How Notion Cofounder Simon Last Builds AI for Millions of Users - Ep. 37 with Simon Last

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Notion cofounder Simon Last told me everything he’s learned from integrating AI into a platform that has over 100 million users.

Simon likes to keep a low profile, even though he’s the driving force behind Notion AI, one of the most widely scaled AI applications in the world.

In his first-ever podcast interview, we get into:

• What he would build if he started Notion from scratch today with AI
• How to get high quality and reliable results from AI at scale
• The future of human creativity in a world with machines that think

This is a must-watch for anyone interested in building reliable AI products at scale.

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Timestamps:

1. Introduction: 00:01:57
2. How AI changes the way we build the foundational elements of software: 00:02:28
3. Simon’s take on the impact of AI on data structures: 00:10:07
4. The way Simon would rebuild Notion with AI: 00:13:05
5. How to design good interfaces for LLMs: 00:23:39
6. An inside look at how Notion ships reliable AI systems at scale: 00:28:22
7. The tools Simon uses to code: 00:35:41
8. Simon’s thoughts on scaling inference compute as a new paradigm: 00:38:16
9. How the growing capabilities of AI will redefine human roles: 00:49:10
10. Simon’s AGI timeline: 00:50:28

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:

• Simon Last: @simonlast
• Notion AI: https://www.notion.so/product/ai
• The AI code editor Simon uses: Cursor
• OpenAI’s definition of AGI that Simon ascribes to: https://openai.com/charter/