Why Ask Luca?

It all started about a month ago when I was sitting around the dining room table with my mother who was finishing up a couple of tasks from work. Having already pitched this idea to my co-founder George and looking for any sort of validation I could find, I decided to hit her with a question - “Mom, do you use any sort of AI in your day-to-day at work?”. To which she replied, “No, how would it help me at work?” Now don’t get me wrong, my mother doesn’t live under a rock (far from it actually), and I had even seen her tinkering around with Chat GPT when working on a recipe the night before, but like so many others, she was unaware of what AI was truly capable of.

Now this was no fault of her own, but instead an example of a failed industry attempt (or lack thereof) to convert the common man into adoptive users of AI tools. Companies have done a great job at designing products that can increase productivity, create new workflows, and even complete tasks in the background, but in a landscape where shipping fast and getting the product into the hands of those who will use it are some of the main keys to success, the barrier to entry becomes increasingly higher. With less documentation available and a systemic change to the way people are expected to learn new skills on the go in the workplace, we are at a point where the gap between the technical and non-technical user is widening at an exponential pace.

Do I think there is a perfect solution to this problem? No, I don’t. But I think we have developed a product that can begin to bridge the gap. Like so many things in today’s world, those with the correct resources will thrive, and those without will fall behind. We believe this shouldn’t be the case with AI.

Our main goal when starting Luca was to build with the non-technical user in mind. Whether it be my mom at her property management job, a National Grid employee out in the field, or the seventy-seven-year-old lady still working part time for a creative products manufacturing company (you get em Noni!), we made it easy for the user to understand what AI is and how it can help them in their exact role.

Our learning hub is made up of modules and exercises that are suggested to the user based on personal goals in the workplace and company mission. Through teaching users the correct ways to prompt, add context, and develop unique personas, we see a large increase in the productivity and contributions stemming from AI output. Through built-in data aggregation systems we are able to provide our users with the prompts we think will benefit them most in the workplace before they know they need them, solving one of the main issues people have in not knowing what to ask, and what AI is capable of assisting with.

I am confident that our initial offerings will help guide many people towards a new way of doing work. One that is more efficient, deeper, and even more fun. As we continue to build this product our main goal is getting it to a point where using AI feels natural in most situations, and the system grows with the user. Showing them new lessons when stuck on a task, suggesting prompts to overcome difficult obstacles, and even building workflows in the background that can solve problems before they have to face them.

All of these things are great, but at the enterprise level it is important not to let the latest and greatest advancements overshadow the threats to organizational safety that come along with them. We have made sure to keep this in mind while building a product that will interact with unique company data. Through the implementation of strict guardrails, lessons that teach what is good context and what is not, and the tools to curate good prompts, we mitigate a lot of these risks before a user even interacts with our system. We believe these are lessons that must be learned by doing, and not through a one-time Coursera course.

It has been a pleasure building something meaningful for an audience that is often overlooked. And over the next couple of months as we deploy the product into organizations, I remain hopeful that we can get more hands on the AI tools that are capable of changing the way we work. Please feel free to follow along with us on this journey, and feel free to send an email to George and I if you ever have any questions or concerns.

Cheers!

Drew