Four For Friday | January 31, 2025
LF158 | Friend, Boardy, a Learnbook for complex change, Internationalzing Japan + Napkin AI
Welcome to Looking Forward’s Four For Friday. Four things that have piqued my interest this week, together with a bonus: AI Tip of The Week. Enjoy!
Friend: Taking your AI companion in your pocket
I’ve been following Avi Schiffman for a while - a prodigiously talented whiz kid developer, and excited to see his company, Friend (great URL), take shape. He’s taken the form factor of a pendant that’s always with you and combined it with an AI companion bot. The result is a rather weird concept, but probably has some really important learnings.
The So What? I don’t think anyone knows what the right model for AI-meets-human companion will be, so let’s explore each of these to see what works.
Boardy shows us how AI could improve the world
Boardy is basically an (AI) superconector - you have a phone conversation with a remarkably lifelike conversation partner who asks about your career, plans and things you’re working on, then goes off and offers up potential intros (double opt-in) to people who may be a fit.
Four really interesting ideas for me here:
Conversation singularity. What happens when speaking with AI is better than speaking with humans? This is within sight. My 10 min onboarding chat with Boardy made me feel good about my career and what I’m working on.
Its “objective function is goodwill”. We’re all suffering because the objective function of much Big Tech AI is engagement (read outrage), clicks and profit. This is new, refreshing and optimistic.
Unlocking human intelligence. It aims to help connect people at the right time and on the right topic. It’s building ‘networked human intelligence’.
Scalable hyper personalization. The introduction it gave me to a chap in CocaCola was extremely tailored, professional and engaging- as good an intro mail as I’ve received from any human:
“I think you'll have an incredible conversation about combining AI with systemic change for real impact. Stephen's experience building global networks in healthy longevity perfectly complements Aidan's work in sustainable innovation and corporate-startup partnerships.”
“When anyone can build anything, trusted distribution is the only thing that matters”. This is one of the lines from the disarmingly simple deck (here) that Boardy.ai used to raise $8m from investors, just a few months after its first $3m. I agree mostly with this (even as a non-coder I’m now coding up new websites courtesy of AI),but I would add, in the world of fake news, that trusted data, as well as trusted connections will be what matters…
The So What? Finally! Deploying AI so that the right people connect to address the challenges of our time is a perfect use case for AI. I’m following with interest.
Learning Towards Zero
A ‘learnbook’ by the Good Shift’s, documenting their recent systems innovation work with Brisbane and Logan’s anti-homeless efforts - “Zero Initiatives”. It advocates for an iterative, ‘adaptive’ learning approach the embodies collaboration, sharing power, and human-centered data to tackle complex challenges.
“Human systems are complex and dynamic. When we are working in complex domains, we need to ‘learn forward’.”
Key Insights from the Learnbook:
“Learn Forward”: Embrace ‘continuous, action-oriented learning loops’ to navigate the invevitable complexity of human systems.
Collaborate Adaptively: Organize partnerships dynamically, blending the sometimes conflicting dynamics of competition and cooperation.
Distribute Leadership: Shift from hierarchical governance to shared, networked decision-making.
Human-Centered Data: Prioritize real-time, actionable insights over lagging metrics to inform advocacy and action.
The So What: Complex systems change involving changing people’s behaviors is not best suited for a top-down ‘master plan’ (a wake up call for some of the mission-led, moonshot/ hero impact initiatives).
Internationalizing Japan
Am off to Tokyo next week for discussions around “internationalizing Japan”. The note above lays out 12 initial topics as input to a workhop on Tuesday.
The So What? Japan has so much to offer to the world about healthy aging and longevity and also could benefit from some of the world class global innovations. We’re exploring what an AI-enabled impact network could do t support those working on this.
Bonus AI Tool:
Napkin.ai - create visuals and graphics from text.
That’s all for this week. As always, feedback welcome. Feel free to share insights or links of interest.
- Stephen