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Brian Chesky interview: AI agents need their own operating system
Developing
In Short: In an interview, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky talks about the company's approach to AI and the need for a dedicated operating system for AI agents.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky discussed the company's plans for integrating AI agents into its platform during a recent interview with TechCrunch.
Chesky emphasized that chatbots alone are insufficient for travel discovery and that AI agents will require robust software infrastructure.
Chesky outlined a vision where the Airbnb app could evolve into a macro agent, with various specialized agents handling different service areas.
He also mentioned the importance of interoperability, suggesting that the Airbnb app's agents could interact with agents from other apps through a standard like MCP.
Chesky highlighted the need for a full operating system software developer kit to support AI agents, noting that no one is currently developing such a system.
What's still developing
- Co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky has said in the past that a chatbot-only interface is not fit for travel discovery.
- With more AI on the way to the Airbnb app, I caught up with Chesky over Zoom to talk about how the company is approaching it, where interfaces are headed, why consumer AI still isn’t working, and what role voice will play.
- I asked Chesky how Airbnb is preparing for consumer AI agents, which are tools like Instinct and Muse that carry out tasks on a person’s behalf.
- Chesky thinks that there were concerns around AI tools cutting companies like Airbnb out of the customer relationship, but he said that chatbots have proven to be good at lead generation.
- He explained there might be some interactions within the platform and some with agents of other apps.
- “I think of the Airbnb app as one day becoming an agent, you know, where basically the explore tab has an agent, our customer service has an agent, we’re developing another agent in another service area. Probably eventually there’s going to be a macro Airbnb agent. And that will probably be interoperable with MCP [a standard that lets AI agents connect with other software] to other agents,” Chesky noted.