Four For Friday | Nov 10, 2023
LF93 | 23andme's health service, Systems investing case study, Jobs to be done in health & can AI help with the Middle East conflict.
Welcome to a Looking Forward’s Four For Friday. Four things that have piqued my interest this week. Enjoy!
23andme launches genome-powered health service
A new service from long-time personal DNA service offers exome sequencing, blood diagnostics and unlimited virtual clinical care for $99/month. Question: I wonder if the unlimited clinical care needs be kept to just the topic of your genes…?
Case Study: Systemic Investing to reduce food waste
A new MIT paper on how ReFed mobilized hearts, minds and multiple types of capital in its ambitious drive to reduce food waste by 50%.
Jobs to be done in healthcare - A16Z’s take
A16Z has created a useful framework for how to think about the impact of AI on the healthcare “jobs to be done”. It looks as clinical vs non-clinical jobs on one axis and professional vs consumer facing on the other. This model lends itself well to the ageing and longevity space as a way to think about the impacts of AI.
Can AI help with the middle-east crisis? The UN hopes so
The UN is looking to see if AI tools can help with the growing mid-east conflict. CulturePulse has a fascinating history - it began as a science experiment to see if you could predict outcomes of real life conflicts by modelling digital agents to interact, and it first succeeded in Northern Ireland:
In Belfast, [the founder] figured out that by modeling aspects of identity and social cohesion, and identifying the factors that make people motivated to fight and die for a particular cause, he could accurately predict what was going to happen next.
Fingers crossed that this, or something like it, works. And soon.
That’s all for this week. As always, feedback welcome. Feel free to share insights or links of interest.
- Stephen