Speaker 1You're listening to a Day One.fm show. Can you please blink if you'd like to have a long and healthy life?
Speaker 2Oh, he did it! He blinked. We did every rule in the start-up book completely opposite. You know, people say build your market first and then build your product or like get a wait list. Not for me, not who I am. Originally we built a stem cell bank, which we still operate today. You know, we use the word longevity because it kind of surmises like all of those concepts, but really it's like really good personalised preventative healthcare. Like how do you do that on a scalable basis? There's no way we're going to do this unless we can do something that adds value and that becomes a true patient-centred health platform that can actively help owners to make decisions to help their dog live longer. I would feel some kind of way if we over-promised and then under-delivered. In that capacity, I think the grief of the death of a pet is something that we haven't quite understood in society yet. So anything I can do to slow that down or make that less, I will.
Speaker 1Hello and welcome back to In the Blink of AI. I'm Georgie Healy and frankly I have been pestering this person to come on the show for years, not months. This one is for anyone sick of being told you have to pick a side, you have to be a complete AI doomer and hate it, or you have to be the complete AI hype person. I experience this a lot and frankly I'm glad we have Paloma Newton, the VC-backed founder of Alita, the pet preventative health and longevity platform, because guess what? She's honest. She holds contradictory perspectives about the pros and cons of AI at once. It is possible, guys. She reckons the South Australian Royal Commission is frankly theatre, she's deeply worried. She's worried about three people owning the biggest tech shift of our lifetime and she also has so much optimism for what women can do with technology now. She has an incredible AI hack and the industry Australia needs to double down on for the future is all in the show today. And I hope you stay till the end because we have a very special guest. Let's dive in. You're listening to a dayone.fm show.
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Speaker 1Paloma, welcome to In the Blink of AI. I have been so pumped for this. I've been begging you to come on for months slash years now. Start us off. What's your AI hack of the week?
Speaker 2I actually was thinking about this too. And my AI hack of the week is probably quite boring. But I am a big believer in creating passive workflows. And so my new favorite tool that has become so much more useful with AI is actually Slack. My to do list is just a Slack channel with myself, which is then passed through a cloud channel that then pulls all of my contacts from like emails, granola notes, basically anything I've ever agreed to do with anyone. And then it passes that back into another Slack channel. So it's this like beautiful. Little system. I spent years trying to figure out if I wanted to use like a Kanban or a dot point list, and I hate managing anything that I don't have to. So like having a passive active to do list that updates without me having to do anything
Speaker 1is fantastic. Did you need it for accountability or just the overwhelm of being a founder and CEO of a company? Oh, the overwhelm.
Speaker 2Yeah, I don't need to be accountable. I just need to I the amount of things I'm like. Yep, I'll do that. Yep, I'll do that. And then there's just there would be no way in human form that I could do it without the tool.
Speaker 1Yeah, I love being the bottleneck of my own life. That's an awesome hack. And it's always the boring ones that are actually the ones that everyone will benefit from the most, because that's what you're going to use every single day of your life. Not like a cool new tool that you use twice. Strong start Paloma, honor to have you on the show. First of all. What is a leader and, you know, then we'll dive into some AI headlines.
Speaker 2Yeah, for sure. So we're a longevity platform for dogs. So we combine biological testing, which we do in house clinical history, owner reported changes. And basically, we've kind of built this incredibly powerful algorithm that helps you aggregate all that information about your pet's health and then know what to do next. And also uncover things that you might have missed or steer you in the right direction.
Speaker 1I come from a family with many. Dog family members. And yeah, this is just something that I feel like most listeners would be touched by in some shape or form. We're going to dive into a leader a little bit more, but there are two headlines. I kind of want to get your perspective on number one. South Australia has announced a $3 million Royal Commission into AI. First of all, do we need this? What do you reckon?
Speaker 2I have been grappling with this headline since we kind of quickly touched. On it because there's there's like a few points to this, and I'm not going to do it justice in the time that we have, but I'm pro our institutions thinking about this and thinking hard about it. That's not really the problem that I have. The problem that I have is the vehicle that they've decided to do it with, like a Royal Commission is going to take. I think they've announced that it's going to take nine months, nine months in AI time is probably like three lifetime iterations. Yeah, I think like I was thinking about there's no point in me just denying. What they're planning to do without giving like a feasible example of what you could do differently, right? And I think this is like the massive disconnection that we have at the moment with all of our current structures, be them government, be them legal, whatever, and the speed of which our technology is moving. Like, how do you how do you bridge that gap? And and so I was kind of thinking, like, if I was in charge and I'm not, but if I was in charge, like, what would I do? And I think it would be really great to have a kind of revolving advisory board. Where you're getting the voices of the people that are using the technology every day. So, you know, Tom Kelly from Heidi Health, you know, Mel Perkins from from Canva, but also like teachers, people in the legal profession, ethicists and really starting to understand it from multiple different lenses.
Speaker 1From the people using the technology and building with the technology.
Speaker 2And being affected by it, right? Like, I think the reason we also like to jump to a Royal Commission is because often. It gives the people a bit of a voice, and I think a revolving advisory board could do that function, but on like a consistent and ongoing way, which is kind of what you need to do when the technology is constantly evolving. I also will get into this, I think when we get into deeper into the episode, but I think the other thing that struck me is that I think a lot of the fear around AI is coming from people's distrust of the institutions, and I thought it was like a little bit disinterested. I also think a lot of the fear around AI is coming from people's distrust of the institutions, and I thought it was like a little bit disinterested. we know it, right? If anyone sits there and they tell you that they know what's about to happen, they're lying to you or they're selling you something, no one knows. And that's kind of scary and also okay. And I think it's important to recognize that we don't know and to have really complicated conversations and understand the shades of grey and hold you know two three seven things in our brains at once and I don't think that a Royal Commission like they will I genuinely and I just said don't trust anyone that says they know what's going to happen but my theory on what will happen is that they will spend millions of dollars on this take probably more than nine months because I've never seen the government complete anything on time and then basically come out with a report that will probably have some flashy headlines then everyone will realize it's probably about six months out of date and then we'll continue and they'll end up announcing some deal with I don't know but I think it will probably slow down some parts of our economic growth potentially it could it could make some things that other people worried about worse I don't know what the outcome would be but I don't really see it being I don't know what the outcome would be but I don't really see it being
Speaker 1nine months is crazy nine months ago we were talking about uh you know uh there being a ceiling to how much AI can take in data and and and therefore you know the models will reach a ceiling and now we've got fable and like like nine months is insane I just like I think
Speaker 2back to nine months ago comparatively to like my day-to-day today and it's it's just unfathomable that you yeah that you would try and it just it again like I'm not against the concept of us doing something to better of us doing something to better of us doing something to better equip ourselves you know from all angles of equip ourselves you know from all angles of equip ourselves you know from all angles of society but I think this is quite an society but I think this is quite an society but I think this is quite an interesting approach beautifully said
Speaker 1interesting approach beautifully said interesting approach beautifully said agree meta CEO this is the other headline agree meta CEO this is the other headline agree meta CEO this is the other headline I'd love your take on they argued that I'd love your take on they argued that I'd love your take on they argued that AI productivity gains should produce more AI productivity gains should produce more AI productivity gains should produce more output so the more use AI to be more output so the more use AI to be more output so the more use AI to be more efficient the more outputs but not efficient the more outputs but not efficient the more outputs but not necessarily more time off or work-life necessarily more time off or work-life necessarily more time off or work-life balance do you ever think AI was gonna balance do you ever think AI was gonna balance do you ever think AI
Speaker 2was gonna help us work less no and I think that help us work less no and I think that help us work less no and I think that is like I mean it's funny because I is like I mean it's funny because I is like I mean it's funny because I remember the exact moment that I it remember the exact moment that I it remember the exact moment that I it probably became super conscious to me probably became super conscious to me probably became super conscious to me was like another founder that I've got was like another founder that I've got was like another founder that I've got good friends with messaged me and was good friends with messaged me and was good friends with messaged me and was like using all these tools you know I like using all these tools you know I like using all these tools you know I thought we'd be like working from the thought we'd be like working from the thought we'd be like working from the beach but I just can't stop working beach but I just can't stop working beach but I just can't stop working because there's just so much more I can because there's just so much more I can because there's just so much more I can do and I think that that was always do and I think that that was always do and I think that that was always gonna be the case I mean there's this gonna be the case I mean there's this fantastic Hank Green YouTube video about this but it's called the Jevons paradox right and this is a known thing in society forever it's when we first made the steam train really efficient everyone was like we've made the steam train efficient we're gonna use less coal because of the efficiency and yet we found all of these other reasons to use coal it's it's just it's just not how we are as humans we are incredibly output oriented and we want to solve problems and we want to you know create more and for better or for worse I just I never ever thought that this was gonna make us work less yeah no your your
Speaker 1slack workflow that's helping you you know be on top of your to-do list how's the to-do list going is it shorter look I
Speaker 2also think it's funny because as a human being and this isn't a new AI thing this is just who I've always been I remember my first boss telling me that I had an unhealthy bias towards action and I think he was trying to say it as like you should reflect on this and I was like oh my god thank you which like in hindsight lol but no I I think it's hard because my general disposition is this sort of anxious speed rabbit and so definitely for someone like me this has been insane for me it's not about doing more or doing less I try really hard to I look at my diary every week at the beginning and the end of the week and I I can get into a because output makes me feel in control and comfortable and that's just my anxious leaning I have a bad habit if I allow myself to get out of control where I'm outputting for the sake of feeling in control right so I'm quite disciplined about this in making sure that everything that I'm doing has to link back to the strategic goals what we're trying to achieve like I have I have to kind of cap myself to make sure I'm just not outputting for the sake of outputting for the sake of feeling control and and I think what is interesting is I don't think the list recently I've actually been challenging myself to make the list shorter but more impactful and so I think that hopefully we're all using these tools to make the work we're doing more impactful and get more value to you know for me it's dogs but whoever you're you're servicing in the world and I just I want to make sure that when I'm using these tools I'm using them to leave you know a good impact for what I'm building
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Speaker 1that's d-double-e-l.com/dayone selfishly I want to know for people like myself that are very out come driven product driven did I create a thing this week or not that that success what do you suggest is something we could try next week to make more of
Speaker 2an impact oh that's a great one I think I mean this is again such a boring answer sorry but you need to start with theoretically what you're trying to do and this is actually really hard especially in 2026 when you're a founder and you have to move faster and faster and faster than anyone else because that's the it's it's been a weird time to start a company you're the only things that I think are truly moat in 2026 are speed and taste right like those are genuinely the only things that I think are gonna protect you the interesting thing about the tools is that anyone can build anything right which is a positive and negative and we can get into that but why it is important that speed and taste become this like balancing factor for you if you're building something is that in order to hit both of those you kind of need to start with a thesis on what you are doing and why you are doing and that should obviously be informed very old school by insights and learnings and customer and rara but then set yourself a challenge at the beginning of the week when you're kind of fresh off your hopefully weekend and feeling rested where you go what would be the highest leverage thing that I could do this week what would be the things that would need to be true for me to do that thing and then mark yourself at the end of the week like literally I look at my diary I look at my granola I mean my whole life is tracked right and I'm like did I spend an enormous amount of time on something that wasn't moving the needle in that direction um and if I did why did I do it like what's my emotional connection to why I did that like was I writing blog posts at 10 p.m at night because I was spiraling and feeling out of control because once you start to understand like what are the most high leverage things that I can do you can start to kind of discipline yourself if you're doing things outside of those
Speaker 1goals that you set yesterday I pulled out of an event that I'd been planning for a few months uh because of a number of reasons but it was almost that emotional feeling of this just doesn't feel right and if I'm going to invest this much time in it it should at least feel right I know that's that that's not quantitative but the gut feel was off for some time and every time I thought about doing that job and taking away from the things that did feel right it just felt
Speaker 2off didn't work yeah and that's the other thing right like you only exist in this world for a certain amount of time and we are so lucky to be doing the things that we are doing but if you're not building towards what you wanted to build towards then what's the
Speaker 1point speaking of which tell me about Edgar and why you are so passionate about what you're
Speaker 2building Edgar Allen pause is a sleep he's now a five-year-old good boy I love how we both named
Speaker 1our sons after poets but continue
Speaker 2um Edgar's my dog he's my adult dog which I actually think is like an interesting distinction to my childhood dogs I grew up around a lot of pets and I've always been the the person who gets distracted easily by animals um like that's just a known thing when I got Edgar it shifted like the whole concept of having a pet shifted um for a bunch of reasons it was covered uh I'd been wanting a dog my whole adult life but you got to do it when it's like actually the right time because it's not just a cute little guy you've got to take care of them and all those things and when I got in like the long story short not that I've ever done that is I was planning to get a rescue dog during covered um just like we had a very finite amount of time I was working in a pretty intense startup at the time and so I knew it was sort of my one chance when I was like oh my God I'm settled I have my own apartment I've got a partner that can help me with my dog um it's time and I'm working from home randomly which had never really been a thing for me before shelters this time this is end of COVID were pretty empty I knew I didn't have the capacity to take on a dog with serious behavioral health issues because I knew that I would be going back to work so I was really looking for a puppy that could kind of mold into my life could not find something that was suitable I'm a big believer in like you have to get a dog that matches your lifestyle like you if you're an office worker and you get a border collie that's just bad for everyone could not find one and so my we were running out of time because like the deadline to COVID being kind of over was actually sooner than we thought but that's another story for another day so suddenly it was like oh we can choose a dog which had never just like conceptually never not something I'd not done before and so we landed on after discussions basically landed on like we want something that's like relatively lazy and uh not smarter than us um and we got Edgar he's a golden retriever Cocker Spaniel um he's the best and it was just the best thing ever like we just fell in love with him just went on like the deepest health journey he because of this like finally getting a dog with a breed I started to understand you know predispositions based on breed health and it was around that same time and look I was I'm a much more educated pet owner now than I was five years ago for a bunch of reasons but um the the first thing that I did was I was the first thing that I kind of like discovered having never had a dog where I knew their breed before my dogs growing up were always rescues was that breed predisposition was such a huge health outcome based um situation so the first thing I really started to think about was the fact that he was predisposed to arthritis and elbow and hip dysplasia on both sides as in golden retriever Cocker Spaniel and really I'm probably like a leaning towards preventative health for myself person so I'm not sure if that's what I'm talking about but I'm not sure if that's what I'm talking about but I'm not sure if that's what I'm talking about but I'm not sure if that's what I'm talking about wasn't a huge leap to go how do we avoid the situation that spiraled obviously and originally we we built a stem cell bank which we still operate today but through building the bank and really understanding uh the science behind biology and the science of health and the science of you know we use the word longevity because it kind of surmises like all of those concepts but really it's like really good personalized preventative health care like how do you do that on a scalable basis um and so from the bank we we've kind of theoretically understood that we could shift behavior far earlier uh which is what led us to you know the kind of world's first longevity platform powered by biology and we did every rule in a startup book completely opposite um you know people say build your market first and then build your product or like get a wait list not for me not who I am um I knew that to do this properly we had to build something and and it's so like in the context of everything we're talking about right this is why that like nine month thing is so interesting had we done what the advice is if we had just gone like full pelt marketing and not worried about building the system when we started I genuinely don't think we would have a business today but we did it the opposite we were like there's no way we're going to do this unless we can do something that adds value and that becomes a true patient-centered health platform that can actively help owners to make decisions to help their dog live longer like that was always the thesis and
Speaker 1I am no health founder I have no health background or biology background but to me it's like I'm not going to tell me if I'm wrong wouldn't it be the worst thing in the world to get all this marketing and then actually have nothing to stand for it in the back end I'm not gonna name names of companies that have done that before but isn't that like not the way you want to fail
Speaker 2right I think like everyone has to do what works for them and there's sure and and look I I agree with that's how I feel right like I I think we've even released things that like probably have been perfectly robust and I've been like I feel uncomfortable because it feels a little bit early and I think that's something that we're always balancing right um I would feel some kind of way if we over promised and then under delivered in that capacity and so it's just not how I am or who I am or how I build um but I think you kind of got to choose your own journey and I think that's something that I think is really important to you and I think it's really interesting because I used to obsess over kind of like what a competitor's doing and I just don't care anymore like we're building something that is adding so much value and it's just like focus you've got to know so you kind of look into it every quarter or whatever but I'm laser focused on like that person told me that this happened with their dog and this was the outcome how do I make that better next time like I just eyes on the prize right like we're building a longevity platform it's got to have longevity which means it's got to be clinically robust our whole team up until yesterday was only scientists and vets and then me and an engineer so like we haven't even had a commercial team up until
Speaker 1this week speaking earlier about being the kind of person that is that gravitates towards longevity even in human health I'm seeing a lot of this in the system do you think there is any overlap between pet longevity and humans and is or or is that like apples and oranges I think of course there is
Speaker 2overlap there's this concept of one health right like your dog or cat drinks the same water as you lives in the same environment as you drinks the same air as you they're a mammal there's going to be macro level learnings for sure but I think sometimes where historically people trip up is just by like dog longevity therefore dog wearable and it's like a dog doesn't give a shit if it has a sleep score do you know what I mean like it's not it doesn't have a meeting tomorrow and and so those analogous they just don't work and I think like what I'm deeply proud of is because of our team being you know vets and scientists and specifically biologists and I think it's just like it's just like it's just like it's just like it's that was really important. We have always brought this back to biologically what would help a dog and we'll do that once we do cats in the future but like biologically like what actually is going to make their life better like biologically and sometimes it's really hard to not build the sexy thing because actually the boring thing will make the most impact and so those are the considerations that we make every day is what is actually going to move the needle for x dog.
Speaker 1My cat's sleep score would be fucking off the chain there's there's the content warning right there. I want to know genuinely as a pet owner that has a cat that would love to use this product hurry up and release it for cats thank you. Can it help my cat live longer? I know that's a crazy question but but how do you? I don't think that's a crazy question.
Speaker 2I think um knowledge is power and you know uh scientific development this is like a bigger conversation but scientific development has consistently helped our pets to live longer right like if you think about human medicine versus animal medicine we are just a little bit behind and that's not super surprising obviously a lot more funding goes to human development and I'm not saying what is right or wrong I mean I chose to work on dogs because I like them. I'm not saying I'm not going to work on dogs because I like them. I'm not going to work on them more than humans but each to their own um so you know I think what we're building is giving you the power knowledge and the data to make better decisions so that you're not kind of there's like two ways of doing it there's a complete denial where you just don't know and then one day you get something really scary and and or expensive and you are very sad and you start desperately trying to figure out what you can do reactively and it kind of just doesn't work. I'm not saying that it costs you a lot of money or the other side of it is you notice things and you don't really have the data to go on and so you end up doing a whole bunch of tests and you know you're kind of like no one has a magic ball your pet can't talk it's just it's it's kind of like an ineffective way of doing things so really all we're all we're working on is like what's this preventative health metal look like how do we aggregate the right data for each individual pet so that we can make assumptions not just based on or sorry not even assumptions so that we can make decisions not based on assumptions but based on that actual pets own biology right like that's the crux of everything that we do is like how do we understand this individual so that you are making decisions for the dog in front of you not for the average dog because so much of how it had to do you know preventative or even sometimes medicine is based on averages even can I give you like a really tangible and small example please vaccines right so we we suggest to vaccinate your dog every year and the reason that we do that is not necessarily because your dog needs to be vaccinated every year but it's because we need a reason to try and get you to go to the vet once a year and we're trying to catch all for you know a great dana and a chihuahua are the same animal but they obviously have vastly different needs um so there's things called like titer testing for example where you can understand the um the actual antibodies in your dog's body and decide if they need to be vaccinated that year or not like there's just so many things that most people don't know about um and so we're helping to guide owners to make better decisions based on their pet's biology
Speaker 1can i tell you you know the first uh security question for everything is you know your the name of your first pet and every time i write the name of my first pet i feel sad and the reason is my first pet we we just didn't know any better i was four still an only child my parents were like wow she's really a weird kid maybe a dog will help you be the judge um and she's a cavalier king charles spaniel and we didn't know we didn't know any of this but a myriad of health issues heart conditions but even the food we gave her this is back in the day in the 90s yeah whatever's at coles or worse we'll just feed her that and she had horrible like eczema and it's awful and we wouldn't have done that had we known we just wouldn't have totally
Speaker 2and that's the other thing like it's one thing to be like even today present day i have a cavalier i understand heart health right but what our platform does is it goes well here's all the existing data here's new data that you might want to be able to get over time and then here are some questions that we can specifically ask you about that dog so that we can start to understand changes of behavior early and like it seems so simple i mean the actual underlying technology is very complicated so my cto is probably going to listen to this and be like no it seems so simple
Speaker 1you try but like building that algorithm was like definitely
Speaker 2the hardest part and now we're just finessing and making it better and better each time but like you there are so many things that you can do to intervene and and to protect that particular dog over time across you know it's not just diet diet is obviously a huge one but there's just there's so many different things that we can look at and help support on that journey so yeah it makes me sad don't say your dog's name though because that's your security password across
Speaker 1everything yeah now everyone knows they'll carry the one and hack into my gmail uh this is such a obviously mission-led you know origin story that you know you've got vc backing from so clearly very exciting but mission-led business how do you feel about ai in general you're obviously leveraging ai you're obviously using ai how do you navigate the the doom and gloom headlines of ai while also having such a a clear uh positive mission yeah look this
Speaker 2is something that i think about uh all the time right and i mean even even this morning i was sort of uh thinking about it deeply i think like i'm gonna like lay out my thought process and again i think going back to my quote from earlier where i said you know if anyone proposes to know what's going to happen next they're they're lying or they're trying to say something or they're wrong um i don't know what's going to happen next and i think it's absolutely important to interrogate this because i genuinely believe that we're working through this and i think it's absolutely important to interrogate this because like the biggest shift that we'll probably ever see in our lifetime and that is you know both terrifying exciting and important um all at the same time and that's why it's quite hard to balance all these things in your mind i think where i've really struggled lately is this um what i'm calling our kind of comfort in rage or our comfort in outrage it's sort of you know in my personal life um i think it's sort of you know in my personal life i think it's sort of you know in my personal life everyone is do not use this you're ruining the planet you're the worst person on earth and then in my professional life everyone is ai hack of the week and like you know who asked you that and like building really like um interesting and important technology and i guess like the part that i struggle with is that i i i alluded to it earlier which is like we need to be able to hold more than one concept in our head at the same time and i think it's and so on the one hand i i am deeply worried about the oligarchs and you know the entire world's change being held by essentially like three people and i think that's something that we should be really conscious of as a society and and interrogating question for sure but then on the other side you know i am inherently a optimist when it comes to innovation and technology and like i can't i cannot lean into this outrage leading every decision mentality because it's something that i think we've gotten comfortable with because it's easier to be like this is bad i don't want to talk about it you're a bad person which i think is like super reductive and shuts down any conversation because if you consistently just say that all technology is bad and innovation is bad then you're also saying that the technological developments that have led to you know us like i think doubling the global life expectancy in a century or decreasing the amount of children that die by the time if they're 15 years old or like there's just there's so much innovation that has led to us actually living better and better over time and i think people struggle with that because we have access to so much information and so it's much easier to be upset about the things that are going wrong than to be cognizant of the things that have gone right yes
Speaker 1there's so much outrage like i i have to i don't have to i post on social media you know a lot of my ai related content and ai hacks of the week and and i see so much outrage uh but frankly i think i could own a sweatshop right now and get less outrage why do you think that is like why are we so mad at ai i actually
Speaker 2developed a new thought right like this morning so this is slightly half-baked and i think i love that
Speaker 1i'm getting the first scoop yeah we need
Speaker 2i think we need a lot more time than what we have to go really deep into this so i'm going to try and display it to you um in a shorter and more hopefully eloquent version i i think that change is hard i think change is scary and i think when we don't know what is coming i think we are as a society incredibly exhausted by change at the moment like starting and i'm boring covid but starting in 2020 like that whole period was so uh dismantling for a lot of people what's going to happen what's going to like there's it was a big it was kind of this weird big aggregation at the same time we're seeing this massive technological development and i think the bigger problem that we have right now is that we have this really deep-seated distrust in the institutions around us right now and that is totally fair and rational like i don't need to harp on about what you know politics and america and yada yada but i was listening to a really great podcast called search engine this morning just around like data centers and you know it became really obvious to me that data centers are the enemy because they are tangible and there's something that we can like hang our hat on and say like this is bad right this is bad because of the environment this is hate data centers yes and i mean like let's also remember that data centers were not invented by ai we've been using data centers for the internet for a very long time no one was mad well no one had anywhere to complain about it they didn't have the internet before the internet was invented
Speaker 1they'd have to write a letter and that's too hard
Speaker 2um and so there's that thing and like look i also want to preface this by saying i think that interrogating how we're building data centers the same way we interrogate how we build anything is absolutely important but to just say don't use technology don't use innovation and put it back in the box is so reductive and not going to do anything um whereas you know there is companies already in our midst like you know we're not going to do anything we're not going to do anything like firmus who are raising money to do um closed loop uh water cooling you know renewable energy data centers changes here changes coming innovation is going to lead to uh hopefully incredible medical advances which we're already starting to see but like it is absolutely our job to to fight for what we want to be the future that we exist in i just don't think that that is a simple and complete rejection of the growth of what we are doing in society right so there's that side of it but i think what really came from that listening to that podcast this morning which is why this is like slightly half-baked i don't think we're scared of data centers i don't even think we're scared of ai i think we're scared of kind of the problem i was saying before which is three people are going to own so much of this development and we have no trust in the systems that are built to trust us like so much of this is coming out of the us and that's because it's sort of the birth place if you will um so many of these towns that are worried about data centers are not necessarily just worried about data centers they're worried about all the massive companies that have come before that have bought land to build mining sites and then decided not to build those mining sites and you know that county is x million dollars in the hole and doesn't have the jobs that were promised to them It's not necessarily that we're worried about that thing. We're worried about the consistent letdown down of the systems that are meant to be around us so unfortunately this has been made worse by the fact that like we can't ignore that the distrust in the institutions and then the distrust in the people that are running these organizations like has been building and building and building over the past few years i mean open ai were an open source not-for-profit until yeah two years ago um and so i i don't times nine months ago just saying exactly like i don't really blame the distrust but i think that the outrage is slightly misplaced and if we just jump to outrage and if we don't think about how we can do it better i just i just see us sort of failing like it's not it doesn't and again like i don't know what's going to happen in the future and i don't profess to but to me just outrage is is not very helpful because the the positive side the obvious upside to this is you know in my space for example like paul conningham has developed the first ever personalized cancer vaccine which he's currently got funding from yc and is for dogs and is working on um you know it was all started by his dog rosie who had uh mast cell cancer and was told that she was incurable so like the development side of it is that it's not very helpful because the positive side for things that people i mean like it's just it's just so obvious that we could we could solve some huge problems and i also hope that there are people coming up that are solving those problems across the environmental issues that we're seeing as well right but the sad irony is that probably the tools that we've got will help us to solve a lot of those problems
Speaker 1can i ask you what is a more uh instead of being so anti-anxiety what is a more what's the word for it uh optimistic but eyes wide open way to approach ai even if you see yourself as an ethical and environmentally conscious person how do you approach ai i don't
Speaker 2think it's about being optimistic like i'm not going to ask anyone to be optimistic i think it's about being like balanced and well-rounded i take it uh it to me it is my responsibility as someone who is working on this space and but it's funny when i say like a friend of mine who is like works in a bar and is like don't use ai and i'm like that is awesome that you can just opt out of that i don't really have that same opportunity luxury yeah i don't and like it's not it's not me being i i constantly have conversations with myself around like what is the right tool for this job you know what is the right you like what will make this more efficient and and a better outcome and and faster and like and what won't and like yeah great and i have my own internal ethical matrixes and and hubrics for like what i deem as like a good use of ai and what is not a good use of ai and everyone should have that for themselves right but i think agree like with anything like i i just i get very frustrated by this you are a bad person you need to stop doing this you you you firstly like putting everything on the individual is just a race to the bottom right it's our responsibility as the people that work in these ecosystems to be saying we do want better systems for this um we do want the pharmacists of the world to be able to raise money we do want closed loop cooling we do want renewable energies like we do want things that are going to make us be able to be both efficient and also like not completely destroy the planet i just i find the outrage quite hard to stomach sometimes if i'm feeling particularly sassy and someone's talking about ai i'm like oh so you're a vegetarian because you do understand that the agricultural industry uses a lot more water and power than but when i'm not feeling that sassy because i also feel like it's a little bit reductive to just say well this uses that and this uses that because again it's the race to the bottom right it's not about burn the whole world yeah exactly like it's not about the individual it's about what can we all collectively do to make what we're doing better and if you're only just become out if you've only just become outraged about ai recently and you've never been outraged by mining or like the other things that are absolutely desecrating the environment so that you can have your iphone and you can have your computer i think it's reductive and so i'm not saying that you need to be an optimist i'm not saying that you need to be wholly positive i think it's totally fair to be sitting in the gray at the moment and saying i don't know what's going to happen because none of us do but i am an optimist in life that we are all genuinely pushing for things to get better and that is like hopefully better for everyone i don't mean just better for a few and even though it doesn't the world will never be fair right like the the world will never ever be fair there will always be systems that we need to finesse and improve but the more that you shut things down you're actually not having those conversations you're not making things
Speaker 1better speaking of unfair in every other technological you know implementation the internet smartphones i feel like women weren't invited a lot of us were not invited or like oh we didn't study software engineering therefore we can't partake in building it and i get really excited about ai and lowering that barrier of technical know-how to still bring products to life but i am noticing women because they seem to outsize care about the ethical uh considerations of ai they're opting out of ai what happens if they do that this
Speaker 2is a topic i could talk about for hours but um look yes you are right it is consistent and there's data to show this like i can send you studies on it that it is women who are overwhelmingly care about things you know like the amount of like female influencers that will talk out about fast fashion for example that male influencers just do not have to and that's just that's just like a very like visual example of of kind of that women constantly have like this ethical brunt to bear um and that's a whole other thesis but with regards specifically to this i will i mean yes i'm obviously worried about like the three dudes that are holding all the power but that's also why i think it's really important for us to be part of this conversation i i worry that if only 50 of the population are bowing out then we're just going to create another however many decades where we're like reinforcing the patriarchal structure that we've yeah worked so hard to get not even out of especially if you've seen the news headlines recently about the afl but we've worked so hard like so many people in our generation are the first women to have their own house right like to not be in the structures of of that you're right like the the dot-com boom it was it was so male heavy and i just i see i see that as a concern but i understand it it's it's like this weird place that i'm existing in where completely understand that the ethical concerns like completely see that but i also want you to be a part of the innovation and the growth and like in a funny way it's the most exciting time if you're not a software engineer to be building because going back to like speed and taste is everything the tools are open so wide now like i meet incredible founders like lauren from verity ai who loves fashion and has created an entire ai platform to help um and she's going to kill me because i'm probably going to get this totally wrong but to help distinguish between genuine and fake fashion and like what a cool product that helps with the black market and millions of people that are losing jobs and money in the creative space of fashion and like these kinds of products will not be developed by men because it's potentially not interesting to them and so it's not even just that the individuals miss out on being part of it it's also that the things that will support us will be missing out on being part of it you've got dr ariel who's the founder of ovum who's creating this incredible preventative health product for women right which really understands their cycles and endometriosis and all of these things that have been overlooked and underfunded for years and years and years and if these women aren't partaking then we don't have those those development grace from angiometry
Speaker 1no one cared about aged care literally she's got this delightful gorgeous robot that doesn't freak me out that's hard to do incredible right in aged care like it's beautiful that's like because women
Speaker 2for some reason are the the holders of the empathy right so like yeah yeah i just don't get me started but like but true like this is what i mean like grace is a fantastic example of like the fact that there's a lot of people who think deeply about these problems and and i struggle even with saying that because i don't think it's women's jobs to hold no everyone else accountable to do
Speaker 1all the ethical uh and you know improve the world startups but like no like
Speaker 2also if a woman out there wants to build a business that just makes like a shit ton of money like pop off queen like get it girl like i i am naturally a person who's going to want to start a business about something that i care about it's it's not a business that i care about it's not a business that i care about it's not because I'm a woman, it is because of who I am. is the same like he deeply cares about the problem that we're solving right i think i really wish i
Speaker 1loved insurance or money more because i think it would change the the money that comes in the door but yes no judgment to the women that love insurance and fintechs uh please get that going please girl okay this has been absolutely incredible we're at the rapid fire uh spicy questions i think there's no risk of you shying away from these are you ready paloma uh yep all right let's talk about your recent business trip to the u.s uh what did it what did it make you realize when you came back here good or bad or both
Speaker 2oh this one's gonna hurt um i think we're just thinking like i yeah australia think bigger like go earlier back yourself like the amount of people that i don't know told us like you're too early and then when we went over there they were like you're not early enough i just think i think like uh yeah i i've i've had confidentially like female founders tell me like yeah they really like what i'm building but they've said that i you know i need a hundred mil oh sorry a million million dollars to build a building and i'm like yeah i don't know i don't know i don't know a million million dollars to build a building and i'm like yeah i don't know a million million dollars to build a building and i'm like yeah i don't know in order to raise like i don't know 500k on a safe note and i'm just like that's crazy man if i'm making
Speaker 1a million arr i do not want your safe note but it's like it's just like i just
Speaker 2think like i and i think like a lot of things are at play like market dynamics are at play like the whole complete change of our infrastructure is at play australia's you know being the sass yeah lots of things are happening at the moment but i think we we are in a bit of a fear bubble at the moment yeah which is sad because i think like maybe two years ago people were raising here and building here and because of the reaction to the market now i'm like go to the us like save up some money because you've got to save quite a bit to actually go there it is very expensive um but dream big
Speaker 1go early do it uh san francisco or new year really why uh look
Speaker 2my business is a direct-to-consumer business i couldn't live in san francisco but just like i think i don't know it depends on what you're building i for me i think new york direct-to-consumer the vibe the energy um just the hustle of like and i don't use hustle in the like derogatory term of like where i go all the time i mean hustle of like building your dreams and like doing the thing i felt like san francisco was a little bit more and i had a great time there so i don't want to shit on it too much but a little bit more like slick and like polished and like yeah sassy and um probably just like not for what i was building um but also i might change my mind in like 20 minutes so i wouldn't
Speaker 1hold you to it it's just going to be recorded and in the internet for all eternity uh amazing and uh look what do you think australia you know we're looking at geopolitical we're not going to build frontier models here in this nation what do you think australia could do
Speaker 2well i mean i'm biased here but australia is one of the best places in the world for science for deep tech i mean like for health like andromeda um everlab like there's heidi health like we we are so good at solving like complex problems that i think are so important harrison ai harrison ai like there's so many like i i if i haven't mentioned you know that i think about you huge list huge list and i like personally those are the problems i love to solve you can probably hear from everything i've been saying but like the problems i'm deeply interested in are like how do we continue all the things that have actually made the world a lot better in the past century because you cannot deny that like life expectancy mortality rates like declining people like how many people die from malaria like there are just there are so many things that we have started to solve for and you know i'm obviously very interested in in the animal space and pet health because i think that too often you know we're catching things too late we're putting dogs down too early and like it just i think the grief of of the death of a pet is something that we haven't quite understood in society yet so anything i can do to to um slow that down or make that less i will but there are so many other problems that i think we need to solve like brain cancer like you know the reason i'm so enamored with ariel at ovum is like women's health is still is still very behind so i think that's a big problem i think that's a big problem i think that's a big problem i think it's still very behind um even like like even medical like software that we're still building incredibly in australia like one of the incredible female founders ali hardcare who's building halaxy like we we are so good at things that are so important in the world and i think that's what we can keep doing really really well and like this aggregation of like what is hard what is science what is r and d and then what is commercial like that's i think that's where we excel
Speaker 1beautifully said this last question goes to edgar i'm wondering if you could call him bring him on the show yeah give me one sec i'll grab it guys this has never happened in the history of the show oh sorry edgar oh my god the feet oh okay okay focus this professional show um i'm gonna ask edgar a question i'd appreciate if you let us have this space edgar can you please blink if you'd like to have a long and healthy life oh he did it he blinked paloma you have been such an amazing and generous guest how can people follow what you're doing at alita um follow you as well and uh what's their best way to help their dogs now cats soon live a long and healthy life best way to get
Speaker 2your dog or cat to live a long and healthy life is download alita blueprint which you can do in your app store of choice um also please send me feedback because i love feedback um follow me on the link dinky or on instagram linkedin or instagram um for alita yeah like linkedin sort of but probably instagram tiktok um but i think like get that app on your phone help your dog live longer aggregate their health data become more knowledgeable learn what you can do learn more about them and just give them a little kiss on the snoot
Speaker 1for me please do thank you so much i absolutely love this episode thanks thank you so much for listening to in the blink of ai if you want to go deeper on anything we've got a weekly sub stack called attention is all i need yes it's hilarious it's a pun and essentially i go into ai rants tech news events i'm going to and more it's bite-sized and i hear it's awesome the link is in the show notes below
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