She’s Using AI to Reverse Aging—One Day at a Time | Ep 222 with Sally So Founder of Genomii.ai

0:00I am born with severe eczema. So everywhere I go, different country, different weather, different triggers, I'll get different parts of bodies flare up, rashes, cracking up, bleed ache. And it takes months to heal. And there's tons of tests that are done on me on labs and whatnot. But nothing had really break the indication of how this whole thing triggered. I'm always chasing it. I'm treating the syndrome. I'm treating it when I don't feel comfortable, right? And I thought that in the massive world, even in the normal world, it shouldn't be these cheesing of your health. It should be you live it.

0:43And from all the knowledge that I built up from Trini, Gino Week. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Founder's Story. If you've watched this before, you know I'm very fascinated with how AI is going to impact health, but specifically around longevity. How are we going to look, feel, and be younger as we age? Because why do we have to age with AI now advancing as it is? I'm sure there's many ways that we can turn back the clock. And that's why we have Sally So, the CEO and founder of Genome.ai. And Sally, what you're doing is incredible. And we're going to get into all that. But first, what was the spark for entrepreneurship for you and why this industry?

1:28Hi, everyone. You know, hi, Daniel. Thank you for having me here. I'm Sally, founder of Genome.ai. It inspired me from what my personal disease units or symptoms that drive me towards today's outcome. I am born with severe eczema. So everywhere I go, different country, different weather, different triggers, I'll get different parts of bodies flare up, rashes, cracking up, bleeding. And it takes months to heal. So, you know, after I moved to Canada with the public health care system, I've been bouncing around from like, you know, weight rooms, dermatologists and white coats and whatnot. And that kind of triggered me because I'm a data girl.

2:19So I and I'm trained in health care and biological science. So I was thinking, why am I always waiting? And then the system is not following up. And there's tons of tests that stepped on me on laps and whatnot. But nothing had really brought the indication of how this whole thing triggered in the first place. So I'm always chasing it. I'm treating the syndrome. I'm treating it when I don't feel comfortable, right? And I thought that, you know, in the medicine or in the medicine world, even in the normal world, it shouldn't be you chasing your health. It should be you living your life. And so I start to think that is there a way that I can find out the root cause of what's causing my problem?

3:19So I start to stick into the rabbit hole of like biologic, genetic, this epic genomics and environmental triggers and everything else. And at the end, you know what I found? Everything matters, right? So literally everything matters. And it's not because the doctor doesn't want to treat me or they don't have a way of telling you exactly who you are. In genetic that I learned, we're kind of like in 35 % buckets each time we do something to ourselves. So in medicine world, I'm sure you know that every medicine you take, there's people that really react good to it. They have all the curations, but less side effects.

4:11Some of them like half and half, Some of them, right, really severe side effect and not so much in the helping side, right? So that's because our genetic is made that way. And in that sense, our biology is wired to the outcome of some medicine. But because the science is evolving and the medical medicine field is evolving, we gradually learn that everything actually matters. And for doctors to find out what we fit in, they have to try one medicine and then follow the protocol, most likely 21 days to 28 days in a cycle. Then you come back, tell them the symptoms or how you react with the medicine, and then go back to trial again.

4:59So it's basically just a protocol of medicine world that how the system needs to set up some way to help us, right? And from those episodes of my life, I figure that's not smart enough, that that that need to be changed. And that triggers me like, OK, I need to go find my answer. I need to find an answer. And from all the knowledge that I built up from the training, genome making it led. Yeah, it sounds like you went down the rabbit hole and you really, I imagine the deeper you go, the more you learn, the more you want to learn more. When you look at how AI is going to impact health overall, what excites you the most besides what you're working on now, just overall, what excites you the most about how AI is going to impact health?

5:55So AI is a very powerful computation module, right? So it can, when you have an issue, when you have a question, it can land, it can go through all the potential and possibility and give you the best one. And that's what it can do. However, it's still slightly missing from AGI or like human, which is a step further that we remember the context and then we strategy and then we coach. Right. So there's like three steps, three buckets again. In current AI, I think it's very, very powerful and because it can go through lots of computation at once in real time. So it will give, if it's structured the right way, you know, it will give you that AGI towards leading, coaching, guidance way of finding out what's going on with you.

6:52So that's the power of what the AI to the future health system, I'll say. Well, it's very exciting. Yeah, I've heard, you know, they could create a drug in a few weeks. what would have taken many, many years and thousands of people and the ability to, as the computers get faster, maybe we get quantum or maybe we're already there in some lab that we can figure things out. So when you looked at, you went down the rabbit hole, you saw all these things, you figured these things out. Then you realized, okay, how do I take this and create an app that's going to solve these problems? And by the way, I also suffer from eczema.

7:29So I can relate to your story. Okay. Okay. So in Genome in particular, what I'm building is two very special infrastructure that combined with the current LLM model or the normal known AI, that will create the AGI effect. Of course, it will need a lot of computation more. But First infrastructure that I create is called TwinsXM. It's a memory infrastructure. So every time you went to a doctor, you fill out a survey, you fill out forms. To every single doctor or every single year, you need to do the same thing. In terms of the memory form in beta, we can do that. And plus, if we can, you know, nowadays you have cell phone, everybody has cell phone.

8:22So you can trigger and remember all your lifestyle data as you go in a daily basis. You know how powerful Google Analytics is when you pile up volumes, pile up things around you to see the BI, the insights, right? So imagine when you power up all your lifestyle episodes with just a film or a record of sounds. it will then pile up and give you a visual trends of what's going on with you and the system the twin exam is basically a digital twin version of yourself living in your phone that it caps up all the memories put it into a data training analytical and then when it's needed it could add in the ai part which is the lom model to reason why and what happened with you then the last part is the contextual, which is linkage.

9:17So currently what I'm seeing missing here, the missing link is we have a lot of lab tests. We have genetic, we have blood tests, we have all kinds of tests that we can do. Microbiome is a new and upcoming one, right? However, they're not contextually linked and explained it back to you holistically enough. So yes, we have developed more and more tools, However, things are still very fragmented in their department. They're very smart and AI in their department. However, they're not. Like your exercise should be connected to your food, to your rest, to your stress. Like it's not a single fragmented area that you should dig into.

10:05It should be all contextually linked. So the last part of what we're doing is to link them together and then guide you through as a coach using the linked data. So do you see this digital twin, the ability where you can understand how you will look or your age, or how you will age, and then you can determine, okay, in five years, if I continue down this certain path, this is how I will turn out. Or if I tweak, this is how I will turn out. Is that already happening? Or is this the future of the digital twin? In the eatery data that we're using, it's already happening. So basically, let's say we already have a lot of research and science papers around topics like, okay, if you meditate certain minutes a day for a certain time, your biological can strengthen time, right?

11:03Or like say if you eat healthy in this and this diet and weight, in time, you can relevant it back to like biological age shortening or even telomere extent strengthening, right? So in that same token, if we take all those computations back into the lifestyle that we're doing and record the right way that we're recording, I'm basically able to tell you, Daniel, yesterday when you wake up, take a picture. Genome will tell you like, Daniel, yesterday you did this and this and this and this and this. Now today, congratulations, you only aged 0.6 days. Or you went crazy on party last night and you didn't sleep well.

11:46and you know what you age 1.6 days right so that's that's the information that we want to put in front of people and let them see how their age in a really relevant way to themselves rather than okay biological age what was that what does that do to me what makes right so this is what it's coming i mean i'm almost scared because i don't sleep very much that's my problem long. I don't really party, but I don't sleep much. So I'll be scared that this morning, I think I may have aged like three years from yesterday. So this is, I'm very, very fascinated with how the tracking and the ability to link, like you said, linking all these things, all these markers, all the stuff that's happening in our daily lives together, because why can't we see what's going on?

12:35And I'm sure you're familiar with Brian Johnson. He's making all this fame around the longevity. And he always says, you know, with advanced technology, why do we have to die? That's his thing. But how do you see longevity and AI transforming now? And on top of that, it's such a hot topic. And I know there's billionaires dumping huge amounts of money in this because I think so many people want to live forever. Yes. In fact, glad that you mentioned him. He is one of, I think it's, he's one of crazy dude, but I love him. Like, to be honest, he's in tech. He's tracking data around himself. He's a little bit older than normal people, what we will do.

13:23However, he's really inspiring and confirming that data really can do a lot. And thank you for his inspiration of doing all the crazy thing in front of the camera. In terms of the education part, people start to aware and understand. So I think that's very important that we understand that to some extent, we are able to control how we want to age or how we age. And transforming AI, I'll say with current technology, with current devices that we have, I do believe there's a lot of missing data that should have been tracing all along these times. When you see them put together, you'll be surprised how much information it can tell you in a daily basis.

14:14And that's really personalized and individualized that related to you and just to you. By the way, not sleeping too much, it might not cause you losing your age. It's depending on how you're biologically wired. So ease on that. you might not age three years hey there's there's hope for me sally there's hope yeah i appreciate that and we had we had a recent discussion with uh with another guest about biological age and studies that they were doing and what they told us is they found that stress played a major marker in what was aging people among other things but are you finding the impacts of stress or Or is there something else that you're also finding that is moving people along in the biological age mark?

15:10So, of course, sleep and stress is two huge biomarkers in terms of aging. How does people have stress? That's another behavior-driven thing. So, like, you know, people worry. People worry about they're not sleeping. People worry about they sleep too much. People worry everything. thing. That's what human is. I'm sure you hear funny quotes like, you know, women, Caucasian women, they want to tend up. They put on, you know, tend sunscreen, right? Asian women, we want to whiten up. We want blocks of sunscreen. So every person in the world is finding stress for themselves. I don't think stress itself, it's a bad thing.

15:59It's actually triggering some of the hormone to help you live younger. The right trigger of the right stress at the right time, it's the key. However, extreme stress for nothing, that's the one that's causing aging because worry in this type of stress is the one that really causes aging. Just like in business, when you have competition, there's always good outcome. But when you have too much competition that kills all your economics balance, that's when you get out of business, right? So it's the same token. In Genome, what we're seeing that that's one of the very biomarkers that we measure in a daily basis.

16:41So because the device of your phone, we let you talk to your genie, your digital twins. So when you feel stressed, you need a window out, you need an outlet. People often don't find that or don't have that outlet. Plus, If you tell your husband, tell your teacher, tell your partner, sometimes they're not the same individual. They won't understand you and they won't live in your mind of how this stress or this little things, that particular, it's bothering you in what way. They might not understand. It's not like every person is different, right? Especially how our mind is wired. So genome has another function.

17:24And it's because we memorize. So we can be the channel. That's why the digital twin is forming. We're mapping your data graph. We're mapping you, why you are stressing certain things. Is it child? Is it parents? Is it original family? Is it really relation-related or like, you know, work-related, financial stress-related? So we can try to find the core and base of it and try to solve it that way. And so, yes, stress is a major biomarker, but letting people out is the best way of tracking and measuring it. So when it's well measured and displayed in front of you, most likely you can make some changes.

18:12We don't force you. We can't force you. We're just a lot of analytics showing in front of you. But I'm sure with all the data in front of you that proven that the stress is nonsense. Don't worry about it. People will know slower with it. I hope that my digital twin can help me financially and take care of me financially in the future so I don't have to work. I hope that too. I won't be stressed. I won't be stressed. I won't age. And I can talk to my digital twin. And I think about how our relationship with AI will be transforming our relationship with other humans, because I don't think we're at a place, you know, technology moves so fast that I don't know if our brain can really catch up to technology.

19:02So it's like if we're interacting with, let's say, AI, I don't know if we can say, oh, this is AI or this is human. I don't know if we could do that yet. And I wonder how we will transform our thought of a relationship as AI advances so much with you have the voice, you have the video, you can go online. You don't even know if a video is even real anymore, if it's deep, fake. We don't know these things. So I think about this as to how will this transform relationships, whether it's friendships, romantic relationships, because if we're talking to AI or a bot and we don't know if it's human or not, but it's saying everything that we want to hear.

19:46It's saying all the right things back to us. Will I even want to have a human friend who is complicated, who might do things to get, you know, and this has nothing to do with your ad that you're making. This is just something I'm thinking about just in terms of how will relationships change as AI continues to advance? My take on that will be this is happening. One of the reasons that Genome only goes down a wellness path is because this is really hard to control. To act as a digital twins and a friend, a relationship, a buddy and bestie position, if we go too far, it will overtake human position, which is what we don't want to do.

20:34But I do believe it's somehow happening because sometimes machined with knowledge gives you a lot more context than human trying to oppose you and being bad to you, especially attitude-wise. However, myself, I'm an extrovert, so I like to be involved with human, like real human. As long as the education puzzle goes deep enough to tell people that although a machine besides you can be a coach, a buddy, but it cannot replace relationship. Because without, you know, in biological age, back into health, in biological age, relationship, it's one of a big spectrum that whether you will age or not. So I'm sure, you know, in our last generation, my father's generation, a lot of uncles, when they start to retire, they start to see the end goes towards that spectrum.

21:38It's because less people to talk to, less people to interact to, less place to expose themselves. So when you're in front of a machine, although you're talking to it, you know, pouring your emotion, whatever to it, but you're not in a circle, like you're not in a human circle that you human, we want, we live our life, we want to experience, we want to share our emotion, we want to share to other people. And I think that's still, it's very true inside our biological wired. So I think if AI take over that part, I think it's going to be harmful for biological age in terms. That's just my take because, you know, with all the research and scientific back, it is very important to have true friends around you.

22:31That gives me hope. Thank you. That gives me a lot of hope. And then for the people that are, you know, very introverted or don't know how to have a human relationship, I know a few people, maybe the AI will help them, maybe it comes out of their shell, so they can have more human interaction. So I'm very, very excited about how AI is transforming health. On top of that, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to get a lot of fine lines and wrinkles. I don't want to look older. I don't want to feel older. I want my biological age to reverse. So I need an app like Janome.ai. But if you want to get in touch with you, Sally, how can they do so?

23:09Oh, sure. Just go on to my website, Janome.ai, as easy as that. Sign up. We're launching next month. So try experience it yourself and try to DH yourself. Oh, by the way, it's a gamified also component. It leads on people with sort of like a collection and price type of gamified like Dooling Go. So while you're doing your right lifestyle, correct lifestyle, you get some price that you can show to others, that you can share with others. Will you ever have a leaderboard? Yes. I like this. I want to compete against other people on how they're doing. I know that inspires me to do that. I really like the gamified.

23:57It's like customization is the future, right? With AI now that we can customize. So I can see where you have the customization. It's gamified. You have this experience. At the same time, it's doing good. you are you are have this is a future unicorn at minimum I don't I forgot what 10 million is but whatever that is I'm sorry 10 billion this is either a unicorn or over a 10 billion company this this is going to be massive for you where do you hope this company goes in terms of the success for yourself do you see this as like a big exit is this something you want to do for 100 years Where do you see the future of this impacting entrepreneurship for you?

24:38I would do it 100 years. As I know, I can live 100 years with it, first of all. Second of all, it doesn't stop me from exiting as the IPO and let everybody invest and see the future and invest in it. So I do believe this app, it's not just a health app. It's actually the digital tweens component, the system, the operation system that we're building to help everybody keep their digital tweens with them. So they have right guidance when it comes to wellness, all the choices, you know, how to avoid things that would get interrupted with their goal. Amazing, Sally. Janome.ai, the future unicorn, the future enabler of us to stay young.

25:29I appreciate you joining us today on Founders Story. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you, everyone. Bye.