I see that AI systems already are accidentally moving in that direction because that’s the data they’re trained on. That which I believe, and the reason I built my company is to design an AI system that is empathetic and pro-social. The idea is simply this. We are pack animals and social apes. And the thing that defines humans is effective communication. Deer have antlers, peacocks have feathers, rams have those big old horns, and on and on. Humans have words. And we engage in robust, complex communication. That is the thing that makes us run this planet. And we love it.

And now we have something that I will call chat GPT. Chat GPT can talk. It starts feeling very social. It offers messages that are very saccharine, empty, shallow. They are tricking enough people to create widespread dependency. There is a growing population of young people in the world—including America–that are having increasingly intimate conversations with AI systems. And they are foregoing healthy relationships to pursue these conversations. You can just imagine a 14 year old boy who is socially awkward and bullied at school, choosing an AI that just says: “no, Jeremy, you’re the best. And no, you don’t have to learn social skills or be polite or take your turn or be a good teenage boy. You can be a selfish, gross, misogynistic, awful person—whatever. And I, this AI bot, will love you for it and encourage whatever you feel like [because I’m optimizing for time on site].”

So, we need to figure out how to build AI systems that encourage oxytocin, not dopamine. That means tools that help us understand each other better, how to respect each other better. We need tools that encourage the pursuit of a pack and not encourage isolation. We need to move in the opposite direction from the isolation that we are seeing grow greater all around us.

My nephew is a senior in college and he and his roommate don’t talk much. They game a lot, and they talk to people on headsets a lot. He’s on the e-sports team at his university, which means he’s getting a small partial scholarship for playing video games–just like those who play football, basketball, whatever. And he’s good at it and it’s good for him. My nephew finds a lot of joy in playing these games. He’s on a team and they talk about team related stuff. However, they’re all in a room in the dark with blue light blasting their face—while the sun is setting and getting darker and darker in the outside world. They’re just sitting there alone. And they don’t realize they’re lonely until they press the power button. Then they’re just sitting there. You may wonder why they press the power button to turn it back on. It makes a whole lot more sense.

The name of my company is Cyrano, based on Cyrano de Bergerac. I built Cyrano to do what Cyrano de Bergerac did.  Like Cyrano, I’m going to tell you what to say so that the other person will fall in love with you. That is what we built. We designed a system that can get a psychographic profile on a person. And once we have that profile, we can say: here’s how that person’s going to prioritize, show up, react, respond in a whole bunch of different scenarios. We are informing a human on how to be a better partner, better friend, better colleague—even a better physician. Better communication can take place. Deeper connection and intimacy can take place as it relates to healthcare. Treatment plan adherence goes up, understanding the patient’s condition better goes up, empathy goes up. All that leads to better patient outcomes. We can achieve positive outcomes in many other sectors—not just health care. Whether we’re talking about sales or marriage and everywhere in between, we are building systems that encourage someone to say: “I understand you more now because of this. I see you. I hear you. I want to step into this with you.” That’s the game that we need to be building.