IrisGo, a startup backed by Andrew Ng, looks to become the AI desktop buddy you never knew you needed | TechCrunch

Last day to exhibit your breakthrough to 10,000+ tech leaders at Disrupt is on Oct 2. Book Exhibit Table Now. Disrupt doors open Oct. 13. Get your pass and bring someone with you at 50% off. REGISTER NOW. Industry insiders say the next big thing in AI is “proactive” systems: agents that can anticipate a user’s needs — and fulfill them — before the user even knows what those needs are. One startup that’s looking to make headway in this area is IrisGo. The company, which closed a $2.8 million seed round led by Andrew Ng’s AI Fund earlier this year, is building a desktop companion for PCs that can learn about a user’s daily workflows and then automate them with limited to no human prompting. IrisGo was co-founded by Jeffrey Lai, a former Apple engineer who helped to build the Chinese language version of Siri, the company’s automated assistant. (Somewhat slyly, Iris is Siri spelled backward.) The core idea is simple: Show the program how to do something once, and it remembers that process for future automated use — no repeat instructions needed. During a conversation with TechCrunch, Lai ran a demo, showing how his platform could learn to place a coffee order online. As I watched, Iris