Building Honest Software Aligned with Users’ Interests: Imbue’s Kanjun Qiu in Conversation

Most of the software we use belongs to companies whose incentives don’t fully align with ours. Imbue CEO Kanjun Qiu thinks AI agents could make that problem much bigger as software becomes more capable and gains access to more of our personal context. In this interview from O’Reilly Foo Camp, she argues for “honest software”: tools that serve users, let them retain their data, and avoid walled gardens and attention-driven business models, and considers whether AI models could eventually function more like commodities, public goods, or utilities. Imbue is already putting that idea into practice with Minds, its open source AI work surface. Qiu explains how she’s using Minds to build personalized tools for her email, tasks, and Slack, creating what she describes as a user-owned “second brain.” Follow O'Reilly on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/oreilly/ Facebook: http://facebook.com/OReilly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oreillymedia BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/oreilly.bsky.social TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@oreillymedia