we get through our technical glitches do a little have a little message from our impact mascot Hal so without further Ado with digital connections spanning the globe why are we more isolated than ever can artificial intelligence bridge this Gap or does it widen the chasm of loneliness join us for the great debate as we discuss ai's influence on human connection and the lon less epidemic just in time for Valentine's Day or Lonely Heart's day for some the great debate asks if AI stands as a friend
in our Quiet Moments or as the designer of our isolation our Master of Ceremonies Haley Wilson is the Fairy Godmother of AI joining her in the arena are Ashley gross a techsavvy marketing Maestro nethan luthra an AI innovator and Explorer Lena tredi a creative and trailblazing Visionary and Patty Kettle an engagement Guru and strategist now let's get to it Haley are you ready Buu was ready as ever let's do good luck Debaters all right so officially welcome to the great debate we are going to be
asking as Hal told us will AI help solve or worsen the loneliness epidemic and straight off the headlines today San Mato County California they actually issued a public health emergency what was it was it hurricanes no was it earthquakes NOP it was loneliness and the lonel loneliness epidemic we are seeing surveys come out where we say one in four Americans feel lonely and we know there's a lot of not so great uh health benefits or I should say uh not benefits but side effects of having lonelin
ess so we're going to talk to some fabulous people today this will be a formal debate just like it was in college boo so just so you know we're going to start off with opening statements then we're going to go into cross examination we will have rebuttal this will be an opportunity in our audience questions to get hear from you guys comments questions you can go ahead and send them into the chat as we go along in the great debate and we will get to you when we can and then we will close with our
closing statements we will follow this rousing hour which will go very fast I promise with another hour of more informal conversation where you can actually join us on stage and ask questions debate with The Debaters tell us what we got wrong tell us what we got right um and we're excited so let's go ahead and get started Ashley you're up for your opening statement go on sister and just so you oh one other last thing before I'm I go it's important for to note this is theater so you see we have
Devil's Advocates we have eternal Optimus the people here are playing personas so just because for example Lena is on the devil's Advocates does not mean that AI she thinks AI is going to destroy the world she's playing a part just like everyone else on this including me so um just want to make that clear these are personas and not actual representations of the feelings and opinions of the people who are presenting them cool all right Ashley over to you sister thanks Haley before a came around l
oneliness was a big issue we just couldn't crack no matter how hard we tried it's a tough one it's deeply rooted in what makes us human we've always known loneliness is that heavy feeling of being sad or cut off from others and despite all of our efforts getting rid of it completely has been out of the question but now with AI stepping into the picture we've got a whole new set of tools to help lighten that load loneliness isn't just about feeling blue every now and then it's a constant struggle
for a lot of people that's where AI comes in offering a fresh chance to connect in ways we haven't seen before through easy to use apps and platforms AI is becoming a key player in tackling loneliness giving us personalized support and ways to boost our social lives take apps like Pi character Mino blue fever and wisdo for example they're at the Forefront showing us just how much AI can do to fight loneliness they're a bit like the early days of FaceTime and WhatsApp which totally changed how w
e keep in touch but these AI tools go even further offering support that's tailored just for you making it easier to feel connected and less isolated of course diving into AI isn't without its challenges we've got to keep an eye on things like security and privacy to make sure everyone's safe but the potential for AI to help out with lonel is huge and it's something that we should all be excited about by getting to know Ai and spreading the word we can use it to complement the kindness and creat
ivity we humans are known for building a more welcoming and connected world the idea is to use AI not just just as a tool but as a partner in making sure no one feels alone through apps to understand and adopt to our needs AI can offer the kind of support and connection that really makes a difference so as we move forward it's clear that AI has a big role to play in dealing with loneliness we're looking at a future where technology helps us Forge stronger bonds and makes everyone feel a part of
the community it's all about Ai and using it to bridge the gap between humans AI on its own will not solve the loneliness epidemic but AI plus humans will beautiful and right on time right before I was going to give you the little hand very good okay Patty got to follow that up girlfriend good luck with that I I am ready um you know according to the American Medical Association social isolation and loneliness were associated with a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% risk of stroke so
there's a huge effect on The Human Condition from loneliness and then that effect is exacerbated by the use of AI tools and being on a screen all the time um According to some quantitative data from the Pew research trust loneliness has kind of held stable there's some qualitative data from Massie l in 2011 that says there there's superficial connections through the technical and the technology tools that Ashley mentioned there's longing for deep human relationships and I would argue that the to
ols that are being used now you can get addicted to them and you will then use the tool instead of reaching out for um intimate human companionship things like playing board games with someone things like taking a walk with someone and having a conversation with them the Crux of the problem is that AI is artificial it's right in the wording artificial intelligence I think we need to have authentic human connections and to get get those authentic human connections it needs to occur IRL in real li
fe not with any tool not on any platform not in terms of you know building a universe for yourself in AI the emotional bonds and the sense of things like physical touch and the sound of someone's voice and their actual energy of being you know in proximity to you this cannot be reproduced by any AI tools and the more that the AI tools are rolling out without regulation or without an ethical framework the more likely it is we're just going to get lonelier and lonelier and loner brilliant right on
time as well good good um points and remember you guys are going to have an opportunity plenty of opportunity to address all of these little arguments that are coming up right okay nithan it's up to you bro thank you very much um imagine feeling utterly alone even in a crowded room loneliness a silent epidemic that affects millions of people globally myself included on and off for the last 14 years the toll on physical health is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day we know that loneliness
can play Havoc with physical health and triggered dementia later in life that's not I want what I want for myself and it's not what I'm sure other people who are affected by loneliness would want for themselves too but loneliness isn't new it's arising at an alarming rate especially among gen Z and Millennials and it demands action urbanization digital dependence and societal shifts uh including individualism have fueled this epidemic despite our deep desire for Connection in fact 73% of us adul
ts say they prioritize family and 61% value friendships so how then do we have a loneliness epidemic well we strive for connection but traditional Solutions often fall short and require people to be proactive therapy isn't accessible to all and social media while offering connection can paradoxically deepen isolation humans have simply not been able to solve the loneliness challenge themselves we need help what if I told you technology often blame for disconnection holds the key to reconnection
enter AI companions not emotionless robots but intelligent systems that offer companionship understanding and a non-judgmental space AI companions can offer 24/7 companionship combating isolation and providing a listening ear when they need it most this can be lifechanging for vulnerable individuals think of an elderly person isolated at home finding comfort in Daily conversations and reminders or a teenager struggling with social anxiety gaining confidence through safe interactions while AI is
in its infancy progress is exponential of course there are concerns privacy safety responsible development these are all crucial but let's not let these concerns overshadow the potential good AI is evolving rapidly imagine you know companions that can help adapt to users change their moods help them with cultural nuances this personalization can lead to deeper connections and more than some human interactions together policymakers mental health professionals and Tech innovators have a massive op
portunity to harness ai's power responsibly let's not replace human connection but bridge the gap creating a world where no one feels truly alone this challenge is daunting but with a collective action AI can be a very powerful tool for the good against the fight and loneliness than you thank you Nathan it's wonderful all right Lena last but certainly not least over to you sister for your openings team thank you if you believe that the future of our existence lies within our children then we rea
lly have to look at how AI is interacting with the world that we're leaving this is the world that our children will be leading Our Generation invented social media and look at what social media has done to our children from cyber bullying to body shaming to photograph photoshopped image standards that no human can achieve in real life it's staggering our children are clinically depressed they're suicidal mental health facilities are a that are serving our youth are at capacity they have waiting
lists we've already seen how unregulated technology such as social media has taken life's Joy away from our children social media companies are getting sued in multiple jurisdictions for causing suicide eating disorders and so much more let's not allow AI to repeat those mistakes that we made with social media let's really think of how AI is impacting our world the state of AI today is not providing any hope for our children my child's best friends are AI companions her first 14 boyfriends were
AI boyfriends when I was 14 I was trying to figure out how to get boys to like me my child doesn't care about human boys my child will dispose boyfriends with the first point of tension and simply go get a new boyfriend in just a couple minutes with just a few clicks AI is irreversibly impacting human development within our children in our teen years we really learned how to resolve conflicts with our peers yet my child has a skewed idea of how conflicts are resolved because her AI friends and
her AI boyfriends bend around her whims and desires making human contact undesirable when I tell her that AI boyfriends are crippling her emotionally and mentally because now she has an unrealistic expectation of human life Partners she argues why would I ever need a man true however this is a sticking point in our argument true you do not need a man but you should know how to keep one just in case you find one you like I've learned AI boyfriends can be very attractive but they're not real our c
hildren are being reared to expect instant gratification or suffer immediate disposal this applies to their AI friends and their human friends this is the beginning of the end of the world as we know it unless we make intentional strides towards managing AI to protect our children brilliant and Lena remind me how old is your daughter again 14 14 a boyfriend for every year I see how that is yeah um okay now we're going to enter into the cross-examination this is where you guys actually get to eng
age with one another and Ashley as a for our our plan here you are going to get to ask the devil's Advocates go ahead and cross exam and ask them questions and I'm only going to be timing you I won't be timing them but guys don't take advantage of that because I will I'll pull you I'll mute you I will I have the power point of clarification so she asked all the questions and then we respond because we're using the formal debate structure okay you got it girl reminding myself no it's good this is
good I don't know what y'all don't know I don't know what I don't know all right over to you so my first question is loneliness is by definition a feeling so why wouldn't we be able to use technology to change how we feel and perceive the world around us it's a good one so Patty or Newan y'all can tackle that as you as you please Patty or Lena um wouldn't we be able to I'm going to come back to my point from earlier about human touch and authentic human connections versus artificial and manufac
tured human connections we need real human touch real human voices real humans to help us adapt our feelings that's one point the other point is the only one ultimately responsible for how we feel about things is ourselves and you have to to change how you think I do think an AI tool can help you but ultimately the responsibility is with the human and ultimately we need authentic and real connection not manufactured artificial connections yeah and Ashley you can respond if you like you still hav
e a few minutes left yeah so under the same you know topic of AI compliment in human interaction I guess my second follow-up question would be then how do you reconcile the growing body of evidence suggesting that AI companions can significantly enhance human interactions for those suffering from social isolation especially when those traditional human contact is not possible well the Empirical research I explored shows a different point of view in saying that Ai and artificial tools offer a tem
porary relief to loneliness but they don't offer any long-term Solutions so it may alleviate it temporarily it may make you feel comfortable temporarily but at the end of the day human beings need IRL human connections that are authentic and not manufactured do I have time to respond to that yep and then if and I also want to give Lena a chance too so you go ahead Ashley and then Lena see if you have anything you wanted to CU I saw her nod in her head so perfect so in the realm of evidence I wou
ld love to go ahead and share something that I pulled and found so I actually looked up a study by Dr Rose goonrich from Princeton and it actually shows that AI companions can be a Lifeline for those struggling with isolation um specifically it it talks about the long-term benefits which include increased confidence and better social health just thanks to these little AI companion interactions so I just wanted to add that last point in there thanks haly absolutely Lena anything you want to add y
ou don't have to I don't I don't want to throw off the time but I just want to chime in on what Patty was saying about how the evidence suggests that the the benefits are temporary I see that with my child she gets this immediate Joy but then she goes right back to immediately being depressed until she's able to connect with her companions again it's building a dependence That's not healthy well it's interesting I will say it's interesting she chose to have as many as she has it suggests that no
t that I'm choosing sides I'm just calling out an interesting observation that as she has 14 I mean I I couldn't handle 14 real life boyfriends for sure I've tried that it's not as easy as it sounds okay AI boyfriends do get mad at you they get mad at you and then she doesn't know how to resolve conflict so she leaves and go get a new one oh my goodness okay all right well Ashley thank you so much that was wonderful Patty it's now your turn to do a little examination if you'd like yes um Ashley
and Nathan your argument is that there are tools out there you mentioned several apps that can help alleviate loneliness however thinking ahead AI gets smarter and smarter and smarter and smarter so at some point in time from listening to Lena's personal story I'm wondering if the AI would get so smart they might get annoyed at the human and then they would dump them and I'm just wondering what what happens if this is the big if you know we see all over the place AI is coming for us the robots a
re coming they can redo code and make it malicious so what happens if one of those tools you've mentioned becomes malicious and is actually becoming a bully and not a friend or a support I'm happy to take this one I'm going to answered in the terms of data privacy and security because I feel like that's what you really want to get to correct me if I'm wrong uh I'm not that is part of it um I think there's I think there's a h there's an emotional part and my wondering is you know can AI really li
ke learn the emotions there are humans we know who can't so I'm just very curious I think data and privacy is a separate issue I think what Patty is asking is how do you avoid manipulation of human emotions well we've already seen how many AI tools there are out there and as time goes on they only start to get better and learn more and the longer they're out there the more time we get to add more governance and policies and ongoing you know acceleration of remediation support so my general answe
r to your statement would be just like every other emerging technology we've seen it's going to get better with time we can't expect these to to be great when they've only been around for one or two years I think it takes time and it takes dedication and it takes people first making all of these tools accessible and then making the education for all these tools accessible so that we do limit the manipulation but in the same tone I would say why are we limiting the manipulation of Technology just
to AI don't we get spam calls all the time on cell phones and we've had those all of our Lives I see your hand rais Nathan I'm going let you go ahead thank you think about auto travel think about airplanes think about all of the different technologies that emerged you know these things take time we are in infancy of AI so there's there's definitely some cracks that we need to take care of and um My Philosophy is that you know together with the right stakeholders and if we focus on educating peo
ple on connection if we focus on ensuring that people feel safe with the with the information that they're leveraging with AI if we have data and privacy concerns remediated and if we also um have people understand the mental health consequen of over Reliance on AI Companions and things like that we'll be in a position to make sure that we tailor the the um technology so it is suitable to help remediate aspects of loneliness loneliness is a complex problem there's so many different reasons why w
e have it but it's not new it's this isn't something that AI has brought along in fact it's been in existence for centuries so I I really do believe that if we focus on evolving the technology and working collaboratively not as silos I think we can really come to a place where AI can be used for good and use it to bridge human connectedness I think the issue I have is that we need to use it to facilitate human connectedness and not focus on just synthetic conversations only brilliant okay um Nat
han you want to continue well Lena looks like you had something to say do you want to say go ahead girlfri I I hear both Ashley and nithan say that this is a technology that's in its infancy it's only been around for a year or two we need to give it time to you know take hold and show us what we can do and what I'm hearing is that we need to sacrifice our children because we're seeing in these first couple years the dangers of these Technologies these depressed teens and their relationship with
technology is just mindboggling and I'm not willing to sacrifice our children in order to see where the technology can go I think that we need to take hold of it and steer it in the right direction which we're not doing right now just to clear oh if I may and just to be clear in 1956 at Dartmouth Ai and machine language learning was being explored it's not new what is new as generative AI which is the ability to respond via conversation and language rather than through code so it it really excus
e me is not new it's generative AI this iteration gives more functionality that is new but maybe just to add to that if you don't mind generative AI is what is driving the technology behind companions that's only been out for two or three years so uh respectfully Patty it is relatively new um just wanted to bring that point up okay Nathan you it's your turn to cross-examine thank you so very much um so I guess my question is directed to my co-founder and wonderful friend Le um at joy. uh Lena yo
u know you talked a little bit about uh you know your daughter having been exposed to AI Companions and um it would seem to me like you've been supportive of it given the fact that she's been open about using these these AI companions for friendship purposes um if you are so against it why are you allowing your daughter to continue to use this technology you know technology is so intertwined in the lives of today's youth this is the iPad generation it asking our children to stop looking at Tik T
ok videos or scrolling through Discord is like asking them to stop breathing anyone that knows teenagers will will understand that sentiment it in fact our schools they routinely ask our children if they have access to the internet at home and if they say that they don't then a social worker will call you to help your family get back on the grid because according to the world of public education the internet is a necessity so it's hard to even though my child and I talk openly about how she's us
ing technology it's very difficult to block her from it so if I do say okay I don't want you having AI companions then what'll probably happen is she's going to live vicariously through the relationships of her peers and then her friends will be chatting and she'll be kind of on the sidelines telling them oh say this say that do this and do that there's no way to stop it so you're saying peer pressure is now the reason why you continue to allow your daughter to use this technology versus whether
it's actually going to help her combat and is you know uh remediate her loneliness and isolation feelings it's not it's not so much peer pressure it's just the world that we live in right now and it's integral to the world that they are being growing up in and it sounds crazy but we are the last generation that's going to understand what life was like before this connection with technology and before social media so how do we take what we know the differences and apply it to the children that a
re growing up today that have iPads starting at the age of two that have multiple devices by the time they're in kindergarten that have a cell phone by the time they're in second grade yeah there there's a parental responsibility though isn't there you know we can't just assume AI is at fault for creating you know challenges in loneliness and isolation I would argue that parents also have a responsibility to you know be educated and Safeguard their children that brings me to another question is
it okay to go ahead and asky Y go ahead and then Lena you get take after this you can do your cross examination so just whatever he's dishing you you can dish it right on back okay so uh yeah Lena this is directed to you again um you know you've been in AI for 10 years a long time even before it was cool I think you were involved in this space yet you believe AI can hinder human connection but you're working as a co-founder with yours truly me um so can you perhaps Enlighten us as to what appear
s to be contradiction yeah it's true that I do believe that the path that we are on right now is going to damage Humanity um we cannot we won't see the future of the world as we know it today if we don't take mindful steps to preserve human connection and that's what I'm seeing lacking what I am your co-founder joy. AJ ii. a and that's something that me and you are mindfully doing but I don't see anybody else doing that and that's what's concerning to me so if we continue on the path that we're
on if we continue to try to boot STP the technology that we're trying to create that's actually going to solve this issue while our peers in the space are having ample amounts of VC funding being thrown at them then it's going to be a struggle to see the road that AI is going to take and that's the concern that I have and we're we're building something that's going to connect us with the people that matter most to us and how do we how how do we take the struggle that we're experiencing and navig
ate it to where it's going to actually make an impact there's more factors than just our drive here and when we look at the the path that AI is on right now it's it's disturbing and I'm seeing it as you know from all the personal stories that I've shared i' I'm seeing it unfold in my home and yes there is a parental responsibility but like I said the schools are enabling part of it too so how do I is now my parental responsibility to pull my child out of school to pull her out of the community i
n general because the community in general is adhering to all of this technology now I'm I'm in this this this mix of okay I have to isolate my child in order to protect her which is the exact problem that I'm trying to fix well said well then I think may I add on to that Haley I think it no matter what the tool can do or what it is I think it comes back to human touch human sound of voice human warmth and the human who is using that tool needs to play a pretty good guiding hand in it um otherwi
se it is just gonna isolate people people are they'll just get addicted it's it's a known fact the dopamine hits you get from being online I mean they're they're built to encourage those dopamine hits and I think to thinking it through we we need to teach people how to get their dopamine hits from real humans so it does come back to real human connection and authenticity not just an artificial tool may I go ahead go ahead go ahead I just want to kind of reiterate the question we're debating is W
ill AI solve the loneliness epidemic and if we look at that question loneliness again is a feeling it's not a human touch and yes it can it you can feel less lonely with human connection but it is a feeling and feelings can be changed when we change our perception so who's to say the technology can't change our perception and make us less lonely can I add to that just one last thing because I think it speeds on from Ashley um I live um by myself um all of my close friends and Inner Circle member
s are in either different countries or different states um while I physically am alone uh mentally I'm connected to those people and I I I agree with Ashley it's a feeling um so physical proximity doesn't necessarily make somebody less alone or more alone I I think it's it's a it's a mental thing too so just wanted to add that I know that's a good point it makes me just want to go over there and give you a hug yeah hug a hug a physical touch well that's just Haley's love language I could KN a sw
eater I would I would P those cheek um okay Lena it's up to you to close out our cross-examinations yes yes so I um want to post the question you know after taking in everything that we've discussed here today and exploring the potential of AI Companions and AI connections giving us a temporary temporary relief as opposed to a longterm term a long-term effect as well as seeing the effect that AI is having on our children over a long term in terms of the depression rates and the suicidal rates an
d such how is it that I I just want I want I want The Optimist to break down how is it that AI is giving us this hope as opposed to destroying the world as we know it this world that was built on community over centuries of existence can you repeat the question yeah I'm sorry so I I just want The Optimist to break down how AI is giving us hope while simultaneously breaking down the community the sense of community that our world has been built on over centuries of existence go ahead okay do you
mind if I take that one Ashley and feel free to you yeah so um I think we've got to stop looking at the uh Legacy AI Companions and let's start looking at the new technologies that are emerging as we speak I mean there are uh uh chat Bots that are helping geners connect with other geners to talk about their struggles there are um platforms that are actually connecting uh people to others in the community that have experienced some of the issues that they've been dealing with there is a um now a
new technology coming out that's effectively helping people uh get mentored to solve issues in various relationships whether it's with co-workers uh with with members of uh their family and friends and then there's a new emerging technology which I'm super excited to share with you and that's um a really amazing company called joy. and what they're effectively doing is they're bringing in uh sort of like a wingman they're using AI to facilitate human- to human connectedness because at the end of
the day we all know doing life with those that matter most makes life easier and more fun so imagine leveraging AI as a personal wingman to make sure you stay informed on what's happening with your friends and family to facilitate interactions whether they be uh uh IRL to Patty's point or even virtually this technology is going to be groundbreaking these are the sorts of things that we need so I think the new emergence of these Technologies is changing the way we should be thinking about compan
ionship and AI companions there evolving Ashley I don't know if you want to add anything yeah there's two parts of her question that I want to hit on and she brought up the words hope and community and I would argue that anything can give you hope and even if it's generative AI in its early stages giving you hope I'm sure if we looked at someone's brain and compared two brains one that had hope and one that didn't it doesn't matter how they got the hope they're still in a much more positive spac
e than people that don't have the hope that's one thing I want to point out the second thing is the community aspect and you brought up how in your opinion generative AI is breaking down communities well I would argue that there's already communities in place that aren't healthy and if you ask any Community engagement member it's not like they hopped on a bike and made an amazing Community right away they had to iterate it over and over again and put policies in place and rules and regulations a
nd it was a growing pain but at some point it grew and the healthiest communities that I've seen have not been just around for a year two years they've been around for a long time because they have people and policies in place that care about everyone's mental health so I would I would say that your counterargument is a great counterargument back to you guys I mean Community takes years to develop so why are we expecting generative AI to be perfect right off the bat I mean we can say that hope y
ou can find Hope in anything but the numbers and the what we're seeing with our teens is that there is no hope like there's I think 30% of teens right now are clinically depressed which is just what's reported and 177% are wanting to commit suicide so when you look at those numbers there is no hope so what do we do about that so that's essentially what I'm saying that whatever the pattern is of what we've experienced over the last few years is not working and we need to make a massive change and
I'm really excited about the new technology nithan that you spoke about it sounds absolutely amazing and I'm wondering people want to learn more about joy. aai how can they do so I put it in the comment just you guys know it's there joy. a you all see it in there in the comments oh good uh to dovetail off what Lena was saying in March of last year there was a Belgian man who ended his life after six weeks of conversation with an AI chatbot about climate change so I didn't hear either nith nitha
n or Ashley talk about safeguards in any of the tools that they proposed they put forward a lot of tools but I didn't hear about any safeguards for example what I wonder is is it even possible to have a chatbot or an AI interactive tool identify oh they've just crossed the line from unhealthy from healthy to unhealthy and then what will you do about it so I think it does Come Back To Human connection and T I take your point about a feeling but I think we get better more authentic more real warm
feelings from a real human than from staring at a screen and sometimes the screen what comes up because it's iterating on what's in the person's mind um is going to make them take an action that is suboptimal this is before this is a good opportunity for us to go into the rebuttal you get to go first don't worry Lena you won't get your chance don't worry about it just keep little note Ashley you can rebut what Patty is just saying or any of the you know any of the points that they brought up so
far I'm trying to think of the best way because there's so many I think what Patty and Lena are really good at is adding multiple points of view in into questions and I'm trying to think of how I want to break this down I guess maybe we could start with like the evidence of Effectiveness because I've heard that be dinged on quite a bit so my rebuttal would be you know there's there's so much research out there and I would encourage everyone no matter how you feel about this to do your own resear
ch but for me I like to do research whenever there's missing pieces that I need to fill in the gaps and I like to do that with data preferably science fact so for me the first thing that comes up with evidence of Effectiveness is there's an artificial intelligence and Medicine Journal study and I'll link it below um after this is done but it highlights that users of AI companions reported a 25% Improvement in their overall mood and a significant reduction in loneliness levels loneliness levels w
hich is what we debating um and then as far as like continuous Improvement in ethical considerations of course we're not there yet I don't expect us to be there yet I very much would like us to be there but I recognize that we're still as a society trying to form governing bodies and trying to put basic procedures and processes in place and those need put into place before we can build off of them so the IE has established guidelines for ethically aligned design in AI it promotes transparency ac
countability user well-being and ures that AI development continues to prioritize ethical considerations and we're seeing this across the board with all AI companies they're being pressured via the government and also just as a society and being a peer among their Community to uplevel theirselves and provide these transparent policies and what goes into the algorithms and their learning and bias mitigation so we're getting there and we're seeing that it's I would be concerned if we weren't seein
g that movement happen but we are if you go on to any of the apps that I brought up character piie um blue fever weo you'll see a section on their website that says responsible AI policies and procedures and they have them there for you to read you don't have to form fill or anything so I'm happy with where we're at yes there's always room for improvement but I feel safe and protected and I acknowledge that a large part of that is me educating myself and not expecting anyone to do it for me and
putting my bias and feelings aside to look at something exactly how it is and try to take the feelings out of it thanks haly beautiful Patty Lena I'll let you guys I want to let you tag team on this and then we'll do the same for nithan um what my question is you know touching on the argument about loneliness is a feeling and what people would do with an AI tool to alleviate that feeling my concern is that if some someone's mentally a little bit unstable um or is ruminating about something the A
I chatbot is just going to keep reflecting back to them their rumination which psychological Studies have shown that is not healthy to ruminate about something and go down that rabbit hole where you get stuck and just think and think and think and think about the same negative thing all the time so I think I have you know my question is what do both of you you've mentioned regulation you've mentioned there's disclaimers on websites what can happen in the actual AI to identify people who maybe th
ey shouldn't be using an AI tool because the tool is going to make their mental health condition worse yeah I think it's um yeah I think it's an evolving area like again I said right at the beginning there are still cracks you know things that we still have to take care of but my belief is the mental health health he needs to um ultimately come to the table and participate oops is my can you guys hear me okay can I hear you yeah somebody needed to come to the table who needed to come to the tabl
e Yeah so basically the Mental Health Community like if you think about it if we want this technology to be safe and secure and helpful and uh to help remediate the problem we need to have the technology innovators the Mental Health Community policy um makers and a whole constituent of of folks to come together and and put in um you know design suggestions and even um standards to help uh mitigate some of the risks that you're talking about Patty like I said it's a it's a technology that's in it
s infancy we are seeing a lot of evidence that uh companies are taking steps to continuously improve if I look at apple apple has a team of mental health professionals as part of its organization there are lots of companies who are bringing mental health people into organizations to help sure ensure that they shape Technologies so that they uh you know avoid the the the risks that you've um uh stated so it's in its infancy it's not perfect uh I think Ashley pointed to a study from Princeton that
was done that basically shows that um people are actually feeling more connected uh and and feel a better sense of connection uh having used some of these chat spots to help them with these issues so um that study is out there it was I think published on the 21st of September and um it's quite compelling you all have been so good about bringing your evidence like my uh my college professors would have been so proud uh okay nithan I don't know if that if you wanted to add any more in terms of a
rebuttal to anything that Patty and Lena said but it is your turn and then Lena I'm going to come to you sister after this yeah maybe I'll just cover uh data in security a little bit like I know that's a really big concern if you think about the number one concern that people have with AI it's around data inse security and I can tell you that there are Leading Edge companies um that are focused on this issue and there all sorts of things that they're doing to um help mitigate the risks anonymizi
ng data making sure that data is encrypted uh these are just some examples of the things that um people are looking at right now and we um as joy. AI co-founders take this issue very seriously and we are working with um you know a legal firm to ensure that we're in compliance I think regulation is also continuing to improve we have the gdpr in Europe that has some some really uh important standards on this topic so again we're not perfect neither was Aviation back in the day and we can we contin
ue to see some challenges but can you imagine a world where we don't have airplanes it it doesn't it's not even thinkable and I I believe that we'll be at a point in maybe five or 10 years where we will be saying the same thing about AI that you know it's so necessary to help us in the quality of our lives so that's really all I want to say Ashley and thank you so much for being patient uh and listening to my points of view that's great that's why we we brought you here because of your great poi
nts of view all right Lena over to you sister thank you um you know I think we need optimists in our world because when technology is moving as fast as AI is developing it's the optimists that really drive the development but we also need the devil's advocates um to provide that balance and the general sense of logic to to to create that balance the optimists have painted this beautiful theoretical world that simply doesn't exist IRL in real life there are Ripple effects that can leave a digital
footprint that lasts forever and you know I'm I I keep bringing it back to our children the optimists they didn't properly address the data privacy and security of sensitive information that's processed by a lot of these chat Bots sensitive information that's currently recognized by our government might not be sensitive information IRL and I'm going to give a couple of examples my child she talks about all kinds of sensitive things with her AI friends and some of the things she talks about invo
lves regulated information such as the nature of her disability yet it's unclear how that information is store process disclosed when random chatbot has acquired that information that's supposed to be protected and we can take that a step further and explore unregulated information like for example many of the things that our kids they chat about are not at all regulated like for example what their sexual preferences are in their 14-year-old Minds when you when a chatbot collects that informatio
n what happens to it you know I'll be honest when I was 14 I definitely was talking about sex to my friends however I don't recall the exact nature of the conversations and thank God that none of those conversations could ever be transcribed and resurfaced as an adult and that's one of the fears it's a legitimate fear because if those conversations resurfaced I would be completely embarrassed and mortified and when if you've been around middle schoolers you see them giggling and you see them lau
ghing and you know uh a lot of times they're talking about things that are silly and gross and their interactions with AI is to challenge Ai and say the lest most raunchiest thing just to see what the AI says now where is that information being stored is it connected to my child's name and are we entrusting our Tech leaders to safeguard that information from being used appropriately or inappropriately or at all are we trusting Elon Musk and Bill Gates with that information no that's all I have t
o say L's like no I'm not you know it it reminds me there's um there's a podcast it's a humorous podcast called the mortified podcast are you guys familiar with it at all no and essentially it's um you go as an adult you go back to your you know your parents house or something and you find in a a diary that you wrote in when you were a kid and they're taking it out and as part of the mortified podcast they read out loud whatever it was their 12 13 14y old self wrote and often times as appropriat
ely named it is mortifying now why would choose to do this as a you know voluntary activity I'm not entirely sure character development it does yeah it does bring some interesting questions you know we find that interesting entertaining so you know is is that someone some um you know kind of not such a great let's say we have another Mark Zuckerberg who says you know what I got all this these mortifying things from these kids let's respit it out and we'll make our own podcast I mean it's an it's
an interesting question definitely um do you guys want to address that before I go into the audience questions anything that she has to say one quick thing what you were saying Haley made me think of the fact I forget what year it was very early on in Facebook they were doing psychological testing without people's permission on the content they showed them and so to dovetail off of what Lena said it is it is back to cyber security and privacy and the permissions that are given um but those agai
n are Quantified by humans who make sure that that things are protected and as we're this is so new we don't have a lot of Regulation it's very concerning to me that folks who don't necessarily understand mental health deeply or don't acknowledge the fact that you know you need how can a 14-year-old give permission I guess is my point get get that permission not give um I'm sure there are 14- year-olds who go to the websites that are first selling liquor or what have you and all it does is put a
popup that says are you 21 well duh they're going to answer yes um so I'm very very concerned that a exponentially AI is developing too fast for us to control it in a healthy way I think Ray Kurtz said the Tipping Point is 2030 um that the robots will overtake Us in terms of their capabilities and what they're able to do and I think we need to be very very Discerning in how we go forward with AI I'd like to comment go ahead my darling I I keep seeing the same pattern so first I want to say no t
echnology is perfect right can any of us honestly say that one technology that we have has never failed us I can't I can't and I don't think that you live I'm not gonna add that to the list we'll tell you that right now L you have some bugs you have to work out please and thank you but my point is no technology is without its flaws so again you know if we want to talk about children and what they're putting online and living online yes thank God that I avoided that era but also there's a certain
responsibility that the parents have that the children have I remember in school that I was taught that anything that I put online could be used for or against me and that's stuck with me and I don't put personal things online and I do control the narrative that exists online for that reason but it was because I was educated of what could happen so just like any other technology it's the parents Duty it's the government Duty it's everyone's shared responsibility to put these policies and proced
ures into place that's it Ashley you know I mean I I educate my child but there are so many parents and families that are here that just don't have a clue how AI Works how technology Works they're starting to learn as their children are getting into it and with AI moving as fast as it is it's hard for some families to keep up so then do their children just end up kind of steering the ship that's what I'm saying it it it it's posing a lot of really difficult questions would you buy are you let's
just rephrase it this way are you an Apple user um I use both okay did you go out and buy a computer without knowing anything about it well I didn't but I'm not talking about me I'm talking about you know maybe I'm at the Ronald McDonald house right now there's 85 families here and I'm probably the most technologically advanced probably out of everyone in this home there's a lot of people here that have no idea how to use technology outside they struggle with Facebook they struggle what a great
opportunity for you since you have the highest education on this topic to help them understand and to educate them more isn't that community that is community right but the the the balance it's not balanced like there's one of me there's 84 other families here and I'm only here for a period of time you know so the technology it's moving so fast there has to be a leash on it so that we're able to allow people to keep up with it people don't have there's a lot of people out there that cannot just
develop an instant knowledge of how technology works but what if you just focused on educ ating one person and then that one person educated somebody else and we could start this beautiful domino effect of educating everyone by just focusing on sharing what we know with one person it works it works on Theory it also sounds like a recipe for disenfranchisement to me but um you know I Think It's Tricky and I think it's something that we can't necessarily push forward as fast as we are and without
being mindful of how we're doing it I totally agree with you but as far as solving loneliness it absolutely can it can help us solve it which is what you just said you alone can't do it that's our whole argument you can't do it on your own but with AI you can I agree with you too I mean I'm in I'm in technology I'm developing a solution for this very problem I think though that there is a lot of mindfulness that needs to occur in the industry because I think that there are a lot of companies rig
ht now that are not mindfully developing and that's the challenge that I have and that's a good um a question I have for for you guys is that what does that look like for the devil's Advocates what does that mindfulness like best case scenario for you what would you have the Eternal Optimus and the rest of us do to address this like what's your it can be in it could be rep still representing your personas okay because this is I'm not ask Lena I'm not asking Patty I'm asking The Devil's Advocate
that's I think the biggest challenge that there is no framework that exists right now there's no Foundation that we can look to of how as a new developer that has a spark of an idea there's no guidelines of how to safeguard human connection and how to safeguard our children when it comes to developing Ai and that's one of the things that I've been working on with nithan we're producing a white paper that addresses this very topic so I'm hoping that that's a spark that will be built upon over tim
e with all of the developers that are out there that have amazing ideas that are trying to solve not just the loneliness problem but other problems that potentially could be impacted by loneliness by AI how how does it all intersect together and how can we just follow a framework of rules so that we can so that we can develop responsibly right nean absolutely May first of all the trains left the station The Regulators are way behind um we saw in the executive order um that was published by the w
hite house uh from um uh President Biden and there was no discussion about social connectedness in the regulation at all in fact that's one of the reasons why Lena and I decided to put the white paper together because somebody has to start to put a point of view on this issue and how we can successfully uh remediate the crisis and we believe we we jointly believe AI can definitely help there's emerging technologies that we really haven't scratched the surface on yet the ones that I mentioned ear
lier these are new these have all come out within the last six months to one year maybe even less so if we base our opinions on Legacy companions I you know character Ai and replica it's a bit unreasonable because there are new technologies that are emerging that genuinely are helping drive connectedness that's another point and um since Lena took the Limelight and said we are publishing a white paper we are and our view on the white paper is really five or six key things we need collaboration a
cross all the stakeholders the people that matter mental health professionals technology innovators and uh policy makers um and healthc Care Professionals even the public needs to get involved my advice to anybody listening to this who's not necessarily famili familiar with technology and familiar with AI start to get familiar with it it's really important this is a gamechanging technology there is good and we recognize there's some some risk too but it's really important that you stay informed
and and forums like what Haley's put together are great ways for people to stay informed on on this very important topic um we need to provide better education both in the schools for for the youngsters and also um you know uh in in adult education as well to help people stay informed we need the mental health professionals to step up and they need to come to the table and they need to start helping us gear these Technologies so that we don't cause adverse mental health impacts on people so to t
he mental health professionals out there get involved this is we need you we need you to help us figure out how to put guard rails in place and to our wonderful Regulators without which we wouldn't have an amazing world we need your help we need you to get moving to get familiar with the Technologies and to think about social connectedness it's the number one crisis in the world to solve for yet no debate a presidential debate no no conversations I'm hearing are even talking about this issue so
let's step it up amen sir amen was that your closing statement nithan or was that just like closing beginning ending you name it it's everything all in one love that well we did have a question come in and I wanted to ask you guys this one since you asked a lot actually answered a lot of the ones I had just fantastic as AI advances it show to become more and more deceptive right so it's it's getting smarter uh more like us and how should we adapt to AI knowing our emotional triggers better than
us I can take this one oh girl um I will also I'll start it with a learning so I thought I was really great at communication until four years ago I started using generative Ai and then I realized I suck at communicating and I needed to add more context set my expectations and communicate clear in a way that if somebody an actual human being would have said hey I don't understand what you're trying to say can you be more clear I would have gotten offended probably but because it was an AI bot and
it was literally me having a conversation with essentially myself and it still didn't understand what I wanted I was humbled and I learn from it and that's kind of what we have to do is just start somewhere and start learning and start holding these generative AI companies and their products accountable by telling them what we want and what we don't want and I I mean that literally through prompts saying I want this I don't want this even adding your triggers in if you're comfortable with that
so that you don't get offended or there's not a negative experience right because we didn't even dive into that but if you're looking at any emerging technology if you have a negative First experience you're less likely to come back the second time so setting those expectations and doing a little bit of pre-learning before we even engage is is really the only way to mitigate that as a concern in my opin opinion well said Devil's Advocates you want to reply to that well are you on you're mute Pat
ty you're mute I think Ashley just proved our Point um that you do need the human mindfulness and intention intentionality and education in order to have any AI tool be effective so I would like to thank her for proving our point oh well on the contrary I actually said humans plus technology can solve loneliness you actually said humans on their own cannot and I agree with you we cannot oh you go yeah that was actually our opening statement is that you know humans haven't been able to solve the
problem if they were we probably wouldn't be sitting at this uh wonderful event talking about the issue so technology can be off end if we harness it the right way I still come back to the healthiness of human interaction and having close relationships and having a hug and having actual human contact and I don't think there's no AI tool that can provide that experience is it at all possible Patty that that's your love language because I'll tell you right now physical touch is not mine and I woul
d be mortified if somebody gave me a hug and I didn't give them permission to because that's just not how I choose to be loved so is it all possible that this depends on the person and how they receive and give love studies show that a sixc hug every day is beneficial for lowering heart rate risks and for cognitive abilities and for the ability to feel connected and feel optimistic so you may want to review your love language oh and the average human requires seven hugs per day or per week in or
der to maintain emotional equilibrium so that's just you know kind of where we're at at a Baseline and then obviously you know with the onset of technology I think that has sort of come down a little bit but that could be part of you know some of the challenges that we're having that we're not we're not having that human connection but my argument isn't that hugs are bad I understand that hugs are good all I'm saying is why can't we build up to the hug using any technology we can to get more con
fidence maybe we're really shy and we don't want to go out and meet friends right away right during the pandemic we were all walked inside for two years so I'm sure coming out of that we can all relate how weird it was to start having actual conversations in real life again how nice would it would have been if we had assistance from any emerging technology that gave us confidence boosters and kind of gave us baby steps to work up to those in real life relationships this is I'm trying to say gene
rative AI can be the bridge to get you there go from zero to 100 yeah if the end goal is that then I'm in full support of it but right now the path that the majority of the technology that's out there that people are you know adopting is not having that as the end B and I think that's what we where we need to steer the is the end goal Lena what do you why do you what do you think their end goal is right now there's that fake Reliance you know when you look at AI companions for example there's a
Reliance that's building on these companions that's taking away from humano Human connection and I think the end goal needs to be human to human connection yeah just getting de I mean I I'd just like to add one thing it was my birthday two or three days ago and there wasn't somebody to give me a hug um there you know I was my own but um I was doing life together like I said with the people that matter most my parents gave me a call my brother and sister gave me a call my friends Lena inclusive A
shley um Patty yourself Haley and a few others gave me a call and that made me feel connected and it made me feel good and sometimes it's not going to be possible to have IRL I how often do I have IRL not that often but if I have strong relationships facilitated by AI making sure I'm aware of what's going on in their day-to-day lives for them to understand how I'm feeling on a given day because my technology has connected with with their Ai and give them given them some insights I believe that t
hat will help help strengthen and maintain con I I I agree with Ashley it's a feeling it's a feeling loneliness is a feeling and and I'm a testament to that I really am so you know I I do think there's definitely cracks in the system and and I I believe that we need to step it up and work together to resolve these issues but I am telling you in five years time I'll buy you all a drink if in five years time we haven't seen um some Progressive Technologies really help solve the connectedness issue
IRL could definitely be a phone call it could be a zoom call it could be a text message but it needs to be a phone call with a human it needs to be a text message with a human on the other side not Jose my AI friend well if it's facilitated by AI Lena absolutely so in other words we're all busy we all lead busy lives can you imagine your AI and my AI were able to find opportunities for us to connect either IRL or virtually that would definitely help so I feel it's a bridge and I feel we can um
we're going to see that in the next five years at least on my watch I have a question for the team here because I know we're going off script a little bit but I'm I'm in into this conversation you guys all seen Cast Away you know with the volleyball was that a healthy relationship I think that could be argued either way because it got him through a hard place that he was in and without it who would have knows who who knows how that movie would have ended also he was able to give his uh his we co
mpanion hug it was it was IRL so um but you could argue You could argue when Wilson who couldn't love him back never could talk to him back floated away that feeling of complete utter berness the feeling of betrayal that we felt for him over a damn volleyball is that healthy I'm being I'm being a d Devil's Advocate too but I mean this is really what we're arguing we're arguing I mean it's it's technology what how it deep and and Broad it goes but ultimately what we're dealing with is our own hum
an natural instinct to personify because I'm not going to try to get anamorph anamorph I can't get that word anything to satisfy our loneliness Haley to your point though I think you brought up a great you're kind of poking at a bigger question here is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all and that is something that as a society we're very divided about as well so I don't think that this is a on siiz fits-all I think that this is very personal and a decision that shoul
d be taken equally as personalized as any other decision that you would make yeah right I haven't seen the movie so I'll check back in in a couple hours let you know my response but but actually the ball got him through like you know sorry to go back to that but the ball got him through um what was probably the darkest you know part of his time so if that ball hadn't been there how would you have got through that mentally I mean you can make that argument too if you watch the movie yeah and you
know there is Wilson the volleyball that he turns into a relationship essentially on this island out of just sheer loneliness that came from a very very human need and the things that I do see everyone on this call agree with agree on is that loneliness is the absence of a human need being filled we all have a need to be connected right it's an absence so the question is what do we use and allow and encourage to be used as um in place of not having that human connection there and it seems like i
t's not so much that anyone on this call is saying no to AI ever it's just to what degree yes or no I'm want to make sure I'm summarizing everyone's viewpoints correctly it's what to what degree how and what I don't think you guys I don't think um even the Eternal Optimus would argue giving a dementia patient who doesn't even remember his wife's name and AI bot is a good idea I would I would argue that's probably not what you guys are saying you don't want to do right no absolutely not yeah it's
no we're just saying boundaries guidelines and even just to break it down even simpler don't the the apps that I gave a shout out to I've used I've looked at their policies I named Pi character Amo blue fever and wizo I wouldn't feel comfortable nor would I ever give advice and tell someone to use the app without first trying it myself and educating myself and I think at a minimum if that's what everyone in this group and everyone watching this live hopefully can take away that's the main point
is educate yourself access these tools yourself and then share and then let's let's make that the foundation that we build on top of accessibility and education so ultimately this is a question for everyone who is responsible for us using the this responsibly is it the parents is it the kids is it us individually is it the government to come in and regulate is it the mental health organizations to get their together which they haven't in the last 20 years the pandemic was a disaster in that reg
ard is it the the people creating these tools and I would argue you go ahead go ahead I think it's all of the I was gonna say yeah I was just gonna say Haley when when a tornado comes and sweeps through a town the responsibility for recovering from that doesn't fall on any one individual or any one entity everybody comes in and pitches in to figure out how to recover this this demolished town and that's kind of the state that we're in right now you just mentioned about California uh declaring th
e state of emergency we have all of these officials that are saying that we are in a state of some type of emergency in varying levels depending on what part of the country or what part of the world you are in we need to come together we need to all pitch in and not point fingers saying it's the parents responsibility it's the you know The Regulators it's the government it's the you know we all need to pitch in yeah like saying Lena it's almost like not not it not it not it not it no we're all i
t we are all here's the thing we should learn from what's happened with social media what a catastrophe and unadulterated unmitigated disaster that was right I think the reason why we're on this call today is to highlight that we don't want to go back there we don't want to be watching Congress debates where technology innovators are are turning up and apologizing for the fatality of people we want to be responsible and you know to Lena's point I think to Patty to Ashley to to yourself I complet
ely agree this is a collective responsibility and it starts now and we need to start having more of these discussions and actually start to put things into action so that we can be in a place where in 5 years time we're not watching Congress live where AI technology innovators are in front of Congress um you know apologizing um somewhat superficially on the impact that they've had on you know various people that's not the way to go completely agree and really one of the main reasons we created t
he this form an impact was because we didn't really want Elon Musk and Sam Altman's in Congress to be the ones who are only having the conversation because that's really what happened with a lot of the social media stuff and I do worry because I see I'm usually Fair anti-regulation because it doesn't really do very good job like right um and the the these multi-billionaires who have control of this technology right now they have a lot of weight in Congress so there's the question of can we reall
y hope that that those are those entities are going to be able to not won't let us down the here like they have with social media I think um you know I would add that you know society's responsible to drive change so we as Society have to be informed we have to take the we have to have the desire to get ourselves educated I think many of my colleagues mentioned that on the call today and it's so important so you can't sit back and be a spectator you have to get involved and you have to understan
d the implications this technology can have so that you can help shape it you can talk to people the Regulatory Field you can talk to Mental Health Care companions you can talk to your technology innovators of the solutions you're using you know they have you know customer awareness customer success organizations that can help we we we all need to take some responsibility and dive in we have to dive in y 100% agree okay I there a everything go ahead L I was just gonna say there's a space for eve
rything I mean even AI companions as much as I've been kind of talking about how much of a hindrance it's been in human development I believe there's a space for them but we need to figure out what that appropriate space is and for what population it's serving and that's what we kind of need to figure out rather than just seeing the path that it takes on its own that's what I do not want to see yeah agreed I think unchecked capitalism in in this regard is maybe not the answer please feel free to
disagree with me okay we've kind of gone through a lot of the um audience questions it's 11:20 um 11 24 I want to give you guys an opportunity to each of you give your prepared closing statement and then at the conclusion of that um if you guys would like to stay on and have a little more informal conversation to continue this we can do that but I want to make sure that I know you guys have prepared them and so I just want to make sure I give you that opportunity if you guys remember it goes As
hley Patty nithan and Lena so Ashley over to you girl lady you know I mean that nicely all the above um I would say thank you we're at a Crossroads with technology and human connection it's very evident in this call and and just in general the conversation about ai's role in addressing the loneliness epidemic it's more relevant now than ever and it's a discussion that you could see was filled with concerns and hopes and skepticism and optimism so as we wrap up this dialogue I just want everyone
to remember that at the heart of every technological advancement there's a human story an actual Narrative of seeking connection understanding and companionship so the concerns about data privacy and security the fear of overreliance on AI and the potential for AI to either exasperate or alleviate the loneliness crisis are not just theoretical debates the reflections of our hopes and anxieties about the future so as we navigate these challenges let's not lose sight at the potential to transform
our lives with AI by focusing on the fear let's focus on the positive and the hope and the future we envision with AI it's not just one that's filled with cold and impersonal interactions but it's a future enriched with understanding support and companionship and it's a future where technology compliments human connection and bridges the Gap and builds communities so let's just try to move forward and embrace AI with cautious optimism and recognize its potential to make our world a little less L
even if it's one connection at a time thanks Sy well said thank you that was awesome heard I've been watching the bear on on Hulu and they all go they say herd Chef herd anyway her girl her Che heard Chef all right Patty over to you sister well AI offers remarkable possibilities in a whole bunch of domains various domains its ability to address the loneliness epidemic is nil and the reason for that is it's fundamentally constrained with a lack of genuine emotional connection empathy and real au
thentic human connection the solution in loneliness is not going to be solved by someone having a device as a complement to the human touch the human interaction it really we need humans humans need other humans humans relate to other humans it's good for your health it's good for your brain and it's crucial to remember the warmth of a human touch the comfort of shared laughter or the shared empathetic bonds is irreplaceable even with an AI tool with human intervention so AI tools will never sol
ve the lonely this crisis thank you Patty heard all right Nathan okay so Society has simply not been able to deal and manage with the loneliness epidemic themselves it just haven't so that is one of the main reasons why I believe we need help um it's a complex issue loneliness and AI certainly isn't the Magic Bullet but its potential to combat isolation and provide support is strong remember even simple companionship and a listening ear can have have a profound impact on someone struggling with
loneliness AI might not replicate human emotions perfectly but advancements are incredible uh imagine AI companions that analyze speech text and even facial expressions to gauge emotional states this combined with uh learning and adaptation can lead to meaningful interactions that address emotional needs moreover social anxiety often stems from the fear of being judged or negative consequences AI companions can provide a safe judgment free space to practice social skills build confidence and pre
pare for real life interactions think of it as training wheels uh as users gain confidence the Reliance on AI can lessen leading to Stronger real world connections AI is not going to replace human connection but it can be a very powerful tool to bridge the gap encourage real life interaction and provide support when needed most let's not be afraid of innovation by embracing AI responsibly we can create a more connected and less lonely world and just to quickly add on data security and privacy it
's a big issue for everybody um there's lots of things that the technology companies are looking into remember that you know we're still in the infancy of generative Ai and the AI companion technology but new technologies are emerging there's auditing and Reporting there's Regulatory Compliance the gdpr CCPA ensures responsible data handling and user rights protection industry standards and certifications that will emerge will help provide the the frame works for best practices and to safeguard
um AI deployment and make sure it's being handled the right way so we bring solutions to people that are really valuable and helpful thank you Haley brilliant thank you Joy Jo ii. a it's in the in the comment section go check it out all right Lena over to you sister thank you thank you Haley uh for putting this together and in just facilitating this dialogue and I want to thank my co-founder nithan too it's been fun public arguing with you usually our arguments are private so this was kind of fu
n um as a tech Visionary and an innovator and developer I always say that the most important job that I have in this world is being a mother I always strive to think of how anything we're developing how it's going to affect our children when we're dealing with something as Monumental as AI there's not one of us that can handle this alone the leading Minds of AI those of us that are here in this forum in the audience and Beyond we all have to band together and stand for our future a future where
our children can Thrive one that doesn't damage their thought process with unrealistic expectations I want a future that protects their private thoughts and safeguards innocent conversations from one day becoming public a future that allows the leading minds of tomorrow to know that they can make a difference in the world the same way that we are right now we need to take a human approach to ensure that our children know the world wants them to be here and AI cannot do that in fact AI has the po
wer to accelerate the polar opposite message to our children and that's what we need to safeguard my child doesn't know her place in the world and she genuinely believes the world doesn't want her here and she's not alone this is a struggle that many of our youth Revel this is how I felt when was 14 however the difference was in my years to follow I had caring empathetic humans that showed me otherwise if we want our children to feel a place in this world we can't allow AI to manipulate their mi
nds by falsely fulfilling their worldly pleasures we need them to understand the important purpose that they serve to Usher the Next Generation our grandchildren into this world with love compassion empathy and understanding these are all things that AI will never authentically provide bird heard sister I want to share one thing too about Lena because um we were recruiting for when I was recruiting Debaters for this and we had Ashley nithan and eternal Optimus Lena you remember you were like I'm
not really sure I want to publicly come out as critical of AI when I'm such an advocate do you remember that I was like don't worry it's all personas do you remember what it was like what was it that convinced you because you called me that night or you texted me that night after we first do you remember what that do you mind sharing that with the group here because I think it's important I don't mind sharing it but what what are you referring to yeah I'm open to it I remember it was a and I wa
s going back and forth it was when you find you came home and talked to your girl your daughter yeah that's when you you found out oh my gosh he actually has all of these true yeah remember that I I was really um I didn't want to go up against my co-founder because I was like we're on the same team in in IRL right so so I didn't want to come into a public forum and have to go head-to-head with him and that that was you know one of the the top reasons of why I did not want to be a devil's advocat
e but then you know I looked I took a step back and I looked at the state of today I looked at how my child is being impacted and that's when I was like okay I could do this I'm I'm all in yeah and I just that made me so excited and happy to have you on board like that because the whole point of this even down to the personas and the hyperbolic questions and all you know the you know the the backgrounds and all of that is because we are all Advocates of AI and I want to be clear that we're doing
our dut diligence sometimes being the the mama and the real Advocate is cleaning the child's face when it's dirty and right now our child metaphorically the AI world has a couple dirty faces little dirty faces and so it's up for us to shine a light come in and clean when we can did I torture the mother metaphor I'm not a Mom myself so sometimes it comes out a little wrong oh that was great faces right and that's care it's care a real friend will tell you when your your face is dirty I can't rem
ember if that was Cicero or Plato but one of those old di guys said that and I think that's what we're doing here this is the point of the great debate and the secondary thing is that you guys are lovely people you're thoughtful and kind lovely people who have different opinions even if you're Advocates you are all very different from each other different in personal it different in communication different Love Languages yet we can all come under the same banner and have disagreements without be
ing disagreeable and as we are dealing with this crazy election year in this world that's been shaved by a drunk and barber it's important for us to prove that you can disagree without being disagreeable so thank you both all of you all all not just both but both teams for helping illustrate that um and at this point I'm quite happy to end the debate if there was any other last things you guys wanted to say to the group this will be available on instant replay instantly hence instant replay we w
ill also post it on YouTube Patty and I will probably uh slice and dice this puppy and get some good social out of it for a couple of weeks so you guys know the folks listening at home we have our next debate great debate is on March 12th we have not totally confirmed the question but the topic will be whether or not creators and developers of these AI tools should be held legally liable for the actions and consequences of their tools I will think of a nicer way to make that shorter but that's e
ssentially what we're gonna be talking about so and we will see some of these faces there as well um so keep an eye out we will not doing it on LinkedIn live we'll be doing something different but stay tuned I'm not happy about LinkedIn live I just want to say one thing so I had the privilege of attending a loneliness uh uh and isolation uh conference actually building communities uh uh Forum in uh Boston last year and what was evident to me is that none of those participants were really thinkin
g about the impacts of AI uh you know whether it's going to harm or actually help loneliness and isolation I encourage everybody who's listening please please educate yourselves have more awareness get involved it's it's really important the biggest crisis we have to solve for is loneliness and isolation far any in fact 50% of adults in the US have experienced it or are experiencing it today and uh we can't just sit back and AI is going to be an important pivotal tool and we want to shape it the
right way so it doesn't adversely impact those numbers and in fact helps it bring it down but to that point nithan and Ashley maybe you have something you want to add to too how how do we get involved what are this if you're someone not everyone can put together a great debate that's a a Haley special but what are some of the things that you guys recommend doing is it getting more involved with the schools like lay it on me you couldn't have set me up better for an intro so thank you um I was a
ctually going to say as cheesy as it sounds it really does start with you as an individual contributor so um I'm happy to I think that I can probably speak for everyone here if you're watching this and you're like oh man I'm way behind I have no idea what they're talking talking about we're still at the Forefront of AI so you're not behind we're just really early adopters and we're starting these conversations proactively to get the ball rolling and to get you thinking about what Frameworks you
need before your AI Journey even begins so one you're not late reach out to any of us if you need help finding resources or safe places to learn um and educate yourself and then two if you're an employer I promise you there's people in your in your band with and company that are excited about AI find those people and put them together and then you'll actually see magic happen and that's when the policies come together the structures come together um so if this is not your lane and you're not exc
ited about it that's totally fine just no they it hung up I don't know if it just me but what she frze she prosze that's okay it's okay I wanted to um I wanted to just kind of piggyback off of something she said earlier about you know just taking responsibility to have those conversations and I think to a point that is something that we all can do as I had you know mentioned before I'm at here at the Ronald McDonald house and they have a big fireplace and kind of a community area here and I was
just there yesterday talking about Ai and talking about how AI could be a solution to different interpersonal challenges and issues and you know it all it all starts with dialogue and just be open and talk about it and I love the idea that had about you know putting together a task group within a company of all the people that are into Ai and watching the magic happen there's so many possibilities of seeing how it can kind of play out so that's the magic of the time that we're in we're in the ey
e of the perfect storm looking at how this is going to evolve into what we want it to be us the humans want it to be yeah and it is us at the end of the day it's people there's no such thing as businesses are only people um it's always someone pulling the lever pushing the button dra drawing it up and if you are to um to Ashley's Point as well if you are oh Ashley just said she lost power bless her heart in there man but if you are an employer I promise you you have employees that are connected
to the computer they're using AI one at least one of them is yeah so it's not really a choice of whether or not you get to have ai in your organization it's just do you it's not a choice of whether or not people are talking about it you don't get to decide that you get to decide whether or not you're going to be at the table with the conversation and have some say that's really the option so um this has been phenomenal one of you talked about is how can people get involved or how can they learn
more well you know Lena and I have spent a painstaking few months here trying to build a point of view and we are publishing a white paper this month if you want to get access to it it's free just uh sign up on our website we are really well intended we want to bring AI um to life in a positive way to help people solve this epidemic so please do sign up and we will white paper soon as it's ready and Haley I just want to tell you that you did a wonderful job in the casting everybody who's been pl
aying the roles like Ashley she just resonates the eternal optimist and me and Patty I think we made great doubles yeah you guys are fantastic double with you anytime [Laughter] Lena next time I had like these little those I could have added that but I thought oh that's just adding too much because I could have put like Devil horn and I could put a little Halo and Wings around a I thought you know got to appreciate that I'm trying to keep this all professional but you know me I like that for you
r social media clips you did an amazing job I mean people like you who are going to help Drive information and insights into the the workplace and you know the social place and and this is wonderful thank you so much for inviting thank youy we are so grateful you're in our Liv back at you you guys are amazing so happy let's see I don't know oh look I made it do it I love you guys you're amazing oh we're gonna do another debate next month we'll have other opt opportunities too there's so many thi
ngs that impact is doing we're getting ready to launch a new community um so just a lot of stuff coming up in the next month or so and Lena and nithan when you guys have that white paper you better tell me because I'm gonna get on the Grapevine and I'm gon't be telling everybody and their brother and their sister about it so I'm looking forward to it can't even put the paper itself on the AI impact page for people to just access so yeah and then once um once it's live I'll go back on YouTube and
on the instant replay here and put it in the comments too so that talk that sounds great so yes so the next debate March 12th you guys have a absolutely wonderful Valentine's Day nithan I'm GNA be sending you lots of good vibes if you need me to call you boo on Valentine's Day I will I have Valentine I just Valentine you guys are the best thank you so much for doing this fun experiment with me we'll go ahead and end stream here make sure that nothing falls apart are you sure you want to end you
r yes I do yes okay bye and that's it we're officially done so good job everyone that was LinkedIn live had it out for us though I'm telling you I don't think it's just you punch through it yeah through it like a champ there were a lot of comments in the LinkedIn Community when I was like researching while you were playing I'm like oh okay so yeah what things you learn yeah good but it was fantastic you didn't also you were so calm and collected despite you know this being an issue that you were
trying to fix while calm and collected it was awesome you kept us all calm too I think we were all calm we were just a bit like okay is it going to work is it not but you you had to we had to have I had two or three other backup plans I was prepared okay luck favors the prepar it I'm telling you and that's like I I was telling you guys earlier when you've done the crisis work some of the stuff I've dealt with where you're de little death and destruction you really can't get upset about little t
hings like Link's not working because it's like no one's here no one's going to lose their job I'm not going to have to get yelled at by my boss like it's fine it is fine so I just appreciate you guys hanging in there with me while we had that little thing and I'm gonna I'm going to get with Patty and think about a better solution because I honestly don't even know if having it be live on LinkedIn helps us like there I mean I like having the audience participation but you know it's fine without
it too so we'll think about it um how many people did you actually have sign up for today how many people were actually 55 we got three new ones and a lot who said oh I really can't wait to watch the replay who couldn't come so I think having it a different time to y'all's point it's early it's early for you so I think doing it at 1 p.m. eastern time which would be 10 10 p.m. uh Pacific Standard right 10. 10 you guys works well actually is that did is that what we decided I thought it was 1 pm w
e did it was 1 pm Pacific you said for the 12th of the most that's what we're gonna do I wrote it wrong I wrote down it wrong on my little thing we got a lot of folks here Haley that aren't AI impact folks just like signed in it's pretty cool don't get a notification that it's the replay is live so we will get as I kind of anticipated we will get more eyeballs on it after in the replay that's just how it is um I do think experimenting with the time difference will be exciting yeah but um yeah I
mean these are still early days for the great debate but the point is having really good content and so I'm G to make sure I get this to you guys too I mean we're going to slice and dice it for our social media but I want you all to be able to do the same maybe there some pieces in there you can use to promote your white paper coming up if you even want to put this on your website I'm fine whatever and if there's anything that we can do as from an impact perspective to support you guys I'll say
that I've said this before I'll say it again please do not let my imagination be the thing that limits me from helping you in any way possible if I haven't offered it it's because I hadn't thought of it so you know I I really do want to live in the community I'm trying to build this community where you just do everything you can for the people around you and you you you know worry about your own needs last cuz they usually wind up getting taken care of by the same people you're taking care of ye
ah you know there was just one thing I was going to share with you all and I I I said this to Lena yesterday it's my fault I take responsibility I wish I would have been smart enough to have figured out T you know tagging like the Surgeon General and others much earlier because and maybe going forward that would be an awesome idea when you guys are thinking about doings let's get those communities tagged so that they can hopefully join because those are the people you also want to be involved to
help you spearhead the challenge exactly the some of the leading Minds might want to tap into the pulse of the Grassroots we're the Grassroots we are that's right and that that's the thing it's like as why I was so happy when you you bring in y'all's personal stories you know Lena talking about your daughter I think it's so great because it's it's we're not just talking from the perspective of AI Advocates and AI enthusiast we are talking from the perspective of human beings who have young peop
le in our life that we worry about too so it's just very um you guys just the tone was perfect and very respectful which is great I didn't really worry about that because y'all are so lovely hethy skepticism and I think that's fantastic we need that you know it can't be smooth you know blue skies and sunshine I think you have to bring that element of skepticism and I think Lena and uh Patty did that beautifully like very good points and you know I think it was a good three-dimensional conversati
on which is fantastic you and Ashley were amazing eternal optimist I love I thought you guys were just so perfect in your roles so yes I'm glad I wish Ashley was here so I could tell her that you know personally but um Greeks would have been proud of y'all the ancient Greeks would have been like yes this is what I talk about with r this is what it's supposed to be yes you are the best K thank you so much thank you best thank you all so much I hope you have a good wonderful rest of your day you'v
e done all of your you can basically take the rest of the day off if you like I will tell you I apologize to all of you for sending that photograph but I felt it was necessary to show you that I did in my power to be as fresh as I could for this wonderful I love that your photograph definitely played a role in the next debate to benefit The Californians that participate in all the future great debates that I agree with you I agree with you this is why we should took one for the team we shouldn't
do a 7 am just because it would be cruel to society so let's definitely later to the afternoon it would be much better for me I promise I'll be even better I mean I thought you were great considering how early you had to be up I mean you guys are all just I mean you really are just all awesome first packet of cigarettes I've ever bought in my entire life and I don't think that was such a nice prop I really like that prop you know but um I'll be thinking about you as I destroy this now after thi
s take a couple selfies with it in your mouth first ex exactly have yourselves a wonderful day thank you again so much it was a pleasure awesome more to come soon stay in touch all right absolutely love you guys see you
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