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

This episode is sponsored by Notion. I’ve been using Notion to manage my professional and personal life for almost 10 years. As a company, they pay attention to the craft and ideas underlying the software they build, and that comes through in the experience of using Notion every day. If you’re a startup, get up to 6 months of Notion Plus with unlimited AI—worth up to $6,000—for free by going to https://ntn.so/every, selecting Every in the drop-down partner list, and using the code EveryXNotion. 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. If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share!  Want even more? Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free. To hear more from Dan Shipper: Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe  Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Timestamps: Introduction: 00:01:57 How AI changes the way we build the foundational elements of software: 00:02:28 Simon’s take on the impact of AI on data structures: 00:10:07 The way Simon would rebuild Notion with AI: 00:13:05 How to design good interfaces for LLMs: 00:23:39 An inside look at how Notion ships reliable AI systems at scale: 00:28:22 The tools Simon uses to code: 00:35:41 Simon’s thoughts on scaling inference compute as a new paradigm: 00:38:16 How the growing capabilities of AI will redefine human roles: 00:49:10 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/