Kelly Corrigan

If I can only touch on four or five ideas here, what are the most salient, essential ideas such that as you go through the rest of the session where you're going to meet these other five speakers, you are positioned in the best possible way to process what people are putting in front of you.

So the first thing that Allison clarified for me that I thought was essential and doesn't get talked about enough, honestly, is who pays for the product and how will the product be evaluated in terms of its efficacy?

Because if the profit motive involves keeping people on the app longer so that you can, say, collect more data or place more ads, the app will be designed in one way, which could be enfeebling.

It could be creating this terrible dependency where.

A person becomes less strong and less independent and less confident in their own instincts and more addicted to this little assistant who's going to tell them what to say or do every time they have a strange interaction with somebody in their life.

But when it comes to Wobot, I was relieved to know that they are paid by insurers based on well-being metrics.

The biggest shift in my feelings, thanks to talking to Allison, is this possible partnership between people and AI.

Like one thing that she said during one of the pre-calls was that for some people, the way that Wobot is talking to them is a model for the ways they could be talking to the people in their own lives.

It's very helpful.

to be in a healthy interaction and see how that flows.

which is basically like asking follow-up questions, making sure that you understood what the person said and meant.

All of that gets modeled in these AI conversations so regularly that it does seem reasonable that a person might start using those same techniques, follow-up questions, confirming that you understand what they really meant in their live interactions with other people.

And that would be a tremendous step forward.

I mean, if people talk to each other that way,

with more intention to understand, less determined to be understood, people might get somewhere.

Relationships would change.

Another huge takeaway from being with Alison throughout the prep period and then also sitting across from her in front of all those people was that we should know who's behind AI.

Because when you meet somebody that lovely, charming, and conscientious, you feel very differently about AI, which is so anonymous in its nature.

But the way that Alison was talking about it, it's not at all that.

It's something that Alison and the people that she has recruited, based on their knowledge of cognitive behavioral therapy, what those techniques are and what makes it effective, what they're putting in front of us.