We're afraid of the wrong thing in AI - with Paloma Newton

0:00You're listening to a day one dot FM show.

0:03Georgie Healy: Can you please blink if you'd like to have a long and healthy life? Oh, he did it. We did every rule in the startup book completely opposite. You know, people say build your market first and then do 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 personalized preventative health care. 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-centered health platform that can actively help owners to make decisions to help their dog live longer.

0:51I 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.

1:13Georgie Healy: Hello and welcome back to In The Blink Of AI. I'm Georgie Healey. 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 experienced 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.

1:51Georgie Healy: She reckons the South Australian Royal Commission is frankly theatre. She's deeply 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 day one.fm show.

2:23Georgie Healy: founder scale faster on deal set up payroll for any country in minutes hire anyone anywhere get visas handled fast and get back to building visit deal.com day one that's d double e l dot com slash day one paloma 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? I actually was thinking about this too deeply 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.

3:11My to-do list is just a Slack channel with myself, which is then passed through a Claude channel that then pulls all of my context 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 is fantastic.

3:44Georgie Healy: Did you need it for accountability or just the overwhelm of being a founder and CEO of a company? Oh, the overwhelm. Yeah. I don't need to be accountable. I just need to, 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. Yeah, 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.

4:21Georgie Healy: Strong start. Paloma, honour to have you on the show. First of all, what is Alita? And, you know, then we'll dive into some AI headlines. Yeah, 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. I come from a family with many dog family members.

4:58Georgie Healy: 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 Alita 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? I have been grappling with this headline since we kind of quickly touched on it because 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.

5:37That'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.

6:13Like, how do you how do you bridge that gap? 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 Canva, but also like teachers, people in the legal profession, ethicists, and really starting to understand it from multiple different lenses.

6:48Georgie Healy: From the people using the technology and building with the technology. And 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.

7:25and I thought it was like a little bit disingenuous that the Premier would go to the US, sign an MOU with OpenAI and then come back and announce a Royal Commission. Like that just, yeah, kind of peed me off. I don't want to swear.

7:40Georgie Healy: You are allowed to. I'll put a disclaimer at the beginning. Okay, what's an MOU for the listeners and the host that doesn't know? So an MOU is a memorandum of understanding. It's basically like a non-binding document with like shared goals and intentions. Like most people would probably know about an MOU if you're talking to a commercial partner and you are kind of outlining like, hey, we agree to do this in the future. But before we do that, I need to figure out how I'm going to build it into my company or my product. So let's sign that MOU before I outlay those resources. And so I'm not saying that you shouldn't work with the leaders in the space.

8:18but I think from a financial and government perspective, like they need to be a little bit impartial. So I think signing an MOU with OpenAI and then announcing, it's kind of backwards.

8:31Georgie Healy: It is. And as we know, there's an AI race going on against all of those companies. So signing up with one of them, it's obviously going to give you a biased view. Yeah, I was just going to add to that. Like, again, I don't want to kind of pull the horse before the cart here because I think I'm going to go quite deeply into this during this episode. But I actually think one of the biggest things we're struggling with at the moment is distrust and anxiety of change and fear of the institutions not being set up for success in a phenomenally huge change that's about to happen. And so it just feels like the wrong tool for the job.

9:10You know, it's like you're trying to use a hammer to make a pancake. It doesn't make sense.

9:15Georgie Healy: Okay, speaking of the trust, is it due to the AI risk that this commission could add value or could it do more harm than good and put a handbrake on us and prevent us from innovating? Personally, I don't think it will do anything. And like, that's kind of the problem. Like, again, I'm not against the concept of a government thinking hard about something that is absolutely going to impact the whole world as 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.

9:55and I think it's like important to recognize that we don't know and to have really complicated conversations and understand the shades of gray and hold you know two three seven things in our brains at once um 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 um 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 we'll probably have some flashy headlines.

10:33Then 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 make some things that other people are worried about worse. I don't know what the outcome would be, but I don't really see it being particularly good.

10:57Georgie Healy: Nine months is crazy. Nine months ago, we were talking about, you know, there being a ceiling to how much AI can take in data and therefore, you know, the models will reach a ceiling. And now we've got Fable and like nine months is insane. I just like I think back to nine months ago comparatively to like my day to day today. And it's it's just unfathomable that you that you would try and just again, like I'm not against the concept of us doing something to better equip ourselves, you know, from all angles of society. But I think this is quite an interesting approach. Beautifully said. Agree. Meta CEO.

11:39Georgie Healy: This is the other headline I'd love your take on. They argued that AI productivity gains should produce more output. So the more you use AI to be more efficient, the more outputs, but not necessarily more time off or work-life balance. Do you ever think AI was going to help us work less? No. And I think that anyone then thought that is like, I mean, it's funny because I remember the exact moment that it probably became super conscious to me. was like another founder that I'm quite good friends with messaged me and was like, using all these tools, you know, I thought we'd be like working from the beach, but I just can't stop working because there's just so much more I can do.

12:20And I think that that was always going to 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 going to use less coal because of the efficiency. And yet we found all of these other reasons to use coal. It's just not how we are as humans. We are incredibly output oriented and we want to solve problems and we want to create more and for better or for worse. I never ever thought that this was going to make us work less.

13:00Yeah, no.

13:02Georgie Healy: Your Slack 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 also 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 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 can get into a, because output makes me feel in control and comfortable, and that's just my anxious leaning.

14:04I 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 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.

14:50but whoever you're servicing in the world, I want to make sure that when I'm using these tools, I'm using them to leave a good impact through what I'm building.

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15:42Georgie Healy: selfishly I want to know for people like myself that are very outcome 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 to make more of an impact oh that's a great one I think I mean this is Again, such a boring answer. I'm 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 it's been a weird time to start a company. um 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 going to protect you the interesting thing about the tools is that anyone can build anything right which is a positive and a 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 rah-rah-rah.

17:04But 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? And if I did, why did I do it? Like, what's my emotional connection to why I did that?

17:37Like, was I writing blog posts at 10pm 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 goals that you set?

17:51Georgie Healy: Yesterday, I pulled out of an event that I'd been planning for a few months 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'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 off. 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 point speaking of which tell me about edgar and why you are so passionate about what you're building edgar allen pause is a sleep he's now a five-year-old good boy i love how we both named our sons after poets but continue um 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 um 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 COVID 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 um when I got him like the long story short not that I've ever done that is Because I was planning to get a rescue dog during COVID.

19:39Just 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. It's time. And I'm working from home randomly, which had never really been a thing for me before. Shelters at 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.

20:12Could not find something that was suitable. I'm a big believer in like you have to get a dog that matches your lifestyle. Like if you're an office worker and you get a Border Collie, that's just bad for everyone. Could not find one. And so 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 done 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 not smarter than us.

20:50And we got Edgar. He's a garden retriever, Cocker Spaniel, and he's the best. And it was just the best thing ever. But, like, we just fell in love with him, just went on, like, the deepest health journey. 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'm a much more educated pet owner now than I was five years ago for a bunch of reasons. But 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 situation.

21:37So 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 Trever Cock Spaniel. and really I'm probably like a leaning towards preventative health for myself person so it wasn't a huge leap to go how do we avoid the situation that spiraled obviously

22:02and 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 healthcare. Like how do you do that on a scalable basis? And so from the bank, we kind of theoretically understood that we could shift behavior far earlier, 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 uh 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.

23:42Like that was always the thesis.

23:45Georgie Healy: And I am no health founder. I have no health background or biology background. But 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 right I think like everyone has to do what works for them and there's 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.

24:32And I think that's something that we're always balancing, right? 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. but I think you kind of got to choose your own journey and it's really interesting because I used to obsess over kind of like what a competitor is 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.

25:16How 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 this week.

25:39Georgie Healy: 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 australian ecosystem and the u.s ecosystem do you think there is any uh overlap between pet longevity and humans and is or or is that like Like apples and oranges. I think, of course, there is overlap. 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, breathes 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.

26:32And it's like a dog doesn't give a shit if it has a sleep score. Do you know what I mean? Like it doesn't have a meeting tomorrow. 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, that was really important. um 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 my cat's sleep score would be fucking

27:24Georgie Healy: off the chain there's there's the content warning right there uh 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 um can it help my cat live longer i know that's a crazy question but but how do you i I don't think that's a crazy question. I think knowledge is power. And, you know, 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.

28:09Obviously 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 more than humans, but each to their own. 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 or expensive and you are very sad and you start desperately trying to figure out what you can do reactively. And it costs you a lot of money.

28:47Or 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.

29:39Even can I give you like a really tangible and small example? Please. Vaccines, right? So 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 Dane and a Chihuahua are the same animal, but they obviously have vastly different needs. So there's things called like titer testing, for example, where you can understand the actual antibodies in your dog's body and decide if they need to be vaccinated that year or not.

30:15Like there's just so many things that most people don't know about. And so we're helping to guide owners to make better decisions based on their pet's biology.

30:24Georgie Healy: Can I tell you, you know, the first security question for everything is, you know, 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 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. 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. Whatever's at Coles or worse, we'll just feed her that.

31:07Georgie Healy: 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. Had we had knowledge. And 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 in behavior early. And like, it seems so simple. I mean, the actual underlying technology is very complicated.

31:43So my CTO is probably going to listen to this and be like,

31:45Georgie Healy: no it seems so simple you try but like building that algorithm was like definitely the 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 everything. Yeah. Now everyone knows they'll carry the one and hack into my Gmail.

32:22Georgie Healy: 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 doom and gloom headlines of AI while also having such a clear, positive mission? Yeah, look, this is something that I think about all the time, right? And, I mean, even this morning I was sort of thinking about it deeply. I think like I'm going to like lay out my thought process and again I think going back to my quote from earlier where I said you know if anyone proposals to know what's going to happen next 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 like the biggest shift that we'll probably ever see in our lifetime And that is, you know, both terrifying, exciting and important all at the same time.

33:34And 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, 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 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 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.

34:25And so on the one hand, 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 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 us, I think, doubling the global life expectancy in a century or decreasing the amount of children that die by the time they're 15 years old.

35:37There'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.

35:59Georgie Healy: There's so much outrage. Like 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 I see so much outrage. 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 developed a new thought right like this morning so this is slightly half-baked and I think I love that I'm getting the first scoop yeah we need I 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 in a shorter and more hopefully eloquent version.

36:38I 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 boring COVID, but starting in 2020, like that whole period was so dismantling for a lot of people. What's going to happen? What'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.

37:18Like, 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 hey 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.

37:53No one was mad. Well, no one had any way to complain about it. They didn't have the internet before the internet was invented.

38:00Georgie Healy: They'd have to write a letter and that's too hard. They'd have to write a letter. 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. Whereas, you know, there is companies already in our midst, like Firmus, who are raising money to do closed loop water cooling, you know, renewable energy data centres. Change is here, change is coming.

38:34Innovation is going to lead to hopefully incredible medical advances, which we're already starting to see. But, like, it is absolutely our job 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.

39:25Like so much of this is coming out of the US and that's because it's sort of the birthplace, if you will. 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 let down of the systems that are meant to be around us.

40:02So 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, OpenAI were an open source not-for-profit until 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 Cunningham 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 mass cell cancer and was told that she was incurable.

41:24So like the development side for things that people, I mean, like it's just so obvious that 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.

41:48Georgie Healy: Can I ask you, what is a more, instead of being so anti-AI, what is a more, what's the word for it? 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 think 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, to me, it is my responsibility as someone who is working in the space. But it's funny when I see 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.

42:36I don't really have that same opportunity. Luxury. Yeah. I don't. And like, it's not, it's not me being, 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 a better outcome and faster and like, and what won't?

42:59Georgie Healy: Yeah, great. And I have my own internal ethical matrices 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 like with anything, like 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. We do want the pharmacists of the world to be able to raise money.

43:32We 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?

44:04It's not about... Burn the whole world.

44:06Georgie Healy: 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'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 that 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.

44:40But 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 world will never, ever be fair. There will always be systems that we need to finesse and improve. But the more that you'd shut things down, you're actually not having those conversations. You're not making things better.

45:11Georgie Healy: 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 considerations of AI, they're opting out of AI. What happens if they do that? This is a topic I could talk about for hours. But look, yes, you are right.

45:56it 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 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 kind of like reinforcing the patriarchal structure that we've worked so hard to get not even out of, especially if you've seen the news headlines recently about the AFL.

47:05But we've worked so hard. Like so many people in our generation are the first women to have their own house, right? To not be in the structures of that. You're right. The dot-com boom, it was so male-heavy. And I see that as a concern, but I understand it. It's like this weird place that I'm existing in where I completely understand 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.

47:52The 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. 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.

48:31It'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 developments.

48:55Georgie Healy: Grace from Andromeda, no 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 and that's in aged care like it's beautiful and that's like because women for some reason are the other 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 kinds of people that we want in the room that are going to 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 all the ethical uh and you know improve the world startups but like like also 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 because i'm a woman it is because who i is because of who I am.

49:59My head of science is the same. Like he deeply cares about the problem that we're solving, right?

50:04Georgie Healy: I really wish I loved insurance or money more because I think it would change the money that comes in the door. But yes, no judgment to the women that love insurance and fintechs. Please get that back. Please, girl. Okay, this has been absolutely incredible. We're at the rapid fire spicy questions. I think there's no risk of you shying away from these. Are you ready, Paloma? Yep. All right. Let's talk about your recent business trip to the US. What did it make you realise when you came back here? Good or bad or both? This one's going to hurt. I think we're just thinking like, yeah, Australia, think bigger.

50:56Like 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'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 sorry a million in ARR in order to raise, like, I don't know, 500K on a safe note. And I'm just like, that's crazy, man.

51:30Georgie Healy: If I'm making a million ARR, I do not want your safe note. But it's like, it's just like, I just think, like, 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 is, you know, being the SaaS. Yeah, lots of things are happening at the moment. But I think we are in a bit of a fear bubble at the moment, 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.

52:10It is very expensive. But dream big, go early, do it.

52:17Georgie Healy: San Francisco or New York City for a startup from Australia. Really, why?

52:26Look, my business is a direct-to-consumer business. I couldn't live in San Francisco, but I think, I don't know. It depends on what you're building. For me, I think New York direct-to-consumer, the vibe, the energy, just the hustle of like, and I don't use hustle in the derogatory term of like work 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 probably just like not for what I was building.

53:15But also I might change my mind in like 20 minutes. so I wouldn't.

53:20Georgie Healy: We won't hold you to it. It's just going to be recorded and in the internet for all eternity. Amazing. And look, 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 well? 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, EverLab. Like, there's Heidi Health. Like, we are so good at solving, like, complex problems that I think are so important. Harrison AI. Harrison AI. Like, there's so many.

54:08Like, 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 the animal space and pet health because I think that too often, you know, we're catching things too late.

54:52We're putting dogs down too early. And like it just 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. 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 Arielle at Ovum is like women's health is still is still very behind 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 galaxy 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 &d and then what is commercial like that's i think that's where we excel beautifully

55:51Georgie Healy: 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?

56:32Oh, he did it.

56:36Georgie Healy: He blinked. Paloma, you have been such an amazing and generous guest. How can people follow what you're doing at Alita, follow you as well? And what's their best way to help their dogs now cats soon live a long and healthy life best way to get your 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, YouTube. 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.

57:32And just give them a little kiss on the snoot for me.

57:35Georgie Healy: Please do. Thank you so much. I absolutely love this episode. Thanks, Georgie. 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. 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.