Nikki Tessler is the CEO of BeMe Health. She is a psychologist who has built a relatively new company with a self service tool and coaching service for teens. It’s essentially trying to convert teens’ social media time to good use with support, affirmations, coaching and safety–and much more.. I interviewed Nikki and got a full demo over the holiday break. There’s a lot of information here about the teen mental health question (yes it’s bad!), about the company funding & strategy, and great understanding of the product…which is pretty unusual and growing fast!—Matthew Holt
AI Inside
by KIM BELLARD
Well: 2024. I’m excited about the Paris Olympics, but otherwise I’d be just as happy to sleep through all the nonsense that the November elections will bring. In any event, I might as well start out talking about one of the hottest topics of 2023 that will get even more so in 2024: AI.
In particular, I want to look at what is being billed as the “AI PC.”
Most of us have come to know about ChatGPT. Google has Bard (plus DeepMind’s Gemini), Microsoft is building AI into Bing and its other products, Meta released an open source AI, and Apple is building its AI framework. There is a plethora of others. You probably have used “AI assistants” like Alexa or Siri.
What most of the large language model (LLM) versions of AI have in common is that they are cloud-based. What AI PCs offer to do is to take AI down to your own hardware, not dissimilar to how PCs took mainframe computing down to your desktop.
As The Wall Street Journal tech gurus write in their 2024 predictions in their 2024 predictions:
In 2024, every major manufacturer is aiming to give you access to AI on your devices, quickly and easily, even when they’re not connected to the internet, which current technology requires. Welcome to the age of the AI PC. (And, yes, the AI Mac.)
Continue reading…Keep it Short
By KIM BELLARD
OK, I admit it: I’m on Facebook. I still use Twitter – whoops, I mean X. I have an Instagram account but don’t think I’ve ever posted. Although I’ve written about TikTok numerous times, I’ve never actually been on it. And while I am on YouTube, it’s more for clips from movies or TV shows than for videos from creators like MrBeast.
So forgive me if I’m only belated taking a look at the short form video revolution.
As is often the case, a couple articles related to the topic spurred my attention: Caroline Mimbs Nyce’s Twitter’s Demise Is About So Much More Than Elon Musk in The Atlantic, and Jessica Toonkel’s Wall Street Journal article Your Kid Prefers YouTube to Netflix. That’s a Problem for Netflix. I urge you to read both.
Ms. Nyce makes that point that, while Elon may be doing a pretty good job damaging Twitter, much of its woes really are due to microblogging falling out of favor. Her take:
In the era of TikTok, the act of posting your two cents in two sentences for strangers to consume is starting to feel more and more unnatural. The lasting social-media imprint of 2023 may not be the self-immolation of Twitter but rather that short-form videos—on TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms—have tightened their choke hold on the internet. Text posts as we’ve always known them just can’t keep up.
She notes that Twitter is still the dominant platform, by far, for microblogging, but quotes a prediction from data.ai: “While platforms like X are likely to maintain a core niche of users, the overall trends show consumers are swapping out text-based social networking apps for photo and video-first platforms.”
Continue reading…2024 Prediction: Society Will Arrive at an Inflection Point in AI Advancement
By MIKE MAGEE
For my parents, March, 1965 was a banner month. First, that was the month that NASA launched the Gemini program, unleashing “transformative capabilities and cutting-edge technologies that paved the way for not only Apollo, but the achievements of the space shuttle, building the International Space Station and setting the stage for human exploration of Mars.” It also was the last month that either of them took a puff of their favored cigarette brand – L&M’s.
They are long gone, but the words “Gemini” and the L’s and the M’s have taken on new meaning and relevance now six decades later.
The name Gemini reemerged with great fanfare on December 6, 2023, when Google chair, Sundar Pichai, introduced “Gemini: our largest and most capable AI model.” Embedded in the announcement were the L’s and the M’s as we see here: “From natural image, audio and video understanding to mathematical reasoning, Gemini’s performance exceeds current state-of-the-art results on 30 of the 32 widely-used academic benchmarks used in large language model (LLM) research and development.
Google’s announcement also offered a head to head comparison with GPT-4 (Generative Pretrained Transformer-4.) It is the product of a non-profit initiative, and was released on March 14, 2023. Microsoft’s helpful AI search engine, Bing, helpfully informs that, “OpenAI is a research organization that aims to create artificial general intelligence (AGI) that can benefit all of humanity…They have created models such as Generative Pretrained Transformers (GPT) which can understand and generate text or code, and DALL-E, which can generate and edit images given a text description.”
While “Bing” goes all the way back to a Steve Ballmer announcement on May 28, 2009, it was 14 years into the future, on February 7, 2023, that the company announced a major overhaul that, 1 month later, would allow Microsoft to broadcast that Bing (by leveraging an agreement with OpenAI) now had more than 100 million users.
Which brings us back to the other LLM (large language model) – GPT-4, which the Gemini announcement explores in a head-to-head comparison with its’ new offering. Google embraces text, image, video, and audio comparisons, and declares Gemini superior to GPT-4.
Mark Minevich, a “highly regarded and trusted Digital Cognitive Strategist,” writing this month in Forbes, seems to agree with this, writing, “Google rocked the technology world with the unveiling of Gemini – an artificial intelligence system representing their most significant leap in AI capabilities. Hailed as a potential game-changer across industries, Gemini combines data types like never before to unlock new possibilities in machine learning… Its multimodal nature builds on yet goes far beyond predecessors like GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 in its ability to understand our complex world dynamically.”
Expect to hear the word “multimodality” repeatedly in 2024 and with emphasis.
Continue reading…AI Could Have “Unimaginable Consequences” For Democratic Societies, Says Expert.
By MIKE MAGEE
His biography states, “He speaks to philosophical questions about the fears and possibilities of new technology and how we can be empowered to shape our future. His work to bridge cultures spans artificial intelligence, cognition, language, music, creativity, ethics, society, and policy.”
He embraces the title “cross-disciplinary,” and yet his PhD thesis at UC Berkeley in 1980 “was one of the first to spur the paradigm shift toward machine learning based natural language processing technologies.” Credited with inventing and building “the world’s first global-scale online language translator that spawned Google Translate, Yahoo Translate, and Microsoft Bing Translator,” he is clearly a “connector” in a world currently consumed by “dividers.” In 2019, Google named De Kai as “one of eight inaugural members of its AI Ethics Council.”
The all encompassing challenge of our day, as he sees it, is relating to each other. As he says, “The biggest fear is fear itself – the way AI amplifies human fear exponentially…turning us upon ourselves through AI powered social media driving misinformation, divisiveness, polarization, hatred and paranoia.” The value system he embraces “stems from a liberal arts perspective emphasizing creativity in both technical and humanistic dimensions.”
Dr. De Kai is feeling especially urgent these days, which is a bit out of character.
Continue reading…From Xenobots to Anthrobots
By KIM BELLARD
There were many things I could have written bout this week – e.g., in A.I., in quantum computing, even “transparent wood” — but when I saw some news about biological robots, I knew I had my topic.
The news comes from researchers at Tufts University and Harvard’s Wyss Institute. Their paper appeared in Advanced Science, introducing “a spheroid-shaped multicellular biological robot (biobot) platform” that they fondly dubbed “Anthrobots.” Importantly, the Anthrobots are made from human cells.
Let’s back up. In 2020, senior researcher Michael Levin, Ph.D., who holds positions at both Tufts and Harvard, worked with Josh Bongard, Ph.D. of the University of Vermont to create biological robots made from frog embryo cells, which they called Xenobots. They were pretty impressive, capable of navigating passageways, collecting material, recording information, healing themselves from injury, and even replicating for a few cycles on their own, but the researchers wanted to find out if they could create biological robots from other types of cells – especially human cells.
Well, the new research showed that they could. They started with cells from adult trachea, and without genetic modification were able to demonstrate capabilities beyond those Xenobots had demonstrated. Lead author Gizem Gumuskaya, a PhD. student said: “We wanted to probe what cells can do besides create default features in the body. By reprogramming interactions between cells, new multicellular structures can be created, analogous to the way stone and brick can be arranged into different structural elements like walls, archways or columns.”
The Anthrobots come in different shapes and sizes, and are capable of different motions. Ms. Gumuskaya is quite excited about their capabilities:
The cells can form layers, fold, make spheres, sort and separate themselves by type, fuse together, or even move. Two important differences from inanimate bricks are that cells can communicate with each other and create these structures dynamically, and each cell is programmed with many functions, like movement, secretion of molecules, detection of signals and more. We are just figuring out how to combine these elements to create new biological body plans and functions—different than those found in nature.
Even better, Ms. Gumuskaya pointed out: “Anthrobots self-assemble in the lab dish. Unlike Xenobots, they don’t require tweezers or scalpels to give them shape, and we can use adult cells – even cells from elderly patients – instead of embryonic cells. It’s fully scalable—we can produce swarms of these bots in parallel, which is a good start for developing a therapeutic tool.”
They tested Anthrobots’ healing capabilities by scratching a layer of neurons, then exposed the gap to a cluster of Anthrobots called a “superbot.” That triggered neuron growth only in that area. The researchers noted: “Most remarkably, we found that Anthrobots induce efficient healing of defects in live human neural monolayers in vitro, causing neurites to grow into the gap and join the opposite sides of the injury.”
“The cellular assemblies we construct in the lab can have capabilities that go beyond what they do in the body,” said Dr. Levin. “It is fascinating and completely unexpected that normal patient tracheal cells, without modifying their DNA, can move on their own and encourage neuron growth across a region of damage.”
Continue reading…I’m on The HealthTech Marketing Show
As you read this I am winging my way to Tokyo to be at the Health Tech Sum Japan 2023, which means no THCB Gang. So to tide you over I am letting you imagine you’re listening to me there, but here! Adam Turinas, a fellow expat Brit (and Chelsea fan) had me on his podcast, The HealthTech Marketing Show this week. Half an hour of whether Digital Health is Dead and what that means–Matthew Holt
Where is AI in Medicine Going? Ask The Onion.
By MIKE MAGEE
One of the top ten headlines of all time created by the satirical geniuses at The Onion was published 25 years ago this December. It read, “God Answers Prayers Of Paralyzed Little Boy. ‘No,’ Says God.”
The first paragraph of that column introduced us to Timmy Yu, an optimistic 7-year old, who despite the failures of the health system had held on to his “precious dream.” As the article explained, “From the bottom of his heart, he has hoped against hope that God would someday hear his prayer to walk again. Though many thought Timmy’s heavenly plea would never be answered, his dream finally came true Monday, when the Lord personally responded to the wheelchair-bound boy’s prayer with a resounding no.”
But with a faith that rivals the chieftains of today’s American health care system who continue to insist this is “the best health care in the world,” this Timmy remained undeterred. As The Onion recorded the imagined conversation, “‘I knew that if I just prayed hard enough, God would hear me,’ said the joyful Timmy,., as he sat in the wheelchair to which he will be confined for the rest of his life. ‘And now my prayer has been answered. I haven’t been this happy since before the accident, when I could walk and play with the other children like a normal boy.’”
According to the article, the child did mildly protest the decision, but God held the line, suggesting other alternatives. “God strongly suggested that Timmy consider praying to one of the other intercessionary agents of Divine power, like Jesus, Mary or maybe even a top saint,” Timmy’s personal physician, Dr. William Luttrell, said. ‘The Lord stressed to Timmy that it was a long shot, but He said he might have better luck with one of them.’”
It didn’t take a wild leap of faith to be thrust back into the present this week. Transported by a headline to Rochester, Minnesota, the banner read, “Mayo Clinic to spend $5 billion on tech-heavy redesign of its Minnesota campus.” The “reinvention” is intended to “to present a 21st-century vision of clinical care” robust enough to fill 2.4 million square feet of space.
The Mayo Clinic’s faith in this vision is apparently as strong as little “Timmy’s”, and their “God” goes by the initials AI.
Continue reading…Stephanie Strong, CEO, Boulder
Stephanie Strong is the CEO of Boulder, which has been blazing a trail in the virtual treatment of substance use disorder. She left venture capital to start the company and has been steadily building its capabilities and reach. We talked in depth about how Boulder helps its patients, who are predominantly on Medicaid and in general tend–as you’d expect–not to have easy circumstances. One remarkable thing Stephanie has done is spearhead resistance to the DEA’s proposal to ban telehealth prescribing of the anti-addiction drug Buprenorphine. And it looks like that campaign has been successful. that alone will save many lives. Watch this interview of a young female CEO who is making a real difference, and totally impressing me in the process—Matthew Holt
NODE.Health’s Digital Medicine Conference
Next week is the NODE.Health Digital Medicine Conference in New York. Dec 6-8. It features a great line up of speakers and digital health tech luminaries & THCB readers can get a 30% discount using the code THCB30. Register here
