AI that Maps the Mind

Emily Page (00:00):

Some people can talk all day and say nothing at all. Others speak just once And change everything. This is a story about someone stuck somewhere in between.

Doug Downs (00:18):

She was a promising young intern at a top PR agency, quick with a pitch, sharper with a tagline. But when it came time for job interviews, she froze. Not out of fear, not even nerves, but because when asked the simplest question, tell us about yourself, she had no idea what to say. She knew her skills. She could write a mean press release schedule. Media hits like a pro, juggle six client decks in her sleep, but she couldn't explain why any of it mattered. She couldn't articulate the through line, the why, the story behind the bullet points without a story. She wasn't memorable. She was just capable. One night while doom scrolling job boards and sipping her fourth match of latte of the evening. She had a thought, I've helped brands find their voice. Maybe it's time I find mine. So she started journaling, not about work, but about what made her curious, what frustrated her, the moments she felt most alive. At first it felt kind of silly, and then it felt vulnerable, and then it started to feel like truth, and that's when something changed. She didn't just land a job, she landed one that fit because now when she introduced herself, she wasn't selling skills, she was telling a story, her own story. Today on stories and strategies, we meet a man who's helping all of us do exactly that, turn our inner voice into outer value, because sometimes the best way to reach your audience is to start by reaching yourself.

(02:14):

My name is Doug Downs,

Farzana Baduel (02:16):

And my name is Farzana Baduel. Our guest this week is Bill Welser joining today from Austin, Texas. Hey Bill.

William Welser IV (02:25):

Hello. How are you?

Farzana Baduel (02:27):

How are things in Austin, which is meant to be this incredible, vibrant tech center of creativity. Is it that way or is it just great?

William Welser IV (02:40):

Well, they've tried to make the PR even better by saying we're Silicon Hills because we're in the hill country of Texas, so we're Silicon Hills, but Austin's great. It's a little rainy today. So we've gotten a nice respite from the a hundred degree weather. It's about 70. That's why I'm wearing a jacket because I'm cold.

Doug Downs (02:58):

It's like room temperature and you're wearing a coat. Yeah. Whoops.

Farzana Baduel (03:03):

I love that. Silicon Hills, I mean, who needs valleys when you can have hills?

William Welser IV (03:09):

I mean, I moved here from Silicon Beach, right? So everybody has silicon in front of it. LA Silicon Beach like come on. Nice. Wow,

Farzana Baduel (03:17):

Wow.

(03:18):

Now, bill, you are the CEO and the CTO and co-founder of lotic.ai, a privacy, fast wellbeing ecosystem that uses spoken word narratives to give individuals agency over the data and insights about their mental and emotional health. My God, I needed that yesterday. Now before founding lot in 2020, you served as an executive and senior management scientist at the Rand Corporation leading its engineering and applied sciences department with over, gosh, 300 PhD level staff. My God, all of that brain energy. And earlier you were an officer at the US Air Force working on space and air systems and Bill, you believe the richest data set we have on ourselves a story.

Doug Downs (04:14):

That's correct, yeah. So let's start there, Bill. The richest dataset we have on ourselves is story and not in the once upon a time sense, but in the real vulnerable narrative that we live out day by day. Can you explain what you mean by that and why that matters now more than ever?

William Welser IV (04:36):

So when I say story, I'm talking about vulnerable or honest disclosures, and I'm not talking about toes that last tens of minutes, but I'm talking about one to three minutes, kind of just segments of your life that you're describing. And the reason it's so rich is because I can wear all, I wear an aura ring, I've got a Garmin watch on, I've got a whoop band on because part of our work is also taking that episodic data, that kind of biometric data and assessing it for how it affects your life or how it defines your life. But those things are the how many steps did I take? The what of my steps? How is my heart beating the what of my heart? It doesn't tell me about the why, and the why is the context around us. And there's context that is social and cultural context that's all around us. There's context that's very kind of physical on what's happening to me right now. And then there's context that's emotional and cognitive and the subconscious around your motivations and your expectations and all that dirty, dirty, squishy stuff. Unless you're speaking in run-on messy, no punctuations flipping from topic to topic, you really don't get an insight into the why of self. And this is, pardon the statement why story is so important.

Farzana Baduel (06:13):

I don't have a PhD level of understanding of, I mentioned earlier when I was discussing logic that it is a wellbeing ecosystem. What does it actually do? How does it turn our story into something actionable? Can you break it down for us non-PhD holders?

William Welser IV (06:34):

Sure. So everyone I think at this point is familiar with large language models and large language models hit the scene for real in 2022, and they take all of the information that's out there available and they kind of consolidate it and they turn it into what seems to be an interaction with you, an answer to your query, but it's not really a back and forth between you and another human. I've got a question, give me the answer and I'm going to ask you another question because that one, that answer wasn't exactly right. Well, that's not really the way we interact. We interact in a more relational sense. So what we set out to do at Lotic was to build artificial relational intelligence. So I'd like to think of it as the last mile of interaction between very, very powerful technology systems and the human and to get the most out of these technology systems.

(07:39):

Because remember, technology is just a tool. We like to villainize it and be afraid of it, but it is simply a tool that to get the most out of it, we need to be able to interact with it as naturally as possible. We need to be able to interact with it in a way that you can, if you rupture, you tell it, you hate it, you tell it, you don't like it, that you have to repair that, right? Because if I were to say something nasty, either the two of you, which I never would, I'd have to repair that. I couldn't just delete and come back and forget that it happened. So what Lodic set out to do was build this relational intelligence because that's what actually makes people most comfortable to be vulnerable, to pull out these stories that color in the why of their life. And if they have that we can make better decisions that serve us. Not a better decision as it relates to what Doug thinks should be best for me, but what's good for me, not a decision of the 77th percentile of men my age living in Austin, Texas, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I should be doing this. No, bill, this is what will suit you best because this context tells us that that's most important.

Farzana Baduel (09:05):

Okay. And does it help us to learn about ourselves like this in the biblical sense thyself?

William Welser IV (09:13):

Yeah, so the know thyself is really, it's spot on, it's self-reflection, self acknowledgment, those sorts of things, which when I hear people say those words, I shudder. And I'll share a silly thing about me, given the fact that I started this company, I've often joked that if it was the end of the world and I were stuck in a bookstore and I had to light something on fire, which I never would want to light books on fire, I would go right to the self-help section and burn it because that's where I would find my heat. Because I just don't think that a lot of those things actually help yourself better. So the know thyself is not just like, oh, well I really love baseball and pizza. It's more like, wow, I think that the world should be this way, yet it's this other way. I don't understand why I'm always frustrated. Well, it's because there's that chasm in between where I think it is and what it is. And so that's what we're trying to get at. It is super uncomfortable to get at that, but once you have it, it is the most insightful, most valuable set of information you have on yourself. And it gives you direct agency to act on behalf of yourself in spaces like healthcare and financial advisory and consumer goods, what I buy, how I buy it, all of that sort of stuff. If I know myself better, I can do those things better.

Doug Downs (10:52):

So low tech ai, I have a friend and over coffee, she told me recently she's developed a habit of journaling in chat GPT in a single chat. And cool, that's sort of the concept here. It's an online tool where you can journal except your tool is substantially deeper than just using a chat GVT because you built it with behavioral scientists, psychologists, any other letters that I should be including in there? I

William Welser IV (11:24):

Like to say it's built with science. Yeah, it's built with science. A lot of ISTs and ologists that we brought in that understand the humans. And then we partnered with universities to check our work. So University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, to check our work, not to help us build it, but instead to say, Hey, this is what we found. What do you think about this?

Doug Downs (11:47):

And Farzana and I are going to share what we found in just a second because we had the opportunity use it for a week. And it's amazing. I want to ask you, I'm a PR pro. I'm working on a campaign or I'm managing a tense internal relationship. Lord knows I've had those. Where does Lodic come in? Why would I use Lodic for my self-awareness as a PR pro? It sounds like something needy people need to use

William Welser IV (12:15):

If everyone has challenges on a day-to-day life, whether that's a challenge with something that's inanimate, like my house, I don't know what to do about my house, I've got to pay my mortgage, and how do I construct my spending habits so that I can do that? Or whether it's with other humans, right? Like, oh, I cannot stand this person every time I say something, they take it to the wrong way and I've house and spouse do rhyme. Yes, go on. Exactly. And so Lodic can help in all these spaces because really what you're looking for is you're looking for the cues of why it is you react in particular ways and how you might adjust that. I like to think people talk about being self-aware all the time, and I've met people who are the gurus of meditation and they go on these two week silent retreats and whatnot, and they're like, I am a hundred percent, I just know.

(13:16):

And I'm like, no, you're 50% self-aware. The most you can be is 50% because the other 50% is the other person you're talking to. You don't get a chance to control what they think. And so Lodic allows you to be the best that you can. And to your example, to some examples that we've gotten back from people because we can't see the way we've dealt with privacy and security, I can't see anybody's data. So if you all have used the system, thank you very much, I can't see that you have, it is protected at the individual level. I can't even reach back in and see what you've shared. And it's actually maintained on a blockchain that is specific to you so that it's immutable but also protected with the advanced cryptography, if we can say it that way, that's available out there. I use a lot of the same tools that I built for, well that I learned how to build for the military during my time, and then I've kind of honed over time. So it's very, very secure, very, very private.

Farzana Baduel (14:21):

So Bill, you talked about people becoming data brokers of their own, and I'm obsessed with dogs. So I go to the website and I'm just looking at dogs just randomly. And then of course all of a sudden all my other social media, they seem to get the memo and just pushing me lots of dog products, which of course I just buy them all on mass. So my dog is probably the most fault canine in London. Now I wanted to know a little bit more. I just passively give my data. I don't read the long contracts that you have to approve when you are downloading software channels and sorry, social media channels and so forth. Why do you think we have openly just given our data so easily to the point where we just feel as if it has no value and now all of a sudden you are coming up with this product which is actually you should be your own data broker, you should see value in your data, and actually instead of just giving it away to big platforms, how can you harness your data so that it works for you, not for the advertiser that's pushing a product?

William Welser IV (15:33):

Yeah, it's a really great question, and I think it varies by age demographic. It definitely varies by geography, but I think it boils down to in the late nineties, in the late 1990s, early two thousands, all of a sudden people were offering it went from paid email services to free email. We're like, holy cow, I can get free email. That's amazing. And it was at that point that we got ourselves to where we are today because we didn't ask the question of why free? How valuable is it to you Google? And I don't mean to pick on Google by far not the only ones, but for me, Gmail, I was like, holy cow, Gmail, I just got invited to it and it's free, right? I didn't question what is it worth to that? What is my data worth to them? And all we need to do is go look at the stock market for these publicly traded technology companies, and yet the data's worth something. The data is worth a ton. And so would we trade off free email for say your date is worth $10,000 a month, 10,000 pounds a month to Google. Would you take free email for that? Is that what it's worth to you? Or would you just buy a carrier pigeon and pocket the 10,000 pounds?

Doug Downs (17:10):

Okay, how are you making money on this bill? It's an awesome tool. We used it for free, I presume that website, and we'll put a link to it in the show notes if you're cool with that. So the listener can go on and do it, do it. This is an amazing tool. How are you making money from this man?

William Welser IV (17:28):

Yeah, so to be clear, when you do put the, anybody can go to this site and start an account. And so you don't need to have the most roots and smartphone or whatever. You can just use it across platforms. It is a demonstration system, so it is not fully articulated for everything that we can do, but it gives you a pretty good idea, it gives you good insights.

Doug Downs (17:51):

So later there'll be a premium

William Welser IV (17:53):

Option. So there are other versions of it out there right now in use by companies, by entities, and by entities. I mean we're working with municipalities, we're working with large nonprofits, looking at how to better understand their population but actually help their population understand themselves. And I can go back to how you can do both of those things at once in a second, but the way we make money is by in a B2B sort of sales, Hey, you want to make this available to your entire population, that's fantastic. It's X number of dollars per person per month. And what you get out of it is better informed, better behaved, just essentially more holistic humans. And we can abstract using very cool statistical tools. We can abstract out key aspects of population data without giving any insight into whom the individual is or the individuals themselves. And we can hand the organization like, Hey, you want a pulse of how your workforce is right now? Here's the pulse. Not you have to go do a survey. You just query the data and it comes back and says, here you go.

Doug Downs (19:24):

So I used it this past week and I have to admit the very practice, this is going to sound so sexist, but the very practice of using it, like sharing my feelings, like actually doing that was weird and strangely rewarding. I found, it's not that I'm out of tune with emotion, but the very practice of doing it and the prompts were thoughtful, it definitely follows what I consider to be therapist like principles where there's validation of my point followed by further digging and man made me, there were answers that took me 15 minutes, and yet I only provided two sentences because I had the sit and thing. Fna, you had a chance to use it as well. How'd it go?

Farzana Baduel (20:11):

I did. Life can be so busy, and especially as prs, we're always looking, we're people pleasing animals, so we're always looking at other people's stories and we just don't really pause for our own. So it felt very indulgent actually. And it also, it felt awkward because I'm, I'm just not used to thinking about myself, but it was quite transformative because actually it made me feel a little bit more connected to myself.

Doug Downs (20:44):

So we'll put the link in the show notes, get lodic ai. Correct. So it's like my mental Fitbit. That's right. You can use that if you want. You can use that. Thank you. Done. Bill. I love this tool. Thank you so much for your time today.

William Welser IV (21:01):

Thank you. You're

Doug Downs (21:02):

Welcome.

Farzana Baduel (21:03):

Bill, we have one more question for you. It's left by our previous guest, Brett Faro.

Brett Farmiloe (21:09):

The question that I'm most interested in from everyone is how are you using AI to improve your workflows? 

William Welser IV (21:27):

Oh man, I hate to say it but I’m weaning myself off.

So there is a danger, particularly with large language models, to offload so much of our cognitive processing that we just lose ourselves. So why do I need something to help me write an email? I guess it maybe saves me some time. I definitely use it if I'm having a hard time communicating something and I'm like, Hey, here's what I've written. Can you help me make this more clear? But I try to not automate things that require cognitive capacity, and I'm very actually worried that there's, and I have a good friend who cannot give me an answer now without having run it through chat GPT, but we can be talking about anything total crutch, and it went like that. I mean, this is not a crutch that developed over the course of 10 years. It is essentially disabled. That aspect of this person's brain in the course of a few months, that is terrifying.

Farzana Baduel (22:47):

That is not good.

William Welser IV (22:50):

So that's probably not the answer that your previous guest was.

Doug Downs (22:53):

I think it's a thought. We're looking, looking for your turn Bill. What question do you want to leave behind for our next guest?

William Welser IV (22:59):

Oh, that's a really, really good question.

Farzana Baduel (23:02):

You can use chat GBT if you want.

Doug Downs (23:05):

Yeah, you can consult or lodic ai.

William Welser IV (23:08):

Yeah, I try to stay away from chat GPT and I'm sure open AI will target, I'm sure somewhere this is going to be picked up, but because you don't really see where the data's going,

Farzana Baduel (23:19):

And

William Welser IV (23:19):

So everybody should be aware of the fact that everything you put in there is now open source. So that's why we do what we do, because everything you put in ours is not open source, but people should be aware that, just to be clear, everything in there is open source once you put it in and it's owned by the companies that have Microsoft being one that's put 10 billion into OpenAI. A question that I'm very interested in with respect to just day-to-day life is what steps do you take in making sure you bring your most authentic self to an interaction with another human? How do you keep the performative out of it and how does it make you feel when you take that approach?

Doug Downs (24:20):

So for me, one thing I learned when I started in radio at 19 was to listen to my, we call them skimmer tapes, and you listen for, there were always things I thought I did really well, but in the end they were over scripted and performative and there were things I thought, oh my God, I don't want to listen to that Sucked. You know what? They were never nearly as bad and sometimes they were the best parts of the show. So for me, it's to spend more time analyzing my performance, so to speak, and to look for the authentic. I

Farzana Baduel (24:58):

Would say I find that I am performative when I'm running on empty, when I'm tired and when I'm overworked and I don't have time to myself to think. So what I try and do is before I meet somebody, if it's possible, I try and book a little bit of time to just be still and just reconnect with myself and think, who am I meeting? Why am I meeting? And to try and put me in a situation where when I meet that person, I can just really be myself and I don't think I am myself when I'm rushing from meeting to meeting and I have a tick box approach because I'm just trying to get through the day.

William Welser IV (25:41):

Now you've given me something to think about because I'm going to have to look at when I am most exhausted. Am I more performative? I bet you the answer is yes,

Farzana Baduel (25:50):

And I'm inauthentic. I'm an empty shell going through the motions.

William Welser IV (25:55):

Can I add one last thing? So from a broad, so Lodic is obviously my company, but from a broad perspective, I really do believe that story will be a future source of wealth for individuals. And so this is a much broader than a company. This is a movement. This is talking about socioeconomic divide, those sorts of things. I do have a book that's being published and it's coming out in I guess beginning of October, that's called The Story Economy. It is not a pitch for lodic. Lodic can't do it by itself. Instead, it's a pitch for the idea that we have to think about creation of wealth beyond redistribution of existing wealth. Amazing.

Doug Downs (26:48):

Bill, I'm so on your page so to speak. Appreciate it.

William Welser IV (26:53):

I love you guys. This has been really fun.

Doug Downs (26:55):

Thank you, bill. Here are the top three things we got from Bill Welser in this episode. Number one story as data, understanding the why behind the what. Bill explained that while wearables, like the Fitbit on my wrist can tell us what is happening in our lives, only our personal narratives, our honest spoken stories can explain the why, and that reveals the emotional and multiple contextual layers that drive our behaviors. Number two, built for self-awareness, not surveillance. lodic.ai isn't just another chat bot, it's a science-backed, privacy focused relational intelligence tool that helps individuals safely explore patterns in their own thinking and behaviors. And number three, data ownership and emotional intelligence in action by helping people reflect on their own reactions and expectations. Lodic AI empowers users to improve relationships, navigate internal conflicts, and become better decision makers while keeping their personal data secure and entirely under their control.

Farzana Baduel (28:01):

I just thought he was fascinating and it made me think that actually we don't really value our data, and it made me think, is it because we don't value ourself and actually tools like these help us to actually connect with ourselves, value ourselves, and take more an ownership mentality to our data?

Doug Downs (28:19):

Yeah, my mind is spinning after using it, and I do plan to keep using the tool, not that I'm not being paid to support the tool. I just find it absolutely amazing.

Farzana Baduel (28:28):

Yeah, same. If you’d like to send a message to our guest Bill Welser we’ve got his contact information in the show notes.Stories and Strategies is a co-production of Curzon Public Relations, JGR Communications, and Stories and Strategies Podcasts. If you liked this episode, please leave a rating and possibly a review? Thank you to our Producers, Emily Page and David Olajide. Lastly, do us a favour? Forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.