The Admin That Never Ends: Dilani Kahawala on Building Anna

0:00About three weeks ago, I completely forgot to pick up my son from school. I kid you not, Dilani, there were four mums calling me non-stop for that entire hour. They were waiting with my son. I didn't even know the mums that were doing it. And it feels low stakes, but then it's high stakes and then it's reputation stakes. And then I've got some stories to tell you on the episode. I'm okay with dropping the ball and affecting my reputation. I'm not okay with my kids getting affected by it. Anna basically surfaces it up to you in messaging and you're like, hey, this thing moved or the instructions for the swimming carnival changed.

0:37And now you need to add some extra clothes in the morning. It's like boring stuff that between me and my husband, we drop. Theoretical physics at Harvard or multiple location school pickup. That answer is so obvious. It's the latter. And I've got like speeding tickets, police have stopped me. This happens. Managing 150 emotional parents in a group chat or 11 AI agents. Oh, the group chat is intense. I've gotten almost cancelled. Really? LinkedIn, WhatsApp, we're just getting cancelled everywhere. Hi.

1:17Hi, I'm Georgie Healy. Welcome back to In the Blink of AI. This week, before we get started on the episode, I've got two of the most important AI headlines you need to know. Firstly, one of the hardest maths problems of all time may have just been solved. And if it had been solved by a human, they might have been in line for a$1 million prize. But as you might be guessing, it was actually solved by AI. Now the problem involves something called the Navier-Stokes equations. Now stay with me. Now these equations are incredibly important. They help model planes, They help model how blood flows through the heart and they help model things like cyclones and floods and bushfires.

1:56Now there's one part of the Navier-Stokes equations that mathematicians have been trying to crack for decades. Could there be a scenario where there's a weird swirling vortex and at which point these equations go haywire? The answer is yes and OpenAI managed to solve this within 88 hours. And all you need to know really is that the mathematicians are stressed. They say the proof is incredibly difficult for humans to understand. I actually saw one mathematician crying on a podcast recently. This is how much it means to them. I feel for the mathematicians, but I think the coverage isn't covering this enough, which is if OpenAI can solve this equation in 88 hours, imagine what difference it could make to bushfires, cyclones, floods like the Lismore floods.

2:42If we could better predict things like that, help communities move quicker in these environments. I personally am really excited for this kind of development. So if you're a millennial, you cannot have missed Joseph Gordon-Levitt growing up. He was in 500 Days of Summer. He was in 10 Things I Hate About You. He was in Third Rock from the Sun. And now he's Hollywood's biggest AI critic. He's written a Washington Post op-ed arguing that AI companies should be paying their creators. He co-founded the Creators Coalition on AI. He's testified to lawmakers and at Sundance he said that these models are built on stolen data.

3:20I'm like 20 % annoyed but 80 % impressed because essentially I love a nuanced take on AI. He's reminding the tech industry that surprise other industries do exist and a lot of creators have a genuine reason to be furious about how their work has been used. But my 20 %? People like Joseph saying just make AI ethical. Like, mate, I would love that too. The problem is the toothpaste is out of the tube. These models are already built with all of this data mined together in one big data soup. There isn't a neat little receipt when you look at the data that says this is 0.003 % Taylor Swift. This is 0.001 % Lana Del Rey.

4:01Going forward, I completely agree with Joseph's and other creators wish, which is a policy where creators get a real choice with what to do with their work. Opt out, license in and get paid when AI companies profit from their work. My guest this week is Delani Kawahala. She has a PhD in theoretical physics from Harvard. She's chased billion dollar deals at Meta and smashed them. She wrote a novel just to decompress, not relatable but iconic and she'll tell you without hesitation that none of this was as hard as getting three kids out the house by 8 15. That is relatable so she did something about it Delaney built Anna an AI assistant that captures school emails the chaos of a whatsapp group chat jujitsu soccer notices and everything that comes with the admin of being a parent.

4:55She trained it herself using hundreds of hours of labeling from her own inbox. Frankly, it's really rare to hear someone with this kind of enormous brain and talent and brilliance being put towards a topic that the tech industry, for reasons we won't cover today, does tend to ignore. In this episode, you'll laugh, you'll feel seen, you'll leave with better ways to run your week, and you'll probably have some ammunition to make fun of me in the future. I'm okay with all of this. Let's dive in. You're listening to a day one.fm show.

5:32In the Blink of AI is proudly sponsored by Deal, the global HR and payroll platform that's behind the expansion of companies like Revolut, Shopify, or fans of the show 11 Labs who quadrupled their workforce in 54 countries. Build your global team with Deal.

5:56Tulani, thank you so much for joining in the Blink of AI. Thanks for having me. Last time I saw you, we were actresses. That was the most fun and crazy day. Most fun and crazy day, but you were suction actual. Have you ever done acting? No, it's definitely not what I'm good at. Really? You were great though. So our entire launch video ran, like, hinged on your presence there. I got so, when we launched this, I got so many comments about you being in that video. That's so kind. I would pretend to be humble, but I've never felt like, like, has everyone seen it? I was like, I didn't even know who you were.

6:34And then, like, I was like, I'm going to make sure we change that. So good. Yeah, the launch video for Anna, your amazing app, we did it. Gosh, like we smashed it out though, didn't we? What a day. Yeah. It was so intense. And I remember like right at the end, we're like running out of light, daylight. Oh my goodness. We're still like. It's because I was such a diva at the beginning for my first three minutes that I was like, let's do another take, guys. Well, it, you know, it set the scene. It's an amazing, look, I can't wait to talk about it. I can't wait for this episode. I keep being asked about parenting in this time of AI.

7:10I keep being asked about solutions to how hard parenting is. And I can't wait to talk to you about it. But first of all, what makes you more stressed? Your inbox or the WhatsApp group chat? I feel like the answer to this is so clear. It's the WhatsApp group chat. Discuss. It's, there's, I have three kids and they have like different WhatsApp threads for their school and then for like the soccer group and then for tennis and I'm just like you guys do you not even go to school anymore just like stop all this activity sometimes you know like it's like there's an app that will have the information and then some poor parent is like screenshotting this app yes strapping it into whatsapp but occasionally they'll miss because it's like another mom right who's probably like doing this in between getting her two kids ready Agree.

8:06Agree. And it feels low stakes, but then it's high stakes and then it's reputation stakes. And then I've got some stories to tell you on the episode, but it's like, I'm okay with dropping the ball and affecting my reputation. I'm not okay with my kids getting affected by it. It's emotional trauma. And this is, I feel like across three kids, this happens too often. Dude, I'm struggling with two. I don't even. That one hasn't quite got to the stage where he feels peer pressure, but it's coming. How old are your kids? Eight, six and two. Yeah. So we've got six and four. Yeah. And like one's in school, one's starting school next year.

8:50And I thought our lives would get easier. The opposite is true. I'm like an Uber driver and a PA for three humans all at once. Let's talk about the fact you have a PhD from Harvard. your mission right now is to solve this what's harder what's harder getting the PhD from Harvard or the three WhatsApp groups it's not even a competition like I just sat there and wrote equations for five years that was way easier than just every morning it doesn't stop I feel like as a grown-up I did not anticipate you just wake up every morning and it never ends like this there's like 18 admin things and then I get to the weekend I'm like okay now it's time to go through my inbox that is like 400 emails and then I'll be like such an achievement and I know the next weekend I'll have to do it again and I'm just I don't know how to solve this problem it's like so many hours of life you have a PhD from Harvard I don't think I'm stupid but for whatever reason I keep dropping the ball as well and it feels like they're dumb mistakes but it's just the overwhelm so overwhelming This morning I realised driving to this recording, oh no, it was my daughter's ballet day.

10:04She's meant to wear like certain clothes to school. And I'm like, there's always something. There's always something that I've forgotten. How are you trying to help ease that burden for parents? Biggest stress, I think, is all the different pieces of information that come at you. What we do is we just pay attention to all of that and give you reassurance that Anna has caught it all. if it's relevant for you, because sometimes like all of these things have like soccer notices and ballet classes, but my kids don't always not relevant to them. Yeah. And I still get them. Yeah. Anna basically surfaces it up to you in messaging and you're like, hey, this thing moved or the instructions for the swimming carnival changed.

10:46And now you need to add some extra clothes in the morning. It's like boring stuff that between me and my husband, we drop. Totally. It and And that's what Hannah's optimized to do. Just like handle the really gunky, boring admin that gets you into trouble. This speaks to me on such a deep level. One anecdote, I'm going to really out myself in this episode. About three weeks ago, I completely forgot to pick up my son from school. Completely forgot. And I'll justify it, but really, it's pretty bad. He finishes early. He has chess on a Monday. and I had a meeting pushed. So it was an early pickup and then my meeting got pushed.

11:29Normally I would reserve that time and never forget. I kid you not, Delani, there were four mums calling me nonstop for that entire hour. They were waiting with my son. I didn't even know the mums that were doing it. I realised after the meeting was finished, they were standing there with him for an hour. These mums I don't know. And then in the group chat it's like I heard about what happened, Like all these strangers heard about what Byron's mum did. And I'm like, I don't think I'll ever recover from this. No, that's hard. It's brutal. I'm like, I thought I was an intelligent person that was on top of things.

12:06But all it takes is like one meeting to go astray. Or like one slight change in schedule, right? Like on Wednesdays, we have to pick up Theo by five. Every other day, they're in like after school care. So if you're a little bit late, it's okay. but sometimes on Wednesdays you're like at like 4.55 like oh it's Wednesday I think we've told this story really well for people that have kids or don't have kids how hard it genuinely is and it's not just a matter of like being more prepared or smarter things do fall through the cracks it's just so I just don't think I was asking myself like how did this work when I was school age like my parents definitely didn't do any of the stuff.

12:50They don't do as much stuff or just... I do want to ask this to you actually because you work full-time, I'm guessing. I work full-time, I guess, podcast but still full-time and both parents work full-time more. Do you think kids are doing more extracurricular and do you think AI can help us in this time or is it just adding more complexity to how we're navigating all the information overload? I think we are doing more. Like I think it is the expectation of how curated the kid's life should be and I'm like this is insane. I want to stop it because I'm like I don't really think you need to learn tennis.

13:34It's okay. Maybe you can do it later. But then I feel this pressure. All the other parents are doing it. They want to do it because their friends are doing it. And then it's just this never-ending pile up. Agree. Across multiple kids. And actually, they just don't have enough free time. Or being bored. Right. They just don't have. It's so structured now. Agree. And now their life is so structured that they don't even know to do if they have a couple of hours free. 100%. And I'm like, this is not actually a good thing. And to any of you listeners that are judging us and thinking, we'll just pull them out.

14:11You're their parents. I promised myself before having kids, I am not getting on that treadmill. I am not going to be that parent. And guess what? All the other kids are doing it. You feel like a bad parent. And two, you're stuck entertaining them. And it's sometimes easier to just drop them at jujitsu for an hour and get one hour where you're like, at least they'll be doing something in that time that I don't need to think about. At least, like, sometimes I'm like, at least they're outside. But is AI helping with it? I don't think AI is yet helping with this particular problem of like, should we be, how should we structuring childhoods?

14:45Honestly. Agree. I think you have to kind of buck the trend a little bit and be like, hey, you're just going to be free range for a while. Free range kids. I love it. If you had a magic wand, though, with AI or otherwise, what would your week look like from next week that would be a little bit different? I just wish that by the time my kids would come home, they would just chill out. Good luck. By the time they've had enough time to just decompress, which I feel like they don't get enough time to decompress. And then by the time I finish work, we can just have sort of just like chill time as family.

15:23And if that happened like four days a week, that would just, that's such a huge thing. But right now it's like intense. It's just, I'm like, oh my God, I have to, what am I going to put in the lunchbox tomorrow? And the day after, oh my God, I don't have any of those things. And their taste changes and they bring all the food home and all this stuff. Emptying the lunchbox into the bin is like the saddest two minutes of my life. Because you've cut all the pieces up, tried to make it well around it and then you bring it home and it's like, that time that I was making this lunch, in the bin, like what?

15:59And again, I sound this like old woman. It was like, well, I definitely didn't get that for lunch when I was that age. I know. I'm like, I gave you fresh apple, cut it into slices the way you like it, and you didn't even eat it. I know. I've become that person. Yeah, I am every day that person. You don't know what you've got. Because it's so time poor that that time spent, you're like, it should be optimised. Yes. Like there's so much I want to talk to you about. One of the many things I want to talk to you about is how you built Anna. I read 200 pieces of data can go in and then give you text back.

16:33Is that correct? Roughly. So Anna connects to multiple emails because parents have multiple emails, multiple calendars across you and your spouse or you and another caregiver. And that all gets pulled in. and the magic of I guess agentic AI today is you can filter through all of that and figure out based on what I know about Liv how many kids you have and what they like to do which of those things you actually need to do something about and then we set up a setup for you through iMessage or WhatsApp so that you're kind of working with this assistant like you would work with a real human or a friend, that alone, just like school lab information all kind of combined together is really valuable for parents.

17:20Amazing. Now I'm AI pilled. I love it. Sign me the hell up. All the connectors. Let's do this. But for parents that are like, maybe not from the industry or hear that and already are feeling a little bit worried about privacy, security, that kind of stuff, what would you say? That's the number one question we get in parents. It's like, what are you doing with my data? Yeah. How should I hear all these things about what AI can do in like bad ways? Like, how do I need to be careful? I mean, the main thing is you need, if you're working with any AI product and you're going to put your personal data in, you have to be a bit vigilant about what they say about what they're going to do with your data.

17:59And so for us, like we are very protective of privacy because like my kids' data is in there too. So it's like, where are they storing the data? Stored in a legitimate, like we, you know, know, we put our database in Google Cloud services. So how are you storing your data? How are you treating it? We never sell anyone's data. We don't train on your data. And that's not true for a lot of AI companies. So you just have to be careful. Even ones that I'm using and that's not advice, by the way. We were talking about one I was using before. Definitely not advice. Okay. I heard this study that mums carry, this is from the University of Bath and the University see in Melbourne, they work together.

18:37Mums carry 71 % of the mental load. Are you finding that in your experiences when you're speaking to customers, is it the mums that are the ones that are getting overburdened by this problem? Yeah, it's, I mean, the data shows that like both mums and dads have increased the number of hours they spend with kids, like double since like the 70s. So they just, they are generally more involved parents. But I, like our customer base is probably like 75 % moms and 25 % dads. So there's a lot of dads. But I think the way that mental load affects moms is that they end up, even if the other parent is taking on responsibility, they feel like they're responsible for making sure all of it kind of sticks.

19:22Like they carry the other parent's admin in their head too, which I do. I do. And I, you know, like my husband is the core school admin person and I'm the extracurriculars parent. Ah, clever breakdown. That's awesome. Which is why you're like, maybe no more extracurriculars. Yeah, exactly. It's like, can you also do it without lunch? But I still am like, did you sign this thing still? Or like, did you pay for the mango fundraiser? Oh my gosh, the mango fundraisers and the... I mean, that one I quite like. It's kind of fun, right? It's like you just get some great mangoes. But still, I keep all of that in my head, even if my husband is doing quite a lot of it already.

20:07Whereas I don't necessarily think it's like I'm generalizing here, but I don't think it's necessarily like that if you're a dad. Yeah, I don't hear about dad guilt. I hear a lot about mom guilt. I experience a lot of mom guilt. I don't hear about dad guilt. No. And in addition to just like carrying everything, like my personal experience of this is my school WhatsApp group is full of these moms who volunteer and run the entire admin of this school. 100%. And I feel a lot of guilt because I don't have time. I work seven days a week and like it's insane. And I just don't, I can't contribute to that in the same way.

20:46and I feel enormous guilt because it's some other mum who's doing the work for me. I have been the benefit of mums that have gone above and beyond to represent the whole grade. Yes. It's not easy work and it's not, yeah. It's like so underappreciated. People get mad at them and I'm like, oh my gosh. It's free labour. Like seriously. Yeah. Agree. Agree. We've had all sorts of things where mums have gone above and beyond. they don't expect anything from it. But then for some reason, it's all the other bums that are still upset that they can do more. I know, I know, I know. It's a tricky dynamic.

21:25It's a tricky dynamic. At the same time, I always feel this like, why is the expectation always on us? Yes. And so then I feel both like guilt and like aghast that this is the expectation. You're not paying me to say this, but you're trying to contribute to helping solve that, which I think is really meaningful. What made you just like, I bet you could work at any tech company in the world, maybe not even work seven days a week. What made you so passionate to put your insane brain to this?

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22:38I so the first thing is I just get the problem like in a way that I never empathize with any other tech problem I've ever worked on the early data for Anna was my life entirely and I was like data labeling for hundreds of hours probably unpaid the describe that for the listener what that looks like. It's so early on, how does Anna know if an email matters to you or not as a parent? So AI agent needs some guidance or training around this is important for a parent. This is not like most AI models are coding models. They're great at writing code. They don't know that soccer is maybe important, but your Pilates studio discount 25 % off this month is not.

23:30so there's a lot of like delani goes through her emails and whatsapps and like this is important this is what you should do with it this is not important this is important this is what you do with it and actually i would say a lot of what there's a lot of assistants out there and the reason why this works for parents is that level of like fine tuning and shaping yes and that that was my entire job i love how you say this about personal assistants when we first met I actually think it was pre this boom of personal existence that's happened lately. You were ahead of the curve. Yes. And I'm curious, did people see the potential when you were first talking to them about this?

24:09Funny enough, our investors did. Great. I was very stressed when we started building something in enterprise land when I first was like, I'm going to do a startup because I'm insane. We didn't have product market fit and we pivoted. We did nine experiments. This is the one where – Oh. Something here. I was like, oh, my God, we're moving into consumer. What are all the investors going to say? Yeah. And they saw it. For the listeners, consumer is quite tricky because you need a huge market of people to sign up to get profitable, I guess. Profitable and no one really knows exactly how you would monetize it or what does consumer AI mean right now.

24:53Dude, I have a PhD from Harvard. Let me cook. Oh, I wish that helped. I'm thrilled that you're using your enormous brain towards this. Can we briefly talk about personal assistants? Because I feel like this was the promised land a year and a half ago. Like every company said, they're going to book your flights. They're going to book your restaurants. They're going to do this and this and this. And that didn't happen. Whereas now personal assistants are here. Yeah, they're here. They're happening. Do you have any pointers for people that are kind of like, I'm not sure how to navigate this time?

25:28There's so many of them. There's so many now. There's like an entire, there's a personal assistant benchmark now. AI models have these different benchmarks and they're usually for like coding. But someone has put together, just because there's so many of them, there's a personal assistant benchmark on various dimensions. Like how easy is it to browse or how easy is it? How proactive is it? There's a lot. And most of them are, yeah, but a few good ones. fascinating yeah I've downloaded Grokbot Muse I haven't tried yet Dots I think is only available for pro subscribers something like that because the computer is so expensive there's Instinct which is only on WhatsApp and invite only guys personal assistant era but we're all going to use Anna so that's good to know I am going to ask you before I've got a lovely game but I before I get to that this is what I get asked most and that is when are you going to introduce AI to your kids how do you introduce AI to your kids yeah I already have so my youngest not yet but only because he's two fair talk to the AI he's definitely been exposed to it yeah because we might be driving I we drive a Tesla and there's like the Grock yeah thing which is really good Great.

26:42Yeah. I've already introduced, so my oldest was eight, just had an AI camp for holiday. And I've been, I'm like, I'll give you a code code account if you want to go like build something. That's genius. Is it just your name? Like, like in your account? Yeah. And because I strictly don't think you're allowed if you're. Don't worry, this is not going across every social media channel ever. So. Just to learn, right? Just to learn. My perspective is this. I think you can't put the genie back in the bottle. The AI is here. I don't think there is. They're too young. However, I'm very careful about what they use it for.

27:23What I don't want them to use it for is to get the answer. Type in a school question and then. And get the answer. I still believe that we need to work hard to learn how to think and solve problems. And if there's any future for our kids where, you know, any traditional kind of career options are still there, who knows, I think the thinking and the ability to be critical and evaluate things is still going to be the most important skill. I love that. And did you find with that exercise, did he take you up on it, first of all? Yeah, so he's been trying to make like little games. I feel like that is really hard to use your brain to learn how to use a new tool in and of itself though, right?

28:05Like that requires critical thinking, surely. It does. And I still want them to learn how to do maths on a piece of paper or I don't know, just like learn how to write it out because that is how you learn how to do it. That's how your brain learns. How does this thing work? So I don't want them to ever get the answers, but it is a very fast way to learn. For example, I'll give you like an example of my own. I'm not a child, but I needed to learn about VMs very quickly, like virtual machines. Oh, yeah. I'm not a software engineer. Sure. And I learn about virtual machines like half an hour, way faster than if I five years ago.

28:47Could you imagine the Wikipedia entry and trying to understand it and they just show you, I know you're great at equations, but sometimes it's just so deep and you're like, that's actually what I needed. And I just ask the questions and the question after question after question. I didn't get it. Can you explain to me in like very simple terms? I'm not a software engineer, so you need to explain to me like this. And I just do exactly where I need to go deep and leave the things that I don't need. And there's this debate. I think I got roasted on LinkedIn because I asked this question about what do people think about AI in schools?

29:17Oh, yeah, you'll get roasted on LinkedIn regardless. But yeah. and it was very it was one of my most engaged upon posts we like to call that rage bait and it works it's interesting because alpha schools which is this all the rage in the attack community in the us is ai based learning and their whole thing is you can learn everything in two hours you need to and then go play which sounds amazing and then other people like that i was literally speaking to a mum about this on the weekend. She was like, I want my kids to go to Alpha schools and I had never heard of it. As long as you're careful about it, I do think the way to learn for my son versus my daughter is very different.

29:59Agree, same. And I do think I can deliver that, provided they don't, they're not being just fed the answer, so they don't learn to think. It's about offering a bespoke for the individual child that suits their learning styles, right? That a teacher with a class of 30 kids can't individually offer that, right? Yeah. And that was my example, like me learning about virtual machines is I need some things I know, some things I don't, and I just need to go deep where I don't know stuff. This is something that I wasn't planning to ask you, but you've brought it up in such a beautiful way, which is you used to write equations.

30:39You want the children to be able to handwrite math and things like that. You heard about this Navier-Stokes thing solved. People that see you just heard me do a headline news on this. Mathematicians are crying because AI solved this. Well, OpenAI apparently solved this equation in 88 hours. As someone who did a lot of theoretical physics, what is your take? Are you crying about this or are you happy about this? The same thing is happening in physics. is in fact my sort of pseudo advisor this is my direct advisor but I collaborated with him a lot she put out this piece where he's like I wrote all my papers last year with Claude Code with Claude Opus and I will never go back now that's a bit different from AI went and solved everything therefore we have nothing else it's the answer yeah I mean I can imagine that if you're in that field it feels crushing and how am I going to, what am I going to do?

31:37What is human endeavor anymore? Yeah. And if you don't understand it anymore, how do humans stay in control almost? If AI gives you just the answer and you don't even know how to get to that point. I don't have a good answer, but I do think it is the way it's going to go. In places like medicine, I think it's great because we will get all of these advances that will help save lives. I don't know what that means for academia. It's scary. Love having you on the show. It's very helpful to have a perspective. I was like, it'll just solve things faster. I'm happy about it. But I haven't spent 20 years of my life working towards these, you know, missions and goals.

32:19And frankly, that's a mathematician that isn't going to get that million dollar prize now. It's, yeah, it is nuanced, isn't it? I asked my Instagram followers about this children using AI. Do you want to hear what their response was? I'd love your feedback. So I said, when it comes to what age to introduce AI to your kids, 50%, the largest group said the age of 10 to 15, followed by 38 % that said 16 plus. But can I just say I had a few comments that said, well, it depends if it's voice AI versus an actual machine. What do you think? Is that, do you notice parents seem to have that? I came in with a blank sheet of paper in my mind because my kids use Alexa in our kitchen.

33:08So, yeah. So we use voice AI a lot. It's the easiest way to introduce them to. I don't know what in their brains they think chat GPT voice mode is. My kids just say, can we ask the robot? Yes. Can we ask the robot questions? Yeah. And it's fascinating to watch them talk to it. And I'm like, this is not a bad thing. I supervised with you in the head. This is, I think, the key with anything, not just AI, like Roblox or social media. Having worked at those platforms, no individual person in a company like that is out there to do something bad. A lot of them have kids. A lot of them have kids. Platforms like that are just by the nature of what they do and how they're built.

33:51can't always do the protection piece because that's not what they're designed and built to do. So my thing for AI and for any platform is you have to very carefully supervise what they do. You can, I mean, AI is very sycophantic. You can very quickly get into a conversation about some very dark topics and how do you, like that is the situation you don't want happening. I don't think the answer to that is wait till they're 15. For me, I would say any platform, whether it's AI or voice AI or otherwise, or Roblox or whatever, you just have to really carefully supervise what they do. Sometimes that, like what does that mean?

34:39I'm like, you can only use the iPad in front of me while I'm cooking. It sometimes goes as far as that because I don't have a, I don't know exactly how to set up parental control. So chat GPT doesn't say bad things. It's like, how do you do that? Yeah, yeah. I know. I'm the same. I'm kind of like trying to engineer out the potential problem by having the Alexa device literally in the kitchen. So it's part of a family space. It's tricky, right? I get asked this question a lot and I keep fobbing it off to, well, my kids are four and six. They're too young to actually be like speaking to Chack GPT or Claude yet.

35:13But they're not far off. They're not far off. And my six-year-old learns quite fast if you get her onto like a Q &A session. Sometimes they ask these like scientific questions. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm so tired. I don't even know. I can't even think through it. Please talk to you. Deep questions about volcanoes, Delaney. Like I'm like, yeah, comes from the middle of the earth and there's lava. What's under that? I'm like, yeah, more lava. Like I don't know. There was this hilarious. We were driving to school and my daughter explained to me how seasons work. And I'm like, okay, I do know this because I studied physics, but I cannot.

35:55This is so hard. And I'm trying. It's like the morning commute. Like trying not to get a pedestrian. You're quite front of mind right now, sweetheart. I was explaining and I was like, there is this concept of this and that. And she's like, what's a concept? Oh, God. Okay. Time to pull up. Oh, man. That's amazing. Okay, we're about to finish up, but I want to finish on a game. The game is called What's Harder? First thing that comes to your mind. Are you ready to go? Yes, that's it. Theoretical physics at Harvard or multiple location school pickup? That answer is so obvious. It's the latter. And I've got, like, speeding tickets.

36:40Police have stopped me. This happened. My God. you're like I'm a mum of three okay card deal writing a novel or a night before school assignment you didn't know existed writing that novel was like the most fun and enjoyable thing I did for 10 years to like decompress from the stress of my life so I feel like there's not even the same bucket are you into romanticy I have no you've gotten into it I'm still in the Harry Potter Yeah, love. But slightly older. Love. All these like Sarah J Mask kind of. I am like, I need to get an extra time. It's a cult. It's a cult. My book club is divided into two.

37:21Oh, really? Of half of us that are obsessed with it and the other half that are like embarrassed on our behalf. Oh, no, there's no reason to be embarrassed. It's a. If you listen to it or read Romanticy, hit me up. Hitting a one billion revenue target at Meta or getting three kids out the door by 8.15? Oh, those are close. Are they? I feel like$1 billion, you are always making progress towards the billion. Every morning it's the same. I'm like, brush your teeth. For eight years in a row, I have said brush your teeth. At some point, will you brush your teeth without me telling you? One day. When you're like, have you brushed your teeth?

37:55Oh, no. It's like the third time I've asked you in five minutes. And it's just like, I keep telling myself, one day you're just going to go to school without brushing your teeth. But then I can't bring myself to do that. I just... I can't. All her teeth fall out. And I'm like, whose fault is it? The mother's fault, of course. I get into these like extremely intense threats. Yeah. Don't put your shoes in, I'll burn them. Yeah. I, yesterday morning was like, if you don't do, like, there was a nightmare about the hairstyle wasn't what she wanted. I'm like, if you do not just get out the door, I will take a toy.

38:32Yeah. Carrot, stick, carrot, stick, carrot, stick to get out the door by 8.15. managing 150 emotional parents in a group chat or 11 AI agents. Oh, the group chat is intense. I've gotten almost cancelled. Really? LinkedIn, WhatsApp, we're just getting cancelled everywhere. Were you trying to do rage bait on WhatsApp? No, I wasn't. I just had like an innocent question about whether we could use like kids' pocket money cards for canting. Oh, how dare you? Yeah. I think I got – It was a gentle cancellation. Oh, do you know what mine was? There was a school assembly where they dress up and it was magic school bus themed and the theme was adventure.

39:16My only idea was my son has binoculars. And then at the last moment, one of the mums said – the teacher said they're not allowed to bring binoculars because of whatever reason. And then in the group chat I wrote, he's wearing binoculars, I don't care. And then all of us were like, oh, she's not – And I was like, otherwise he's just wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Well, how dare you? I am the worst. Two more. Explaining AI to an investor or to your mum? Brutal. That's hard. My mum lives, my mum has the best life. She like lives in this world where she has, she only watches free to air TV. She's completely, I think she lives the dream.

39:54I couldn't try to explain AI to her if I tried. My mum is so supportive. Classic, beautiful mums. She listens to every single episode. So she's quite AI literate now just from listening every week. The best. Under duress, I tell you. Like she doesn't have a choice. She's just being supportive. Naming a startup or naming a child? Oh, naming a child for sure. Hard. It was harder. There was just a lot of immersion because culturally I'm Sri Lankan. I was born in Sri Lanka. My husband is born in India. We're like Australian, American, and our kids have Western sounding first names, middle names, and then like an Indian last name.

40:30Oh, my God. This was stressful. It's out. Do you think you nailed it, though, now? No. I won't tell you which, but there's some, like. There were short lists and in the end there was one name for our oldest that we decided not to use because there was a serial killer. Oh, that's always great. With the same name. But then by the time our third one came around, we were like, oh, we're so tired. Just pick that name. You know what? But, like, they always have regular human names. That's the problem. That's the problem. How, why aren't serial killers named, more interestingly? I had a beautiful name.

41:11My husband said it sounded like a stripper. And on that note, thank you so much, Sonny, for the most incredible episode. Thank you. You unpacked so many topics that I know my listeners have been dying for. Where can people find Anna and where can they follow you? You can find Anna at hianna.ai. And you can find me on LinkedIn. That's probably the best. Just message me. I'm around. I'm pretty responsive. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for listening to In the Blink of AI. If you want to go deeper on anything we've spoken about today, I write a weekly substat called Attention is All I Need.

41:54Yes, 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.