Jaime Siminoff: But when you put AI into it, now, suddenly, you have that human element that AI gives you. I think, with our products in the neighborhoods and, again, you have to be a little specific for this, I see a path where we can really start to get crime in the neighborhoods closer to zero. And I even said, there are some crimes that you definitely cannot stop.
Nilay Patel: Mechanically, tell people what you mean. You place enough Ring products in a neighborhood, and then what does the AI do with them that helps you get closer to the mission of reducing crime to zero?
So, the mental model, or how I see it, is that AI allows us to… If you had a neighborhood where you had unlimited resources, every house had security guards and those security guards were people who worked in the same house for 10 years or 20 years, and I mean that from a knowledge perspective. So, the knowledge he had about that house was immense; They knew everything about you and that residence and your family, how you lived, who came in and out.
And then, if that neighborhood had an HOA, call it private security, and those private security were also around and knew everything, what would happen? When a dog is lost, you would say, “Oh my God, my dog is lost.” Well, they will call each other and one of them will find the dog very quickly. So, how do we change this and bring it into the digital world-
Can I ask you a question specifically about that neighborhood?
Sure.
Do you ever stop and think that neighborhood might suck? Just the idea is that every house on my street will have omniscient private security guards, and I will have an HOA, and that HOA will have a private security force.
You could easily characterize it as a dystopia. Everyone is so scared that we have private police on every corner, and I’m paying HOA fees, which is a nightmare in itself.
Therefore, I will assume that you live in a safe neighborhood.
I hope so, yes.
No, today, I’ll go… If you want, I’ll take you to a place where people live and when they come home from school, they lock their doors and stay in their house, and they can’t go out and –
But I’m just saying that’s the model of “everyone is so scared they have private police.”
I think the model is that it’s not profitable to have crime in the neighborhood, and I think you want people to move to other jobs. I don’t think crime is a good thing and so I think… But listen, it’s certainly an argument, I believe that… I think safer neighborhoods allow kids to grow up in a better environment and I think it enables them to focus on the things that matter and so that’s what we’re going for.
I just wanted to challenge the premise.
I think it’s a fair challenge.
The model is that there are police everywhere. That level of privacy.
Yes, this is not the police. I think it’s more that you will have the ability to understand what is going on. It’s not… but yes, I think, listen, I think that’s a fair statement. I think I want to live in a safe place.
There’s a lot of intelligence in your neighborhood, and maybe it’s private security, maybe it’s not. What does AI do? Does it just make the camera smarter? This lets you more intelligently assess what the cameras are seeing?
Right now, we just say motion detection, motion detection, motion detection. It’s funny, when I started Ring…the book was funny because I had to go back and actually read the whole story of how this thing was made, and how motion detection was an amazing invention. You’re at the airport, and there’s a bust at your front door, and you look at it like, “Wow, this is crazy.”
Now, with AI, we don’t have to tell you about motion detection; We should tell you what’s in it, when you should look at it, when it matters, and we shouldn’t bother you all the time. That’s what I mean by this idea of these security guards in your house or in your neighborhood. There should be intelligence in your neighborhood that can tell you when you should try to be a part of something, but doesn’t always tell you. So, it’s not just like “car, car, dog, person, person.” It’s like, “Hey, look at this. You want to pay attention to this right now.”
