Podcasts

Episode 5- Decoding AQ with Ross Thornley Feat. Amanda Solosky - AI Digital Twins

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Intro

Hi, and welcome to Decoding AQ, helping you to learn the tools mindsets, and actions to thrive in an ever-changing world. 

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Ross  

Hi! Thanks everybody for joining, I have a really special guest with me today. It's somebody who I was blessed to be introduced actually through a mutual connection at a 360 through Bri. And it's Amanda from  Lifekind and I can't wait to share some of the insights of work that Amanda has been up to. So welcome.

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Amanda  

Thank you so much, Ross, I appreciate it.

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Ross  

I want to just start off really understanding a little bit of your background for our audience, you know, what led you to start your business. And when we first have had a conversation, I was quite interested in some of the pivots you've done, perhaps in the background of entertainment and gaming or where you are now. So perhaps just give us a little insight to how it all began.

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Amanda  

I started this company originally when I was just graduating from my master's degree in business. But really what kicked it off was I just had this absolute fascination and love for digital spaces, and entertainment and games. It really is just, in a sense, the crux of interactive storytelling to me, digital worlds and gaming itself. And so when you're in an environment like that, you kind of start to ask yourself, like, what could you create here, because the impossible is being created, right, the impossible is possible within this space.

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So that's really what kind of kick started the entire innocence mission of what we were trying to do was we asked ourselves, my co founder, Bill and I, what would be possible, if you could create a computer that could think like we do, as humans that could care? Like we do? What could you do together? How could you collaborate? How could you work together to do something impossible, to make that impossible possible. So that's really what kicked it off was really just the love for characters and story worlds that otherwise could never exist. And using artificial intelligence to make those things come to life.

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Ross  

And over, over that kind of decade, what was maybe something that's stuck in your mind of a great project or character you created or world that was imagined? Give us a little insight to.

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Amanda  

Yeah, absolutely. So over that period of time, so we focused on video games and entertainment for the first, I would say, seven to eight years in the company. It's still something that we do today, but not nearly as much as the focus business. And so yeah, over that period of time, I mean, much of what we did was we helped other developers and other studios actually bring their creations to life, which was, I think, probably one of the most fulfilling things. So we worked with over 100,000 Studios worldwide, everyone from large studios to two people in the garage working together on their first project.

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And so what was fascinating is, when we started actually applying our technology to our own content, we started creating our own digital worlds, and characters. And so right around 2014-2015, we created a story world based on World War Two, in German occupied France, very, very beginning of war. And it was based on the clandestine female spies of time. So we created a fictional character, her name was Elise, and she was very unique. Actually, she is the first character I would say, for kinds that employ a lot of our AI technology.

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So she could have a conversation with the human participant in game world, she could lead them through the game, she could understand what you were saying. And it was a very interactive, collaborative story world was supposed to be episodic storytelling. It was also in virtual reality at the time as well. So in a sense, we brought to life a character that was in a sense, an amalgamation of all of these wonderful historical women from that period of time to actually teach someone something about that, that war from that perspective, and to really kind of humanize artificial intelligence in that way.

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Ross  

That's interesting, because, you know, taking a historical event, rather than a complete fantasy, and that might, in one aspect, be able to cross this divide of what is science fiction, and what is game there's an into maybe more education, and that shift to take somebody that might explore solving a problem through a game, but actually learn things along the way. And in terms of that took you up to a point, you know, years ago, and you've changed focus a little bit now. And what is that new focus? And what perhaps are you most excited about the opportunities that you've built on from the past to what you're going to create next?

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Amanda  

Absolutely. So Elise was actually in a sense, the character that kicked us off on this exploration I would say, of applying our technologies to real life people. So before as we talked about, the company is very much focused on how can we use artificial intelligence to create fictional characters for fictional worlds and Elise was actually this blend, like you were just saying she wasn't completely fictional. She was based on historical events, she was based on real people that we were researching at the time. And what was also very unique about her is, we built that character by actually applying data that was recorded from a real actress.

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So she herself was actually almost like a version of a real person. What we actually found while creating Elise was she actually came out much more like Becky, who was our actress than the original character that we actually intended. And it's honestly, we didn't even expect that to happen. We kind of stumbled upon that fact, when people were interacting and talking to Elise in virtual reality, and the character was speaking back, they would take off their headset and the ends, and they would kind of sit there and they'd be like, Oh, my goodness, like, how was it? You know, how was the story and they're like, that was magnificent, but it made me want to speak to my grandmother, again, you know, or made me want to sit down and have a conversation with, you know, Socrates, or Churchill, or someone from history, or even someone from today.

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And so that's kind of where we started transitioning. And so we're like, you know what, this is really interesting. We didn't intend for this to happen. But this was a really unique insight that we actually found. So we're like, Okay, what if we actually start applying our same technology, to not only do just fictional people for real, or fictional worlds, but real people for more real world applications, so more education, more self development, more collaboration on different work, research, sharing of expertise, and otherwise.

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Ross  

Just out of curiosity, that experience was it mapped out in terms of a storyline that people could go on a journey through? And each journey was slightly different, but it was still designed by the storytellers? Or did it actually learn along the way and do surprising things that you haven't even programmed? You know, at that point? How sophisticated was that AI in that environment?

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Amanda  

That's a great question. So at that time, it wasn't a sense, almost more like a branching narrative. And so we weren't using chatbot technology at the time, nor did we today. But in a sense, it was what I would say almost like a adaptive storyline. So what the character does what our AI technology was capable of doing at the time, and we have a much more sophisticated system now is it was goal based, it was goal oriented. So the character herself almost was like, an improv actress. She understood that she had a certain character to play, she understood that maybe certain lines of dialogue needed to be said, if certain things occurred in the world, if certain things that actually triggered in the world.

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But it was also her job to adapt to the human participant. And some of the different questions, they would ask some of the different ways that they were making different actions. So she was truly almost like an improv actress, and even had more of what we would call an AI Director, that was actually controlling more of the environment in the scene at the time, that was helping a sense coordinate that interactive, dynamic storytelling, so it was a bit of a blend.

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Ross  

It sounds it's sort of visuals going on in my head at that moment, a very Westworld kind of environment, you know, characters that have goals or a purpose in the overarching narrative, and then they interact in perhaps unexpected ways. But it's still within their legths.

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Amanda  

Exactly, exactly in their character, or they know that the plot point is going to be coming up or you know, something about it, they have a bit more information about where the storytellers who were the writers, in a sense intended the story to go. But for the most part, it was very open. So yes, very Westworld is a little less dark than that. But yes.

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Ross  

The shift now to say, Okay, we've created this technology, and we have this capability. And we've now adapted by allowing it to be out in the world and listening to and co-creating with our audience that said, Wouldn't it be great to speak to Churchill, so Einstein, you know, to have a conversation with Van Gogh while I'm looking at this painting, or wherever it may be. And this now pursued to build these digital twins and these personas of real people either living or passed away to bring them back to life? And how do you envisage this might really benefit people and affect people by the creations that you're working on.

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Amanda  

We believe as a company, that every person, every human being has immense value, you know, completely unique perspective, unique insights. They're focused on unique things. They may have knowledge or expertise or an experience that may help truly benefit someone else in the world. Someone either living today or maybe sometime in the future. And so part of what we're really wanting to do is how can we help unlimit that potential. How can we enable it so that every single one of us has the ability as human beings to interact, communicate and connect and contribute to one another at scale.

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Ross  

It's interesting because a lot of the steps in technology have enabled these various breakthroughs. You know, if we rewind, the people that we knew in our bubble was fairly small. It was based on our geographical location, and potentially then also our either religion or family and upbringing of society of who we would interact with.  Through we would see the world through that kind of lens. And there might be in another location or in another part of society, somebody that we could learn from, or connect or advance in different ways. But until technology came along, we were unknown, that we were oblivious, and naive.

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And then we started communications, from language to letters to the telecommunications and internet. And now you know, we're having Zoom, you're based in LA, I'm here. And we are learning from each other. And we're now sharing what we're doing through broadcasting it in a podcast of various other mediums. And I think the the opportunity of this next rail is, I can only still have this conversation with you at this one point. If I want to have conversation with many people, I have to then decide do I go on stage for the people that are listening, could go "Oh, I want to ask a question to Amanda now". Whereas if that was a digital version of you, then potentially you're talking about unlocking that opportunity of the human potential is that anyone can have a conversation with any version of a person concurrently, wherever they are.

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And I think that's a really quite a profound shift and a profound future, if that becomes a reality and comes to pass. How do we evolve to that and how we adapt to that it's going to be very interesting. I'm interested in terms of, you know, we've mentioned some historical characters that people would know. And who are the first ones that you're working on? Are they these historical characters? Are they people where they're living? You know, could you share us a little bit of insight as to who they are, and, and how it came about that you're working on it?

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Amanda  

We are working on a couple of historical individuals. But I would say that the focus that we have right now, are on individuals that are still alive today, and are still contributing, in a sense for what they do and how they do it. So one of the individuals that we're working with is Anthony Robbins, or Tony Robbins. I don't know if he needs an introduction, but a world renowned entrepreneur, life coach. Ending human suffering is truly what he's about. And if we just take someone like Tony, we're working on a couple of others as well. But if we take someone like Tony, you know, Tony, is what I want to say up the last 40 years of his life, aggregating a lot of his own personal knowledge, expertise, learning about psychology and the like, and that how we can modify our own behaviors. How can we become more adaptable? How can we, you know, in a sense, take our own life into our own hands and do something to help our communities, the world and otherwise grow.

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Ross  

It's perhaps called destiny, right? Is it preordained? Or do we have control over that? Can we adapt what our future is going to be?

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Amanda  

Right. Or even his financial book is called Unshakable. Right? How can you in sense give people the tools to where they can consciously start to create a sense of themselves and the future and the life that they would like to see and share that with other people? Um, so Tony, you know, has been able to scale like we were saying before, scale, what he does through broadcast, right, so audio programs, books, seminars, and alike. But even for someone like Tony Robbins, he's been doing this 40 years, I think that he's only been able to essence work with people, one on one at a much smaller scale, right?

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Yeah. And so what can we do to actually help someone or anyone take their knowledge that they've gained over their lifetime? Or the strategies that they actually employ when they're working with someone coaching someone communicating with someone? And then how can you actually get that to be something that's now an ongoing relationship? So he's one of the individuals that we're working with, we're also working with other individuals as well. Peter Diamandis is also another persona that we're actually creating. And then we're really looking at growing the technology to the level at which anyone would be able to create an ad persona of themselves, at least to some degree.

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And this isn't supposed to be something that's supposed to be as a perfect replica of you. I don't even think that that's possible. But it's more of can you create something that represents the things that you care about the mission and vision that you have, has this sense and alignment of what each contribute. How are you trying to help people? What is it that you know, what's your expertise? What's your knowledge if your professor, if you're a scientist or otherwise, how can you actually use an artificial intelligent persona to actually collaborate with you to help communicate that or even truly create something new together?

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Ross  

I think it's really interesting because, you know, my wife and family would probably shudder at the thought of having two Rosses in the world. You know, there's this reality in our heads of when we think this balance of Dolly the sheep, and cloning and physical things to then thinking, right, we're now creating a virtual version of this, of an entity. And what you're talking about is not necessarily this pursuit of an exact replica, that has all of the complexities that it needs to understand how I talk so differently to my two pet dogs to owl, you know, my wife knows if I'm on the phone to my man, because my accent changes.

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Like any human, we're so multifaceted based on our environment, and also what our goal is. However, if we then take a specific, narrow context and say, This is something I care about, and I want to give access to that to other people in the world, and being able to scale it is always hard at depth, be able to have an emotional relationship to listen and understand and then respond and reflect on that. And the sparks of new knowledge, I don't know what I was going to say, just 30 seconds ago till it comes out of my mouth, you know, that gets me into as much trouble as it does in opportunity.

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So I'm interested in terms of some of the challenges and what your vision is about the level of emotional relationship we can have with this almost narrow version of some of these real people. And how is this maybe slightly different from maybe these chat bots that we see in customer services and stuff like that? Is that what it is? Or is it quite different? So two questions there? How do we get emotional relationships to feel that I connected and that they're listening and caring? And How's it different to perhaps maybe some of our audience that have experienced chatbots? Or what some of the industry call crap bots?

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Amanda  

Well, you just said a lot. And so I'm just thinking about so much of what you actually said. But you're right, in a sense that I just want to say this point before actually answering your question. In a way some people will hear about this. And they're like, oh, my gosh, you're trying to replace us, right? Like, oh, goodness, how are you? You know, but it's almost the exact opposite? I'm like, no, no, what we actually want to do is actually enable you to do more like, we want you to be able to scale like what you do and communicate more and collaborate more create more through using a persona by communicating and building relationship with these different personas.

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And that's really what actually dovetails into your next question that you were asking is, how can you in a sense, have an emotional relationship with something like this, and to tie to one of the ways that we actually create the persona? So it's very difficult to have a relationship, right, unless it's two way. And that's actually the difference in the sense between, let's say, very large base systems, or chatbots. Because there isn't, in a sense, a unique, let's say, entity, in that digital world that can remember you, can communicate to you, or even a sense even has its own model of what does it mean to care? What does it mean to connect? What does it mean to do these things? And so that's one of the things that we're building within our AI persona itself is, what does it actually mean, as a goal? Let's say we want to kind of use like, a high level, kind of perfect way that we're actually doing it. But and since if the AI has a goal of actually truly caring, what does that actually mean? How would that actually be represented? How does it show up? It may actually ask, how are you doing, but it may want to help you with whatever emotional feeling you may be experiencing at the time, it may actually even have unique insight and strategies to actually help you do that and the like.

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And then, so that's one of the ways that you can use sense kind of think about it is, in order to have a relationship, there needs to be two sides, there's the human on one side, then there's the AI on the other. And it needs to be in a sense, a unique AI that can then start to remember you and it's like, okay, this is Ross, I know that he said that he has two dogs, he has a wife, he has a daughter, you know, and it's in a sense, like kind of building a model. The AI is building a model that's trying to understand and appreciate your world, your life and in a sense be like okay, how can I help Ross? Okay, well, I understand that he cares very much about sustainability goals and helping the world and helping the planet. How can I help do those things. Is in a sensible in ways, that an AI would be able to build a relationship in essence to have more than I would say, care for that individual as well as what they're trying to do.

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Ross  

I guess, you know, one of the challenges will be one thing is retention, episodic memory of going okay, that bit of information has been given me, Ross has two dogs. I can remember that but unless I know what two dogs are or what that might mean. Well, they rely on him and they need to be fed twice a day. And so he needs to go out and walk them in the forest each day, or I just know, I've got two dogs, but I don't know what that means. So I think it's equally relevant terms of the technology and what we're trying to do, where the boundaries and of course it evolves.

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But to come back to this situation that we are going through such pace of change, you know, there's technology now becoming accessible, that allows organizations like ours, to do stuff, to invent and envisage new ways of doing things to scale human potential, to measure adaptability, whatever it is that we think are problems worth solving. How in what you're doing, specifically, the services, if someone's going through a change, so we're working with companies around the future of work, and helping them transition about lots of current roles, and tasks are gonna shift. And there might be certain tasks that people were not happy about being let go.

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And so they put up this immune system that technology is bad, and AI is bad, and it's taking our jobs. But like you said, you know, is it replacing me? No, no, no, it's making you scalable, better. And when optimists get together and have conversation, of course, what we see is great things, if somebody is facing a change that they didn't expect, or didn't want, how my A persona that you're creating, help them through that?

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Amanda  

I think that that's a really great question. And we spend quite a lot of time actually thinking about that. I think also, because we recognize as a company, we have a hand in responsibility associated with that, you know, but we are creating a persona that are going to be going out there working with people alongside people, but there is going to be some level of job or task or something that will just be in a sense taken. I would say how would an AI be able to, how would a person and be able to assist help someone through that transition? How would they be able to be a friend, even like a mentor, right, like, and I think that he would be going through and again, trying to understand and appreciate that humans world, of the emotion of much of what actually happens when that occurs is we ask ourselves as people like, Okay, well, what am I supposed to do? Next? Right?

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Sometimes it's much more of a spiritual feeling of loss, right? Of like, well, what's my purpose? If I wasn't doing I enjoyed doing that. And so I think an AI would actually be able to use in the sense some of the different techniques that some great counselors, different psychologist or different motivational speakers, different life coaches would employ in use asking, is that truly something that, did you like doing the task? Or did you like in a sense maybe doing? The emotion that it actually created. Is there another way that we can find for you to actually still get that film and that your desire, outside of in a sense, that one their of way of doing it? Let's go ahead and broaden the scope.

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So I think that an AI would actually be able to help someone co create, in a sense a new dream, co create a new way of getting their, co create let's go ahead and problem solve this together. Let's go ahead. Because I mean, there's so many different ways that all of us can contribute, there's an unlimited amount of let's say, challenges that we can go and face. And so I think when we can just have the AI help people to start shift their mindset, instead of focusing on that one job one task, they could be like, hey, do you care about humanitarian projects? Do you care about the environment? World? Do you care about helping your community? Do you want to, like spend that time now connecting with your friends and families, their skill that you'd like to develop? Tell me, let me know, I can connect you with Einstein, if you want to, like, you know, do you want to start, you know, whatever it may be? Is there some other thing that you'd actually like to do instead, I think that just helping people, again, regain that sense of purpose, that sense of empowerment that you can do this, I believe you, I've got your back. Let me help you get to resources, different experts, or persona, here to help you do more of what you want to do.

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Ross  

I think it's a lovely and something that we share this sense of wanting to help people be better than they were yesterday, and recognizing the scale and pace of this shift. And humans need help. You know, there isn't necessarily enough counselors or enough access to those counselors and those counselors being able to deal with all of this, that maybe some of that lifting can be done by technology, not all of it. And I think this is the balance between where can it be deployed to help some co-elevation and then when there's serious risks, can an AI identify it super early, and then put them in the right place that maybe the AI can't help? You know, we're seeing on the dark side, lots of mental health issues, stress, suicides, these things that can be recognized early and interventions can coming early, if only they're found.

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Maybe there's some AI during those conversations in the same way a human would be able to pick up that if they were trained, then they are, there's someone at risk here, we need to build some support around them before they can be at risk, because we want to make sure no one's left behind. And this is a capitalist world where innovation, you know, and tech and all of this abundance is that there are some people that are at high risk, and just complete lack of confidence. And the defense immune barrier comes up about that. And I want to change tack slightly.

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And just to think back a few years ago, when you were making that transition, and adapting your business from this storyline, entertainment and gaming to now maybe, quality of life, wellness and education of real people. How did you adapt either yourself, your other founders, your stakeholders in the business model? Did that happen really quickly? Was it easy? Was there lots of challenges or barriers just describe that kind of pivot point that you had in that first decade? In the latter part.

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Amanda  

I would say that, when we started the company, we always knew that what we wanted to do was this- we wanted to help impact people's lives. And so the way that we went about it at first was to entertain us something we were passionate about, it was an industry that we were very familiar with. And it was a business application that we could see that had viability to begin with, right. So the need within the entertainment world, specifically within video games to create a software solution to help other creators do something within that space within AI. So that was kind of the way that we had gone about it to begin with.

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But it wasn't a sense of it was always the purpose and the mission and vision of the company was to really truly how can you create something that can help change someone's life for the better. And even whenever we're talking about something like games, or people in a sense, that may be having, but you just in a sense brought up, there are some people that are at higher risk, right, they have a hard time communicating to other people about some sort of issue that they're going through, or some sort of like emotional state or otherwise. Well, a lot of those places that those "people go to escape is entertainment, is video games, a story world".

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So if you can actually create a character within those worlds that can actually start picking up those things and be a collaborative partner to them care about who they are, now they may actually have a friend, an ally, a confidant that they actually can be able to start building those relationships with. If that AI is trained, and it has enough ability to actually help guide that person to pay. I think that you should maybe talk to other people about this, let's go ahead and you know, help that. So I would say that was also a way that we actually started kind of asking ourselves, is there more that we can be doing here? So we kind of, let's say, unbound our own minds about how we were doing it, right. So the objective was still always the same. Right? If we're thinking about in terms of like, outcome oriented, like, we still want it to, in a sense, unlimited people's potential through AI persona, and collaborating with AI persona. So it really started changing to like, okay, entertainment is one way that people spend their lives. And, you know, entertainment games even has a spectrum right there are educational games, right? 

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There are so many games, they're strategy based games. There are games that are truly just created to help teach you new skills. And so we're like, okay "games is maybe mechanics of how you can do it". So can you actually do something where it's not as, let's say, "game based or mechanically based or story based", but something that's more applicable to someone's life? 

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So then we started really kind of went on a brainstorm. We're like, Okay, in what ways would you be able to impact someone's life, not only whenever they're going to someplace to have an entertaining experience, but they're wanting to go grow themselves? Wouldn't it be just so much better if you could talk to Einstein have a conversation with him, instead of just read about him on a book, or in a book, right? Or watch or listen to, you know, something, instead of time or be in a game world where it's a little bit more shallow than experience? What if you could really go deep with that individual?

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And so that's, I think, one of the shifts that actually happened in our own psychology, in a sense of belief of, maybe this is possible. But if we were to actually apply this, and it was truly just asking yourself that type of question, like, what if we actually apply this to real perception, like real people, or more real world applications?

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Ross  

It's interesting listening to you, because a few things really resonated. One was, you know, if you fall in love with the problem, then you're open to different ways of solving it. And that's what you've just described, in that you just happen to have a certain capability because you've had knowledge of that industry and some area to gain some traction. To hone that and improve the capability to allow you to dream again because once we get to another level and horizon of something, we see new opportunity.

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And I think the often the challenge companies face is, whilst that you seems, well body rate, you have to let go of what current is sometimes. And it's as much thing what is possible as what should we stop doing? And you talked about, well, we still do a lot of the game stuff of those things. And I think that's a real tension point right now for organizations is, what is core? And what is emerging and fringe for their innovation? And how do they navigate between those situations so that their company remains adaptable and relevant. And I guess you need some level of both security to do that, to experiment to risk that failure, as well as a burning platform to say what you're currently doing is not good enough. You know that there's a better way.

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Amanda  

I doubt to say that you're absolutely right in that. And I think and you're right, as well about needing to let things go. I mean, I'm still passionate about into games. But one of the things that I've actually modified about what you say we actually don't do those things anymore. So you actually honed in, on what is it that only we can do? Right? In a sense, what's our core competency as a company? And I was like, okay is it games, is it really something like that? We're like, No. It's AI, it's about creating these AI for something that it can do, remember, and care about you.

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So when we focus it on that, and we're like, okay, it has nothing really to do with it. It's for entertainment purpose, or an educational purpose. And you create something that has the ability to think, remember and care. So we started honing in on like, what was it truly that we are creating outside of anyone's industry outside of anyone's product? Because when you do that, when it really starts to collapse? And let's say focus, right? Narrow, in a sense, like, what is your X Factor? Right, as a company? What are your technical capabilities, and just let the other things go? Right? The other assumptions that you've made over the years, the other comfort points and a sense that you are holding on to and you're like, you know what if you let those things go and you see focus in on, can you create something that can think, remember and care about human beings at scale? Regardless of if it's Mickey Mouse, Einstein, or Tony Robbins, then what can you do?

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Ross  

Then what would be possible.

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Amanda  

Right, then what would be possible? And so it wasn't a sense very much of, I know and I'll be honest, like, it was a little scary, because it was something that you're used to doing, you know, in a sense, like, what that looks like, how those industries work, and you're really going into the unknown on a different level, and is this in a sense that you need to have a confidence of your ability to be able to make that leap of faith that says, but we're constantly doing those leaps of faith all the time. It's more about being cognizant of that's what's happening when you're making the changeover at when you "pivot a company" or focus in or hone in on something.

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Ross  

I think it becomes, it's this concept. We've had a conversation on the podcast previously with Barrier Riley, who wrote the book, Unlearn. And it's talking about that concept of, to create extraordinary breakthroughs, you have to let go at certain things that got you there. And if you haven't got a lot to let go of, then you can create extraordinary breakthroughs, right. And that's what we're seeing with a lot of the startups that just how quickly they can create and do things because they're untethered.

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And yet they dream of the resources and assets of the larger organizations, you know, of talent, of money, of connections of collaborations. And yet, on the flip side, the larger organizations often find it very difficult to create those extraordinary breakthroughs because of that willingness to let go of something. And so I'm so excited about the work that you're doing in terms of pioneering this new frontier, of leveraging technology in a certain way that has aspirations that's very human at its core. And that it's a problem I think that's worth solving. Scaling human potential is a beautiful mission to be involved in and creating those extremely breakthroughs takes a lot of leadership, takes a lot of inspiration, takes people to believe in what you're doing. And where has that been most challenging for you in that journey so far in that latter part.

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Amanda  

Can you clarify in a sense?

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Ross  

You've surrounded yourself with people that are working on what you're passionate about, creating digital personas of people that as you put it, care, remember and think for themselves? have you faced any pushback against that in certain areas, industries, certain people or are you just forging forwards in this pioneering state or you've had to overcome pushback against creating this? You had any of that? That's what I wanted to just ask.

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Amanda  

Yeah. I would say that some of these concepts. When we first started the company, right around 2010-2011-2012, the very beginning of the company AI was not, people kind of forget in a sense like how much AI has since been now a word that we all know in society, these concepts of you can talk to something that's not otherwise real. It's not in body. You know, we have Alexa's in our homes, we talk to Google, we have a Siri like, those things didn't exist a decade ago. And so even having the conversation with investors or partners, or otherwise, it was very hard for people to conceptualize what we were talking about.

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Now, I would say that there's in the sense, there are so many different trends that are starting to collapse in on themselves and stack to even enable this kind of conversation to even occur where people are now familiar with chat bots, they understand persona, there have even been a couple of movies that even like, you know, have expressed the concept of what video game characters could be real in like Wreck-it-Ralph style, or the movie Her. Just these concepts of what if you had an AI that was caring, that was persistent, that you know, you could build a relationship with.

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So that's in a sense made it easier, I would say for the company to be able to communicate the value of what we're creating and how we impact individuals lives. I wouldn't say strong pushback, but people are always so curious. And we can very naturally go into a fear state, right? Where we become afraid of the unknown, right? They're like, Oh that sounds really different. What's going to happen there? What does that mean for me? What does that mean for my job? What does that mean for my family? What does that mean for society?

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And so I wouldn't say that there's strong pushback, but there's a lot of curiosity there of wanting to continue the conversation, they want to explore the topic. And I think that that's a really beautiful thing. I think that the more people that are asking questions in that way, in thinking about these concepts are showing, not just a curiosity of it, but they're really trying to understand like, okay, how can I adapt to this? How can I gain an understanding of this? How can I utilize something like this? And I also think that it's very good, that it enables us to create a better conversation. I would say that anytime that you know, people have, in a sense, push back, it's my mind thinking about some of the different ethical implications were very forward thinking about what the ethics associated with this, how do we protect against downside? How do we as a company have proactive responsibility for the ways that is going to be affecting people's lives?

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And so I think that any of that pushback is actually a really good thing. Even you know, when we talk about like, what's the use of data? What's privacy associated with this house, in effect of cybersecurity, there's a whole slew of things that can actually occur when you start to think about it. And so it's more of just how do you think about those things.

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And so anytime that anyone ever has any questions, it's lovely. I've done many panels at South by Southwest or internationally, where we generate some of these different conversations within the audience. And I think it's, it's a really wonderful thing. And I'm so thankful in the sense that as a society, we're able to talk about these things now. Whereas a few years ago, it was difficult even just to get someone to understand the concept enough to be able to have this conversation.

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Ross  

I think, ethics in AI is a very required and emerging area, that we're still just figuring out as we go along. Right? You know, and sometimes we can predict one consequence, but it's the second and third consequences of an action that might catch us by surprise. We've got about five minutes left. And I don't want to end on this kind of low side. And I had when I was listening to you, just this point of what does this create an end game point, that part of scarcity is an advantage in value in certain senses.

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So for example, the fact that not everybody can access Tony Robbins as a life coach allows room for other life coaches. So if I'm an organization, and I go, right, I want some life coaches, for my workforce to help them through all of these changes of marriage stuff, well, who can I employ? Where are they around? And they're going to work on it. If I can suddenly employ an AI version of Tony Robbins to do that. And so can every other organization on the planet suddenly get access to that? Right? What does that then mean?

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But anyone else who did something half similar? And, you know, an optimist might say, well, that can take care of this bit. And then when they've got to that foundation level, then they can then interact at the next part with a real human and obviously. So we're going to face things that we can't even predict. So the level of uncertainty is rapidly growing, the more we unlock potential of technology of people. I'd love to end on this sort of theme of both of our organizations of working on connecting humans with technology with great intent, you know from a measuring, in our case, adaptability to use of unlocking whatever subject matter it might be of a person and making them accessible, so that we can give access to amazing minds. In terms of the future of work and all of these pioneering technologies, if you could make a prediction of the next few years of what to maybe embrace what companies could do right now, to experiment with this, where should they start?

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Amanda  

AI, I mean, I've been using AI in this conversation as a noun, almost like a persona itself. That's how our company both builds and talks about and productizes AI, but overall, anything as a business owner, as a consumer, that you can start to do to educate yourself on just the overall spectrum of what's happening within AI. And any ways that you can start to employ those types of technologies, I think would be beneficial.

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One of it is just educating yourself on okay, what's a neural network? Or what's a, you know, when they see machine learning? What does that mean, when someone says big data, what's that mean? And then start to like, ask yourself, Okay what is it that my company is wanting to do? Truly, at the end of the day, what value am I trying to write?

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Ross  

What do I care about?

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Amanda  

Right, What do I care about? What are we truly trying to do? And then if you can answer that for yourself, and after you've learned a little bit more of the different ways that AI can potentially help you all the different types of AI technology, then maybe you'll probably start to find a lot of overlap, right? The like, Okay well maybe I can use AI to communicate better to my customers, maybe I can improve my customer relationship, perhaps I can use it to gain better insight on the different products that my customer cares, or services that my customers care for me to use your employer, or otherwise.

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And while chat bots, we don't use chat bots, and they are, in a sense, limited in many ways, they can actually be very helpful for business as well. Chatbots, for a lot of people within the AI community aren't really considered artificially intelligent. They are not considered true, "AI" but they can still be very useful. And they do use a lot of different AI technologies.

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Ross  

That can give an on ramp perhaps.

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Amanda  

Yeah on ramp in a sense. Exactly. And so it's just asking yourself, what is it truly that my company's about? What value am I trying to create? And is there some way that I can utilize some piece of AI technology, or back end or infrastructure to actually help me do more of that thing?

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Ross  

My final question for you is, do you now have your magic wand to create a digital twin, this persona of anyone that has existed in the world so far? And you had the choice of who you would want to bring to life? In that sense? Who would you pick? And why?

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Amanda  

That's a fascinating question. So let me see. So I would say one individual that I think would be really wonderful to actually do is the Queen of England. So even though she's not historical, just yet or anything like that, she's still around today. She's such a unique character, and just her overall life, I think all the different things that she's actually encountered as a female leader, as the longest one of the longest running, you know, bikes of the world. At this time, there's just so many different insights, knowledge and learning that can be shared from now and to all generations to come.

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And so I think that she would just be truly a really excellent individual to go ahead and create a persona of the next that I would probably say, is you see, I have so many. I would say probably Alan Watts, he's a philosopher. And otherwise, I think that just being able to have a conversation kind of employ some of the different concepts that he talks about in all of his lectures, and otherwise would just be so fascinating. And I think relevant, it's relevant across any sort of culture, time or space or otherwise.

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And so he's a little bit more, you know esoteric, a little bit more fringe, people sometimes know who he is. But he in a sense, is to me representative of someone that many people listen to his lectures or read his quotes. And I think that being able to have a little bit more of a one on one conversation, having a sense him be an entity that you're like, hey, Alan what do you think about this? Hey, Your Majesty, what do you think about this? Dealing with, you know, in a sense, creates almost like a little mastermind group of different concepts. And, you know one of the other things that I'm personally very fascinated with right now is quantum computing.

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And so having any expert within that field, actually, and I don't even know their names, right, that are out there. They're actually just the top experts, the individuals, the researchers within that field, they're really studying and really spending their entire life's purpose on pushing that field and all the different aspects of it. I would love to have a conversation with them. Like over their AI in a sense, because I'd like to collaborate with them on something that they're working on. So it's much more of a creation aspect instead of just to gaining more information aspect. It's like how can I actually help you do more of what you're trying to do here.

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Ross  

I really enjoyed the conversation. I look forward to many more with you. And like you said early on, you know, a true relationship is a two way thing. And whether that's between people or technology, getting feedback in that feedback loop to be able to learn on both parts, so that it can contribute to some kind of outcome. That's a better one than we currently have today. And that's the sort of future I want to be involved in creating, though. Thank you ever so much, and look forward to seeing you again really soon.

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Amanda  

Absolutely. Thank you so much.

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Voiceover  

Do you have the level of adaptability to survive and thrive in the rapid changes ahead? Has your resilience got more comeback than a yo-yo? Do you have the ability to unlearn in order to reskill, upskill, and break through? Find out today and uncover your adaptability profile and score your AQ visit "AQai.io" To gain your personalized report across 15 scientifically validated dimensions of adaptability for limited time enter code "Podcast65" for a complimentary AQ me assessment. AQ AI transforming the way people, teams, and organizations navigate change.

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Outro

Thank you for listening to this episode of Decoding AQ. Please make sure you subscribe to your favorite podcast directory, and we'd love to hear your feedback. Please leave a review and be sure to tune in next time for more insights from our amazing guests.

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