Coin World News Report:
On Monday, Arianna Huffington, the founder and CEO of Thrive Global, and Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, expressed their support for a new AI health startup called Thrive AI Health in a column published in Time magazine, aiming to completely transform the health and wellness industry.
Despite the comparison of AI entering the mainstream to an arms race, many people are looking for ways to utilize this technology to drive healthcare, wellness, and longevity research, including detection of brain tumors and cancer, as well as early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
Huffington wrote on Twitter, “AI has become central to our mission of improving health and productivity, and I am extremely excited about the opportunity to use AI to achieve hyper-personalized behavior change.”
Huffington co-founded the news media outlet HuffPost in 2005 and established Thrive Global in 2016 as a behavior change technology company, offering science-based tools and technologies, including AI, to enhance productivity and well-being. The company will join the OpenAI startup fund to launch Thrive AI Health.
According to the announcement, DeCarlos Love, who previously worked at Google on the development of AI, sensors, health, and fitness wearable devices, and also at Apple, will be the CEO of Thrive AI Health.
As reported by Huffington, the new AI coach will be added to the Thrive Global platform and will also be available in the Thrive Global mobile app. Thrive Global claims that Thrive AI Health will use generative AI for “hyper-personalized and scalable behavior change.”
Altman and Huffington wrote, “It will understand your preferences and patterns across five behaviors: what conditions give you high-quality sleep; what foods you like and dislike; how and when you are most likely to walk, exercise, and stretch; and the most effective methods for reducing stress. Combine that with superhuman long-term memory, and you have a fully integrated personal AI coach that provides you with unique real-time prompts and advice to take action on your daily behaviors and improve your health.”
Huffington emphasized a belief that AI can go beyond improving efficiency and bring benefits to everyone.
The two wrote, “Using AI in this way will also expand and democratize the life-saving benefits of improving daily habits and address the growing problem of health inequality. Those with more resources have already gained the power to change behavior and have access to trainers, chefs, and life coaches. But with the uneven distribution of chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases in the population, a hyper-personalized AI health coach will make it easier and more achievable to change health behaviors.”
The Alice L. Walton Foundation is a strategic investor in this new initiative and will collaborate with academic institutions and medical centers such as Stanford Medical School.
Details of the investments supporting Thrive AI Health were not disclosed.
AI is also being used in other ways to make healthcare more accessible. OpenAI’s ChatGPT has been used to explain complex medical diagnoses and terms, enabling patients and their families to make informed decisions.
Peter Lee, the Corporate Vice President responsible for Research and Incubation at Microsoft, said in a speech at the annual Global Innovators Summit for Health and Longevity in October, “Some of it is fuel that leads to a lack of understanding of these lab tests and reports. GPT gives us the ability to lower the temperature and truly maintain family harmony.”
Thrive Global did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s interview request.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
