simply searching for a word that was said, a word that appeared on your screen.”

He has a good point. The is A.I. saving us time itself and enabling us to remember anything in the future of search and imagine all that useful data.

Make no mistake, Rewind.AI is an artificial intelligence company.?So move over Google, this is rather a “The Search Engine For Your Life”.?As we get older and retire this also might come in handy in different settings.

Siroker compares the app to a hearing aid

While the a16z seed round is just $10 million dollars the founder is known to them from his previous company. Elon Musk has often asked humanity to try to use A.I. to empower itself and augment itself, well this is just that.

In a world of A.I. for good, this is a tool to improve memory, just as we wear glasses for vision, or hearing aids for hearing, what about A.I. helping us with memory? Listen to the origin story and demo here:

Here is a very smart and proven founder. ?After leaving Optimizely in October 2020 , he began looking for different ways to augment human capability. According to LinkedIn, he started a foundation in 2018 to “fund and conduct scientific research in order to accelerate our path toward human mind emulation.”

It turns out this is a very pragmatic empowering product. ?Siroker said that the startup “uses APIs to determine the specific app that is in focus at any given time,” and then creates a timeline of that behavior. It also uses an API to allow deep linking to websites, so people can open in Chrome directly from search results.

Users don’t need to integrate with Gmail, Dropbox or Slack, but instead just can download and “rewind” to start capturing the apps.

He introduced it recently on a LinkedIn post in a Twitter thread: (What follows are in the founders own words:)

Rewind.AI in Action

Find anything you’ve seen, said, or heard

1. ???Local and Private By Design:?

We record anything you’ve seen, said, or heard and make it searchable. For your privacy, we?store all of the recordings locally on your Mac. Only you have access to them.?

2. ???Mind-Boggling Compression:?

Storing all the recordings locally means compression is very important. We compress raw recording data up to 3,750x times without major loss of quality. For example, 10.5GB of raw recording data becomes 2.8MB. That means that even with the smallest hard drive you can buy from Apple today, you can store years of recordings.

3. ???No Cloud Integration or IT Required:?

In order to enable you to?search for?anything you’ve seen, we use native macOS APIs and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to recognize & index all the words that appear on your screen.?This means you?don’t need to integrate?with cloud products like Gmail, Dropbox, or Slack. Rewind starts capturing these apps right away, with no IT required. Also, OCR enables you to copy & paste anything from your past.

4. ????Meetings:?

In order to enable you to?search?for anything you’ve said or heard, we use state-of-the-art Automated Speech Recognition (ASR). This is particularly useful for meetings, where the content of discussions, debates, and decisions are often lost forever as soon as a meeting is over. With Rewind, you never have to worry about losing this content again. Rewind can capture the content of meetings, including everything that is said and everything that is shared visually. All of the content is searchable. You can go back to the exact moment in a meeting you are looking for by simply searching for a word that was said or a word that appeared on your screen.?

5. Unleashes Apple Silicon:?

The key enabling technology that makes Rewind possible is?Apple Silicon. We utilize virtually every part of the System on a Chip (SoC) so that running Rewind doesn’t tax system resources (like CPU and memory) while it is recording.?It feels virtually imperceptible.

I’m incredibly proud of the product we’ve built, and I’m grateful to our?team?for bringing the product to life. Every member of our team is truly exceptional, and I am lucky to have the privilege of working with them. I want to especially thank my co-founder,?Brett Bejcek, who has been instrumental in making today a reality.

• Did you ever want to rewind time?
• Rewind claims that it compresses raw video recording data up to 3,750x times without a loss of quality.
• Rewind.AI is a new kind of Search, using ASR. (automatic speed recognition).

Their vision is to give you perfect memory, would that make you more productive?

As Search evolves it's going to integrate more personal aspects of A.I to augment how we experience work and life.

With aging populations imagine what Rewind.AI could become?

Of course Rewind.AI is totally private. The recordings are stored locally on individuals’ Mac computers. In theory, that means that the company doesn’t touch the data. Rewind says that only users have access to their data. They take trust very seriously of course.

You can visit their website here and tell us what you think. Is this a good idea? Does it amaze you?

Starting as a Search Engine on Mac O.S if this works, is just the beginning. They have clearly thought about how best to protect users as well. Siroker added that users can pause and delete recordings at any time, excluding specific apps like Signal or 1Password, or go Incognito mode, saying that “by default, we don’t record Chrome Incognito or Safari private browsing windows).

More important how will artificial intelligence elevate the next layer of search? As many younger users are using TikTok, YouTube or Google "+ Reddit" it's clear the world is ready for alternatives. But what if memory, naturally a weak point of people, was augmented with digital tools?

Storing a sensitive, all-encompassing repository of everything you’ve seen, said or heard on a machine is obviously going to happen (if not in 2023 then a bit later), as we evolve with data and A.I.

Is Rewind.AI the cinderella startup to make it happen?

Also morally, how will we censor ourselves in a future where Surveillance Capitalism is more mature? In the future people will be able to re-visit anytime they have ever lived and how could that inform the human experience of time, relationships and behavior? It's fascinating really.

In some ways with smart contact lenses, Rewind.AI could be a smart less invasive brain-computer-interface of sorts. That it's starting on Mac OS in work settings is the perfect pilot. a16z understand the company's radical potential and a $10 million seed round is a very humble and reasonable beginning.

Check out Rewind's profile on Product Hunt.

If you want to say something constructive about it you can do so on this Reddit thread.

Here's what others said about it on Hacker News.

For some jobs and industries, such a product would radically help people do more.

Why should we not augment ourselves with ASR to empower our memories to better access information when we need it?

So far, the company has raised $10 million at a $75 million valuation in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from First Round Capital and others.

The app is currently free, and the founder has said that Rewind “will never sell your data or do advertising.” It's an A.I. startup launching and it's pretty incredible.

Even for the remote work context I can see this as being useful:

Meetings too

Rewind can automatically record your meetings, making them easy to search.

It has just brilliant potential. Dan has been working on Rewind.AI for nearly 3 years already, according to his LinkedIn profile. You can encourage him on this post.

We have to be positive about A.I for good tools that could be as irreplaceable as glasses or hearing aids in the future. If people have a right to hear or a right to see, we probably have a right to remember as well - don't you agree?

Memory is such that it colors so much of our identity but is objectively very inaccurate over time.

For your eyes only

• Stored Locally
• User has full control
• You Decide which apps

This company will be as good as its trust and safety. Tell Rewind which apps not to record and exclude Chrome Incognito & Safari Private windows. Are you ready to unleash Apple Silicon? Rewind utilizes virtually every part of Apple Silicon System on a Chip (SoC).

Are you ready for the future? Then Rewind.AI.

Apply for early access.

A.I. is going to empower and augment nearly every aspect of civilization. Giving us new senses and new ways to experience and appreciate the journey.

Can and will A.I. give us super-powers? I'd like to think it can.

If you enjoy articles about A.I. at the intersection of breaking news join AiSupremacy?here . I cannot continue to write without community support. (follow the link below). For the price of a cup of coffee, Join 89 other paying subscribers.

https://aisupremacy.substack.com/subscribe

What you like to be able to search your working memory anytime?