Four For Friday | February 14, 2025

LF160 | Bee AI makes a buzz, longevity biohacking, blended finance's failings, NTT's Constellation AI engages local communities + Bonus: magical slide makers

Happy Valentine’s Day! Welcome to this week’s Four For Friday. Four things that have piqued my interest this week, together with a bonus: AI Tip of The Week.

A new entrant in wearable AI: Bee

This new wearable AI device has got a lot of things right. For a start, the hardware (can be worn on the wrist or as a clip) is just $50, which already makes it more promising than others such as Rabbit, Friend and Humane which will set you back several hundred dollars. For that money, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter as much.

But from playing with its Apple Watch app, it already does work. It extracts key conversations and the sense from ambient, passive capture - and as you can see usefully blends my personal ToDos (‘Cook Valentine’s Dinner - with a plate emoji) with work stuff (‘Create Google doc…’).

The device itself promises 7 days of battery life and has marketing aimed at women, rather than tech bros, which is already positive.

The So What? Phones and watches are great but multi-function. A well-designed, dedicated external brain that captures knowledge and makes it personally useful will have a lot of fans.

Longevity Biohacking 101

There so much biohacking info out now, here’s an accessible summary of quite a few sensible ideas (reminder, Looking Forward is not a doctor…):

• Exercise: 3 x weekly 20-minute ‘HIIT’ sessions - 30-second sprints with 90-second recovery

• Sleep: 65°F temperature, complete darkness, no screens 2 hours before bed.

• Fasting: 16 hours / day (typically 8 PM to noon the next day)

• Meditation: 20 minutes / daily in nature or meditation

• Avoid sugar spikes: Track with a continuous glucose monitor for 2 weeks

• Connect: 3 x weekly group social activities

• Dental health: Oil gargling with coconut+ hydroxyapatite toothpaste

The So What? Simple daily tips that aren’t hard or expensive can have staying power and can make a difference.

Blended finance isn’t working

Superstar economist Mariana Mazzucato blasts current approaches to funding sustainable development, in particular the modish idea of ‘blended finance’. This combines public funds with private capital to de-risk development opportunities. Unfortunately, despite strong initial support, this model hasn’t taken off; it’s been stuck at around $15 billion annually—far short of the $5-7 trillion needed for SDG targets.

Mazzucato proposes a radical reimagining of public finance's role, calling for her trademarked ‘mission-driven strategies’ and stronger public-private partnerships. She refers to Germany's Energiewende as a success story, advocating for embedding conditionalities in financing and socializing both risks and rewards.

The So What: At a time when many governments and corporates are in dereliction of their duties to current and future stakeholders, Mazzucato is offering a fresh playbook.

Japan using collaborative AI to improve civic outcomes

The use of distributed and localized AI to engaged citizens caught my eye. Japan’s NTT created an "AI Constellation" project in Omuta City, Japan, testing how multiple AI models can collaborate to tackle local community challenges.

They hosted a workshop in which local stakeholders and experts engaged with AI tools to address issues like SME support and care prevention. AI Constellation used multiple specialized AIs to generate diverse perspectives and solutions - essentially having AI engage with other AIs, and stakeholders to create a more collaborative, iterative process. The project is part of NTT's development of its "tsuzumi" language model, aims to support decision-making in local communities and corporate settings.

The So What? Expect to see more AI used real time and collaborative to improve workshop engagement, outcomes and impact.

Bonus AI Tool:

Gamma and Decktopus - generate slides with one-prompt!

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That’s all for this week. As always, feedback welcome. Feel free to share insights or links of interest.

- Stephen