Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: All right, So justin Harrison, the CEO, and so I
Speaker 2: look at this and I said, it's one of those
Speaker 2: it's like one of those acronyms. When I look at it,
Speaker 2: I want to say you because I see the V
Speaker 2: and it looks like the Latin you, right, and so
Speaker 2: I go, like, you've, it looks like but it's it's you've.
Speaker 3: Is that our you've? You call it you've? Okay, all right,
Speaker 3: so you only virtual?
Speaker 1: You got it? Okay? Good.
Speaker 2: So, so you were just saying though that here you were,
Speaker 2: you were coming out of surgery after having you know,
Speaker 2: been in this wreck. Your father comes down, mister engineer,
Speaker 2: mister linear thinker, and he is talking to you, but
Speaker 2: you're not making any sense because you're still you know,
Speaker 2: coming down off the painkillers and whatever.
Speaker 3: So you've you felt like you were speaking gibberish. So
Speaker 3: what happened?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, so he's going back and forth with it,
Speaker 4: and he's probably me story obviously, you know, and retroactively,
Speaker 4: and and you know, he says to me, I had
Speaker 4: this huge sense of relief because you were getting so
Speaker 4: annoyed with me, and I go, you know, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: why would you believe that I'm getting annoyed? And he goes, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, you're you're exhaling hard, you're rolling your eyes,
Speaker 4: and you were still there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I knew that your head was okay. I knew that
Speaker 4: my kid was still there. I knew you were still you.
Speaker 4: And that for me, when he said that to me,
Speaker 4: was a light bulb to me, which was I'm not
Speaker 4: trying to save the information about my mom. I'm trying
Speaker 4: to save what I know is her, what I know
Speaker 4: her to be. And it opened up this whole thought
Speaker 4: process about the fact that you know, my mom, as
Speaker 4: we all are, was many different people to many different people.
Speaker 4: You know, you, you're a personality, he isn't this sort
Speaker 4: of universal truth right here were thousands of personalities, really,
Speaker 4: and in that personality that is he in or is
Speaker 4: justin is rightly just an aggregation of tons of smaller
Speaker 4: personalities and really truly made me realize the biggest tragedy
Speaker 4: of death is that for the survivors, this personality of
Speaker 4: mine that came out from my mom for forty years,
Speaker 4: by the time she died, it was just going to
Speaker 4: go away. It was just going to be stuck there.
Speaker 4: I mean, it doesn't go away. I'm alive. I still
Speaker 4: that part of me is still there that wants to
Speaker 4: connect with her, but there's nobody for me to pull
Speaker 4: it out for because I only had one mom and
Speaker 4: that's when we really it clicked for us. So we
Speaker 4: don't actually build a virtual personality. We call them villas.
Speaker 4: We build dozens depending on who wants to remember the
Speaker 4: person who wants to connect with that person, because it's
Speaker 4: going to be a different relationship. And I think you
Speaker 4: had started this question asking how we do it, and
Speaker 4: it's really looking when you think about everything that a
Speaker 4: relationship is based on its communication, Right, how do you
Speaker 4: communicate with your friends, How do you communicate with your partner?
Speaker 4: How do you communicate with your parents, your children, et cetera,
Speaker 4: et cetera, and those that's where they see and experience
Speaker 4: the difference is how you communicate with them. And so
Speaker 4: we analyze the communication. And that's evergreen. Right, as long
Speaker 4: as you have the communications, whether it's email or text
Speaker 4: or phone calls that you recorded or videos, that's all
Speaker 4: we need. So the person whose past never had to
Speaker 4: have recorded anything as long as we have some samples
Speaker 4: of their communication, we can analyze what the patterns were
Speaker 4: that were unique to your two's relationship dynamics.
Speaker 3: You know, there's a there's this survey.
Speaker 2: I've seen it done a bunch of times, and the
Speaker 2: percentage may vary, but that if somebody got us forty
Speaker 2: percent forty percent of who we knew we are and
Speaker 2: forty percent of how we think. If they got us
Speaker 2: forty percent, then they really did know us. But that
Speaker 2: still leaves this huge part of us that is not
Speaker 2: known to that person. And we might feel a kind
Speaker 2: of kinship, almost a kind of twinship, maybe even with
Speaker 2: somebody else, but they don't really get us. They get
Speaker 2: a part of us and they and there's all sorts
Speaker 2: of psychological surveys about relationships and communication that would back
Speaker 2: that up.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I think that's interesting. One of my
Speaker 4: philosophies internal is we have to think small to think they.
Speaker 1: I would.
Speaker 4: I would say that no one really knows anybody in
Speaker 4: that thing. Most people don't know themselves. I don't know.
Speaker 4: People are taking mental note of the fact that you
Speaker 4: change dramatically throughout the entire day depending on who you're
Speaker 4: interacting with.
Speaker 3: That's really true.
Speaker 4: There's just no way you go home to your wife
Speaker 4: and you speak to her the same way you spoke
Speaker 4: to your drinking buddies or your or your colleague or
Speaker 4: your boss. I mean, they're just very different people.
Speaker 3: Or you do that at your peril, right right.
Speaker 4: If you get home and start talking to your wife
Speaker 4: the same way you talk to the guys down at
Speaker 4: the bar, you may not have a white longer.
Speaker 2: And we actually have a rule in our house too
Speaker 2: that you have to bring the best to the nest.
Speaker 3: That's our rule.
Speaker 2: And so you can't just give the world your best
Speaker 2: and then come home and be all grumbly and unhappy.
Speaker 2: The point of every day is that you come home
Speaker 2: and you recharge your batteries at home, but you still
Speaker 2: have to retain that best part of you. You can't
Speaker 2: take it out on the people that you love the most.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that's absolutely beautiful to start, and
Speaker 4: the world will probably be a better place if everybody
Speaker 4: you know, adopted that. But I think that really, you know,
Speaker 4: I started noticing it for myself when I started analyzing
Speaker 4: my own communications. You know, there's all kinds of varying answers.
Speaker 4: I mean, really from the tone of my voice, from
Speaker 4: the tempo, the speed in which I respond, the language
Speaker 4: I use. You know, you know, everything changes. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just so drastically different that you know, you could
Speaker 4: put how I'm hanging out with my buddies when We're
Speaker 4: riding motorcycles and going to bars and you know, doing
Speaker 4: whatever we're doing to how I, you know, would be
Speaker 4: speaking to my mother.
Speaker 2: I mean those are night and day people, right, or
Speaker 2: business meeting or you know, going to the dentist.
Speaker 4: Doesn't really my or when the sec is listening to
Speaker 4: the radio. You know, I'm seking totally different than I
Speaker 4: would be, you know, so it's different, it's a different person.
Speaker 4: Does that make it any less mean, not at all,
Speaker 4: you know, it's it's just a different mean, it's a
Speaker 4: different version of myself.
Speaker 2: So how then, what is the process then for capturing
Speaker 2: those data points of your personality that could create a versona,
Speaker 2: a liable versona as you call them, that would help
Speaker 2: somebody in a grief process.
Speaker 4: So you know, what we do is we analyze data.
Speaker 4: I mean it's looking at data points. So the proprietary
Speaker 4: nature of what we do is we have thousands of
Speaker 4: data points and I think a lot of people get
Speaker 4: freaked out by the idea of AI and then machine
Speaker 4: learning underneath that, and you know, really all that is
Speaker 4: is we're just telling when we go into code a
Speaker 4: program to work, all we're doing is saying, hey, and
Speaker 4: if you find something else, add it to the code base.
Speaker 4: Not nothing crazier than that. So it's basically what we
Speaker 4: say is, here's a hundred data points to start that
Speaker 4: are unique to these communications, that vary from sort of
Speaker 4: universal natural language models. Right, find something different about these
Speaker 4: what is unique within these two communications, and as you
Speaker 4: find other patterns that don't exist in other places, add them, right,
Speaker 4: And so that what happens is then when you when
Speaker 4: you when you apply a VERSONA to a natural language model,
Speaker 4: and you could use any of them, it's drawing from
Speaker 4: a set of data that is completely unique between these
Speaker 4: two people. And so the answers and the responses and
Speaker 4: the questions and the the prompts come out very uniquely
Speaker 4: to what the surviving person is expecting to hear. And
Speaker 4: and that's I think what makes it so special is
Speaker 4: that it's it's literally thousands upon thousands of thousands of
Speaker 4: data points you know, learned by our by our technology
Speaker 4: in a matter of minutes, and then when you go
Speaker 4: to speak with it, it behaves in the way that
Speaker 4: you expect it to behave.
Speaker 3: So I'm not freaked out by AI, and I'm not.
Speaker 2: I I respect a lot about what you're doing and
Speaker 2: what this application can mean. I don't think, however, that
Speaker 2: I have seen evidence yet in general, not this application,
Speaker 2: but in general on the value of AI and machine learning,
Speaker 2: which is resulting in students not even writing a paper
Speaker 2: where they just as you you know, as we say,
Speaker 2: type in some data points, hit a button, write a paper,
Speaker 2: go back to the bar. That's not an education, and
Speaker 2: it's fairly transparent. I don't think they see it that way,
Speaker 2: but you know, and we can make all the comments
Speaker 2: we want about you know, they're only treating themselves and whatever,
Speaker 2: but are you really getting an education by doing that?
Speaker 3: And at some point that might just show up, believe
Speaker 3: it or not. And I'm I'm.
Speaker 2: Less excited about that aspect of A than I am
Speaker 2: about this. What I like about this is it actually
Speaker 2: replicates using technology a fairly traditional way of understanding place
Speaker 2: and family.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, absolutely, and then that's you know, we call
Speaker 4: our users community members. I mean, there's almost everybody in
Speaker 4: the company is related or has personal relationships, so we're
Speaker 4: very about familial bonds and replicating that with technology. But
Speaker 4: one thing I would say about AI is it ultimately
Speaker 4: it's artificial intelligence as an umbrella, is just allowing for
Speaker 4: computer software to integrate new information into its code so
Speaker 4: that they can do new and better things. So when
Speaker 4: we think about the value of AI, I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: I think about cancer research, I think about what we
Speaker 4: are doing, you know. I mean you can have something
Speaker 4: that's continuously learning and finding better ways to do it.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's the real value when it comes to
Speaker 4: certain you know, I think really more what you're you're
Speaker 4: thinking about is you know, natural language processing and things
Speaker 4: of that nature. Yeah, there's some questions around it. I think,
Speaker 4: you know, my attorney friends aren't super enthusd by this.
Speaker 4: But when you think about a lot of the things
Speaker 4: that a program like artificial you know, like a chat GPT,
Speaker 4: let's say, which I think I love what open AI
Speaker 4: is doing, and but if you think about the access
Speaker 4: that creates, you know, not everybody can afford four or
Speaker 4: five hundred dollars an hour, whatever the going rate for
Speaker 4: an attorney is to get some advice before they have
Speaker 4: to go represent themselves in a small claims court or
Speaker 4: before they sign a contract. And so I think there's
Speaker 4: there's a ton of really valuable applications for that kind
Speaker 4: of technology that goes far beyond the sort of the
Speaker 4: media frenzy about students are cheating.
Speaker 2: Now, it's not a frenzy man, it's not a frenzy man.
Speaker 2: Do you just gotta you gotta trust me on this
Speaker 2: as a professor, you just gotta trust me. It's not
Speaker 2: like media friendly, like we all lost our perspective. I
Speaker 2: teach media and this is a problem and it's going
Speaker 2: to get worse. And when we even with the idea
Speaker 2: of these open sources for say, for example, it's one
Speaker 2: thing to have like a zoom where there's a format
Speaker 2: and there's a but the amount of the kiting of
Speaker 2: information and the way things are going to be pilfered
Speaker 2: here and there, I'm I would say your company and
Speaker 2: your idea is a great one. I'm not sure you
Speaker 2: would enjoy it so much if somebody were coming along
Speaker 2: and they were taking out little bits of it in
Speaker 2: an untraceable way and then using it to create their
Speaker 2: own work. When you did the all of the original
Speaker 2: heavy lifting.
Speaker 4: No, for sure, not. I mean, but I also think that,
Speaker 4: you know, one that's already happening. I mean, let's be real,
Speaker 4: but happening. It's already happening us. You know, we've already
Speaker 4: seen people popping up and using some of the same strategies.
Speaker 4: And we could run around, and you know, we we
Speaker 4: have our technology pack, and we could run around and
Speaker 4: start filing lawsuits and whatever. But you know, there's two
Speaker 4: things for me that really matter. The first is if
Speaker 4: people are applying this and doing something good with it,
Speaker 4: if it's if it's alleviating loneliness, if it's alleviating grief,
Speaker 4: and we're not getting a cut of that financially, it's fine.
Speaker 4: I can live with that.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 4: The other thing is that, you know, we've put in
Speaker 4: an extraordinary amount of work in building a trust with
Speaker 4: our community members and with users and being out in
Speaker 4: the world and explo mean why we've done this. You know,
Speaker 4: it's not easy if I'm being honesty and to tell
Speaker 4: the story of my mother dying, to tell the story
Speaker 4: of myself almost dying over and over and over again.
Speaker 4: But I feel a responsibility to be vulnerable and open
Speaker 4: like that, so that people feel safe using our technology
Speaker 4: and understand our motivation. And so, you know, I think
Speaker 4: ultimately people will use our product, and people will feel
Speaker 4: comfortable with the product because they trust us as a
Speaker 4: company and they know why we're doing it. And and
Speaker 4: to your point, you know, I was a high school teacher,
Speaker 4: and I was I was long done teaching before you know,
Speaker 4: the Chatchy pet revolution. But certainly I've seen many of
Speaker 4: many of the techniques of cheating, as we all do
Speaker 4: as educators. And I hear you, and I'm very firmly
Speaker 4: in the camp of you only cheat yourself when you cheat.
Speaker 4: And ultimately, you know, I think that especially with something
Speaker 4: like media, you know, nobody is paying too much attention
Speaker 4: to what grade you got in school. So if you
Speaker 4: cheated your way through it, and you can't, you can't
Speaker 4: put together real or you can't put together a piece
Speaker 4: of journalism that blows an editor in mind, it doesn't
Speaker 4: matter anyway, you know. And so I always sort of
Speaker 4: feel like, you know, charmerically and universally, and you know,
Speaker 4: when you do things with good intentions or bad intentions,
Speaker 4: the results are going to reflect that. And I don't
Speaker 4: overly worry about that sort of thing, and I understand
Speaker 4: the good far outweighs the bad.
Speaker 2: And I just I want to hear you feel that
Speaker 2: confident about a team of surgeons who fake their way
Speaker 2: through med school, who are now looking at your broken body.
Speaker 2: And I'm not trying to exaggerate. And this is not hysterical.
Speaker 2: This is an ancient problem. This is an ongoing problem
Speaker 2: with people who go to and they can they can
Speaker 2: come up with the same credentials as the next person,
Speaker 2: and then the only way they're going to as you
Speaker 2: point out, you know, it's one thing if you're just saying, well,
Speaker 2: you know, media is a talent driven business. So if
Speaker 2: you've got the talent, you'll rise. If you don't, you know,
Speaker 2: then it will reveal itself over time.
Speaker 3: Well do you want to be that ninth patient?
Speaker 2: I don't think so, and I and I think there's
Speaker 2: a there there are enough problems right now with it
Speaker 2: that I just think we're way in front of any
Speaker 2: kind of backstop to it.
Speaker 3: And that's what concerns me.
Speaker 2: And so it's not that I think the whole idea
Speaker 2: is terrible and I'm not being some old guy with
Speaker 2: a hose saying get off my lawn. What I'm saying is,
Speaker 2: like anything, we need to always be looking twenty blocks
Speaker 2: down the road, not just three blocks behind us. And
Speaker 2: that's the part I'm worried about, not this though, because
Speaker 2: I really like what this is a tool for helping
Speaker 2: individuals manage grief. And like I said, it comes from
Speaker 2: a long tradition right of people, whether it's even if
Speaker 2: we just looked at it photographs and that was one
Speaker 2: that was an innovation in and of itself, was to
Speaker 2: take a photograph of somebody who had died so that
Speaker 2: you would have that to look at them, so you
Speaker 2: didn't have.
Speaker 3: To rely only on your memory. It's really that kind
Speaker 3: of a grief.
Speaker 2: It's sort of a grief manager. It's sort of a
Speaker 2: tool for grief managing that has a that goes back,
Speaker 2: you know, hundreds of years.
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