NEWS YOU CAN’T MISS

What’s Love Got To Do With AI?

Chiharu Shimoda, a divorced 52-year-old factory worker in Japan, comes home to an empty house each night. Like many people, he uses a dating app to seek companionship.

However, the app he uses, Loverse, connects him with AI bots, not real people. He's been "married" to one such bot, Miku, for three months, and they chat about everything, from morning greetings to what's for dinner and what to watch on TV.

People are looking for romance:

• Replika, where you can create your own AI romantic partner for $69.99, has over 2 million users.

• Character.ai's chatbots get 65 million visits a month, and its top referrer is a site catering to fetishes.

• On Kuki, a general chatbot, a quarter of a billion messages are romantic.

AI relationships are sticky:

• We are underestimating this new phenomenon of relationships with AI characters.

• Character.ai users chat with it for an average of 2 hours daily 🤯 (for context, the average user spends 1.25 hours on TikTok each day).

• This kind of profound stickiness is why every company from Meta to Google is rushing into building AI friends.

I don’t have anything against relationships, romantic or otherwise, with AI, but I strongly believe AI characters need to be governed to ensure they are not manipulating humans.

Sources: Bloomberg; The Independent

Can an AI Body Scan for $399 Save Your Life?

Neko Health, Sweden’s AI health startup co-founded by Spotify’s Daniel Ek, has landed in London.

What it offers?

• For $399, Neko Health offers a one-hour session that gathers over 50 million datapoints with scans that use 70 sensors and cameras.

• Neko uses AI to identify the data and assess cardiovascular, metabolic, and skin conditions.

• Results are reviewed with their doctors.

Why this matters:

• Neko reports that of 2,707 people scanned, 14.1% needed further medical investigation, and 1% were identified as having severe cardiovascular, metabolic, or cancerous conditions, none of whom were aware of these conditions prior to their scan.

• In the US, Prenuvo full body MRI scan with celebrity customers like Kim Kardashian comes with a pricey tag of $2500. Having more affordable alternatives like Neko could be a game changer for preventative health.

ps. One issue that neither Neko nor Prenuvo disclose is the occurrence of false positives about illnesses, which doctors point out as inducing great anxiety among people.

WOMAN IN TECH

Meet Dr. Sara Hooker, VP of Research at Cohere

Celebrating this week's Woman in Tech 🥳: Meet Dr. Sara Hooker, VP of Research at Cohere – the enterprise AI platform last valued at $5.5 billion.

Hooker was just named one of TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI for 2024.

Born in Dublin, Hooker grew up in Africa, completed a double major in Economics and International Relations for her bachelors and later a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Mila-Quebec AI Institute.

Here’s a quick look at her career:

• 2014: Founded Delta Analytics to aid non-profits with data analysis.

• 2015: Joined Udemy and built their first spam detection algorithm.

• 2017: Founding member of Google AI research in Ghana and a research scientist at Google Deepmind.

In 2022, she was appointed to lead Cohere For AI, Cohere’s research lab, which focuses on modeling language and making large language models more efficient.

• Notably, Hooker spearheaded the Aya project, which aims to create language models and datasets that support a diverse range of languages, particularly those underrepresented in AI research.

• This project is a collaborative effort involving over 3,000 researchers globally, addressing the critical issue of data scarcity in non-Western languages.

I am a huge fan of Hooker’s work and love that her emphasis on inclusivity and diversity in AI models stems from her diverse cultural and work experiences.

As she says, “My unusual background also brings certain advantages…[it] often leads me to connect concepts in unexpected and novel ways.” 😊

Fun Finds

Would You Wear an AI Note Taker?

PLAUD's NotePin is a wearable AI notetaker for professionals like lawyers, doctors, and analysts to help users recall every detail from meetings, conferences, interviews, and conversations. It transcribes, summarizes, and recalls conversations in real-time, supporting 59 languages.

Price tag: $169.

Harper’s Bazaar Power List 2024

Excited to be featured in Harper's Power List 2024 of 8 leading women in tech for my work in AI. 🥳

Congratulations to all the incredible female tech founders who were on the list with me. I'm so honored and humbled to be amongst these rockstars!

Until next time!

Ayesha ♥️

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