Airbnb’s Brian Chesky plans to launch a new AI lab

Airbnb 首席执行官 Brian Chesky 计划成立一家新的人工智能实验室

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has had enough of merely being an artificial intelligence kingmaker. He now plans to back a new AI lab of his own. Airbnb 首席执行官 Brian Chesky 已经厌倦了仅仅充当人工智能领域的“造王者”。他现在计划支持并成立一家属于自己的 AI 实验室。

The news, broken by Bloomberg and confirmed to TechCrunch by a person familiar with the situation, marks Chesky as one of many Silicon Valley machers who are unsatisfied with the models coming out of the frontier labs. 这一消息由彭博社率先报道，并经一位知情人士向 TechCrunch 证实。这标志着 Chesky 成为硅谷众多对现有前沿实验室所产出的模型感到不满的重量级人物之一。

While Airbnb has adopted AI coding tools, Chesky said last year it hasn’t struck an LLM partnership because existing products weren’t quite ready. Still, Chesky has plenty of insight. He met Sam Altman in 2006 through Y Combinator, which incubated Airbnb, and stayed in touch. 尽管 Airbnb 已经采用了 AI 编程工具，但 Chesky 去年曾表示，公司尚未达成任何大语言模型（LLM）合作，因为现有的产品尚未完全成熟。不过，Chesky 拥有深刻的洞察力。他于 2006 年通过孵化了 Airbnb 的 Y Combinator 结识了 Sam Altman，并一直保持联系。

When OpenAI took off, he began meeting regularly with Altman to offer advice about managing a hypergrowth tech company. Chesky, who was reportedly considered a potential OpenAI board member, helped broker Altman’s return to power after its board of directors fired the CEO for lack of candor. Chesky advised Altman on public relations and rallied support for him among Silicon Valley bigwigs. 当 OpenAI 崛起时，他开始定期与 Altman 会面，就如何管理一家超高速增长的科技公司提供建议。据报道，Chesky 曾被视为 OpenAI 董事会的潜在人选，并在 OpenAI 董事会因“缺乏坦诚”解雇 Altman 后，协助促成了后者的回归。Chesky 为 Altman 提供了公关建议，并在硅谷大佬中为其争取支持。

Now, however, he appears to be entering competition with his mentee’s company. It’s not clear what the focus of Chesky’s new AI lab will be, although the Bloomberg article mentions user interaction and design, areas that he has emphasized at Airbnb. 然而，现在他似乎要与自己曾经指导过的公司展开竞争。目前尚不清楚 Chesky 新 AI 实验室的重点是什么，尽管彭博社的文章提到了用户交互和设计，这些都是他在 Airbnb 一直强调的领域。

That’s not unlike what Brett Adcock is doing at Hark, the AI lab he launched late last year to develop a novel user interface for an AI assistant, although the startup is also emphasizing hardware products. 这与 Brett Adcock 在 Hark 所做的事情颇为相似。Adcock 在去年底成立了 AI 实验室 Hark，旨在为 AI 助手开发新颖的用户界面，尽管该初创公司同时也非常重视硬件产品。

Chesky also won’t be going into “founder mode” at this operation; a person familiar with the situation says he will remain as Airbnb’s CEO and not lead the new lab himself. Whoever gets the job will have to contend not only with the other AI labs, but also with a founding chair (we presume) known as a micromanager. A representative for Airbnb and Chesky declined to comment. Chesky 也不会在这项业务中进入“创始人模式”；一位知情人士表示，他将继续担任 Airbnb 的首席执行官，不会亲自领导这个新实验室。无论谁最终担任该职位，不仅要应对其他 AI 实验室的竞争，还要面对一位（我们推测）以事必躬亲（micromanager）著称的创始主席。Airbnb 和 Chesky 的代表拒绝置评。