Notion CEO: RAG is the Future of Knowledge Management and AI Brings SaaS to a New Bundling
Notion is one of the companies with the most aggressive AI strategies in the productivity tools space. They have incorporated the GenAI experience directly into their products to provide a smarter user experience. In the interview, Ivan shares Notion's thinking on their AI practices, including how the team made the decision to fully commit to AI and why they believe the importance of RAG and workflow agents is underestimated by outsiders. He highlighted that the language model will speed up a new cycle of bundling in the SaaS industry.
AI presents an opportunity for Notion to further
Ivan Zhao stated that Notion aims to create a versatile tool that enables users to accomplish a wide range of tasks, and that AI offers a new approach to drive and combine these tools. Ivan discussed the impact of AI on knowledge management and highlighted the importance of RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) as a tool for knowledge management. He anticipates the development of smarter search and assistant systems, as well as the emergence of new areas similar to Work Agent.
The Birth of Notion AI
The Birth of Notion AI involved the Notion team's confident and dedicated decision-making and resource allocation towards AI technology. Ivan Zhao highlighted the team's belief in AI, particularly after witnessing the capabilities of GPT-4. The team invested significant effort in learning and experimenting with AI technology, integrating it with Notion's base building blocks. Zhao also stressed the importance of AI engineers and skilled model users. He observed that as technology advances, there is a need to balance inference quality, speed, and cost, and to combine AI with SaaS software.
RAG: the future of knowledge management
Ivan Zhao introduced Notion's AI Q&A feature, Notion Q&A, which aligns with the principles of the RAG system. This feature helps users to remember everything they enter in Notion. He explained how searching and retrieving was done before using RAG and the changes that RAG has brought about. Users no longer need to manually organize and manage information, but can instead search and retrieve the content they need directly. This feature allows individuals, teams, and companies to have perfect memorization capabilities and be much more productive. Furthermore, he noted that Notion is among the limited number of companies that provide RAG services on a large scale. However, they are still refining and tweaking this feature.
Furthermore, he discussed the potential benefits of integrating AI with schedule management, stating that this combination could enhance workflow efficiency and enable agents to assist users with knowledge-based tasks. He also mentioned the potential use of agents for communication and speculated that as language models continue to develop, people may rely less on direct communication. Finally, he answered Sarah Guo's question about information organization and management. He stated that with the development of embedding and RAG technologies, users may no longer need to structure and organize information manually. Instead, they can enter all information into the system in a free-flowing manner, and the system will automatically call and retrieve it as needed.
AI Enables SaaS to Enter a New Round of Bundling
Ivan Zhao discussed Notion's AI strategy and how the history of computer technology development has influenced it. He explained that the current phase is one of consolidation, where information and functionality are combined for more efficient processing. The current trend in software development follows a pattern seen in the past, where applications were fragmented in the PC era, followed by unbundling and fragmentation in the Web era, and now reintegration. Oracle's strategy of acquiring second-ranked products as an analogy to highlight the significance of information integration.
Ivan argued that Notion's design is not just about looks, but also about how systems work together. He compared it to the design of an operating system or programming language, emphasizing its centralized and comprehensive nature. He also highlighted the team's diverse abilities, both as designers and engineers, and how this diversity is critical to their success.
Overall, Ivan highlighted Notion's success as a design-driven company, not only in the product's appearance but also in the synergy of the system and the diverse capabilities of the team.
