Arianna Huffington thinks AI could be a GPS for the soul

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1:39Two years into building the Huffington Post, I was the divorced mother of my two daughters. I had bought into the collective delusion that in order to be a super founder and super mom, I didn't have the luxury to take care of myself. So I literally ended up collapsing, hitting my head on my desk, breaking my cheekbone. And that was the beginning of this journey into understanding the epidemic of burnout in our culture, in our global culture. Ariana Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, knew she needed to make some serious personal changes. But she wanted to do more. Now that she knew the dangers of burnout culture, Ariana wanted to address it head on.

2:35I first worked to raise awareness around it at the Huffington Post. I launched a dedicated sleep section in 2007. I wrote two books on the subject, Thrive and the Sleep Revolution. And by 2016, I realized I didn't just want to raise awareness. I wanted to help people change behavior. and that required leaving the Huffington Post and launching a behavior change technology company. Ariana then founded Thrive Global, a company using technology to promote better health through behavior changes. And now in the age of AI, Ariana partnered with Sam Altman to launch Thrive AI Health and they're building a personalized AI health coach.

3:28Pioneers of AI is celebrating our one-year anniversary this month, which is why I'm so excited to share my conversation with Ariana. I've been so looking forward to this interview for months now. Ariana and I talk about how a hyper-personalized AI coach could unlock health and wellness for all of us, the importance of prioritizing self-care, and how AI could be the GPS for our souls. I'm Rana El-Khalyubi, and this is Pioneers of AI, a podcast taking you behind the scenes of the AI revolution.

4:10Hi, Ariana. Welcome to Pioneers of AI. Rana, it's great to be with you. So I have a confession to make. I have been a longtime admirer of your work, and it's been a dream to bring you on the show. So I'm so excited for our conversation. Me too. And you know, I love all the things we have in common. You're the divorced mother of two. We both went to Cambridge. Yes, I wanted to start there, actually, because we both went there as international students. And actually, I first heard you talk about this on Meditative Story, which I've listened to this episode like maybe 10 times. And every time I'm it brings me to tears.

4:52So what was that experience like? And maybe share with our audience that whole story. Well, actually, I love that episode of Meditative Story because it explains so much about my life. It explains about my mother, who was a force of nature. and when I saw a picture of Cambridge University in Athens, Greece, where my mother, divorced from my father, was bringing up my sister and me in a one-bedroom apartment who had no money, I just saw this picture of Cambridge and I went home and said to my mother, I want to go there. And I told everybody who would listen, I want to go there. And everybody said, don't be ridiculous.

5:37You don't speak English. You have no money. And it's hard for English girls to go there. My mother said, let's find out how you can go there. And, you know, she found out I could take my general certificates of education at the British Council after I learned English, apply for a scholarship. But the best part that explains her is that she never made me feel that if I didn't get in, it would be the end of the world. She always made me feel, and you know, if you don't get in, there will be another adventure. Her life was an adventure. And she always felt that we're somehow held by the universe.

6:24a little bit like Rumi's poem, live life as though everything is rigged in your favor. And she made me very comfortable with failure. You know, she used to say, failure is not the opposite of success. It's a stepping stone to success. I love that. I also, one of my takeaways hearing that conversation was, you got to embrace the journey without attaching to outcomes. And that's become a mantra in my family. Like literally, like all my kids, my nieces, my sisters. It's very powerful. That is so true because if you're so attached to outcomes, then first of all, you don't take as many risks because outcomes are not guaranteed.

7:12And if we are so attached to everything being perfect, we often only play it safe. Ariana says that it's this mindset that helped her take the leap back in 2016 to leave the Huffington Post and start a new health-focused company. And it was a very tough decision. And back to my mother, I don't think I would have done it if she hadn't made me comfortable with the possibility of failure. because I was leaving a super successful media company with 850 journalists, a Pulitzer Prize, offices in 18 countries to start again. Raise money, hire people. And I'm just beyond grateful that I did it because I so love what I'm working on, the fact that I believe our health, especially in this age of AI, is at risk.

8:14And anything we can do to actually give people the tools and the right mindset to go through these turbulent times is going to be so important. You know, I want to ask you a question. So it sounds like when you were at the Huffington Post, you had this kind of notion that to be a successful CEO and leader, you basically did not have time for self-care. But then you did it all over again at Thrive. And I'm curious if you do it differently. You know, I guess I invest in a lot of early stage founders and having kind of my own experience as a CEO. I used to wake up every night at 3am, send emails to the whole company.

8:59And that was really stressful for myself, obviously, no sleep, but also for my entire team. And now I advise my founders to really prioritize self-care. So is there a path to success where you're also taking care of yourself? Well, I absolutely built the Huffington Post after I changed my habits. I was at the Huffington Post from 2005 when I launched it to 2016. And my collapse happened two years in when And the Huffington Post was very young and very much a startup. All our success came after. And I definitely profoundly believe that the changes in my habits were transformational in achieving the success the Huffington Post had.

9:52And I see that all around me. It's a little bit like if you look at athletes. Recovery is part of peak performance. there is no athlete who doesn't recognize that so giving yourself time to renew yourself to replenish yourself makes you operate at the top of your game in touch with your intuition with your creativity who's your best decision making i mean when when whenever i've made bad hiring decisions, I can go back and look at the fact that I was sleep deprived, I was exhausted. I wanted to just basically check this off my to-do list. My coach calls us like you're below the line. Your nervous system is basically like freaking out.

10:45And then you kind of come at it out of fear and scarcity, which I totally agree with. Yes, exactly. I love that. In a minute, Ariana and I dig into how her AI health coach works and why behavior changes need to start small. Stay with us.

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11:45So let's dig into AI. I'm a big believer that AI can help amplify and augment human abilities. Like we need to take a human-centered approach to AI, and it can help us be happier and healthier and thrive better. And you're on this journey with Thrive AI Health, and you've teamed up with OpenAI to build a personalized AI health coach. So first of all, let's just step back. Like what is the problem in our health system, and why are so many people unhealthy? I think the fundamental problem in our healthcare system is that we have ignored the fact that there are five daily habits, five daily behaviors that govern our health.

12:32And we think that health is what happens when we go and see the doctor. But as we say at Thrive, health is also what happens between doctor visits. And these five behaviors that we work on are sleep, food, movement. We don't even call it exercise. Millions of people in this country and around the world don't move. They lead entirely sedentary lives. Stress management and connection. These behaviors are infinitely more important than our genes. Our genes are about 7 % of our health. Fascinating. And the rest is lifestyle habits? The rest is lifestyle and, of course, medical care if you get sick.

13:25But these lifestyle habits are absolutely critical. So my passion and what Thrive is based on is elevating these habits to be part of science and medical care. In fact, it's interesting. Professor Ashley at Stanford recently said that exercise is one of the most important medical interventions. So I just published actually a post on my Instagram and my LinkedIn that is a carousel that says exercise is one of the most important medical interventions. Sleep is one of the most important medical interventions. Food is one of the most important medical interventions. Stress management is one of the most important medical interventions.

14:24Connection is one of the most important medical interventions. And I say that, Rana, because they are not warm and fuzzy wellness habits. They are hardcore. Like if you are perpetually sleep deprived or if you eat ultra processed foods and junk, if you don't move, you are going to be unhealthy, no matter how many drugs you take. Now, it seems like these five things are very actionable and easy to implement. Why is it tough for people? And I guess where does AI have a role to play? Yes. Well, behavior change is very hard. It's not easy at all, but it's doable with the right behavior change methodology.

15:12And we've worked with great scientists, behavior change economists like Kevin Volpert-Warton and B.J. Fogg at Stanford, to actually break it down into what we call at Thrive Micro Steps, tiny little incremental changes every day. that cumulatively become healthier habits. And they compound? They compound, exactly. But the key is to start small, which is the opposite of how we think of change. You know, New Year resolutions. No more chocolate. No more chocolate. No more sugar. In the gym every day for an hour, et cetera, et cetera. So that's fundamental. And the reason why AI here and what we're doing with our AI health coach is so important is because of the AI superpower of hyper-personalization.

16:19You know, behavior change is not one size fits all. so when we onboard someone on the ai coach we don't just bring in whatever data they are willing to give us biometric data lab data medical data we also do an extensive preference onboarding what foods do you like what poetry do you like what piece of music do you like so in moments of stress, we can nudge you with things that are going to help you center. And also our nutrition director is an expert at swaps. Like if you love Cheetos, she's not going to tell you to start eating avocado toast. She will tell you to switch Cheetos to power curls.

17:14Yeah. I think the key to this vision of personalized AI comes from this trifecta of having sensors, tons of data, and both this idea of predictive, but also conversational AI. Is this how you see it? Does Thrive connect to like, you know, I wear a whoop, I think you're an aura ring? Yes. Yeah. Definitely. I think conversational AI is key. The difference with a coach is that it's two-way. the coach nudges you. He doesn't just answer questions. The coach, let's say the coach also has access to your calendar and knows that at 2.30, you pick up one of your children from school and then you have a three o 'clock podcast interview with Ariana and it takes 10 minutes to walk your child to school.

18:07You can say, the coach can say, Rana, you have 10 minutes to do some squats or extend your walk with your daughter so you get more of an exercise time in. So your coach is very involved with you 24-7. You know, I've been thinking about how memory is a really important moat in AI. So the AI that really gets to know you and has memory of your data and experiences is going to be more powerful than one that doesn't. How do you think about memory in this kind of world of personalized AI? Well, AI without memory is useless. It's not AI. I mean, memory and the large context window, billions of data points, potentially trillions of data points is foundational to an AI model, right?

18:59So I think behavior change is totally based on AI's powers for personalization and its memory capabilities. Yeah. One of the things I've been really kind of fascinated by, you know, human memory is not monolithic, right? Like we put more weight on some experiences than others. We try to forget some memories. We weight some memories more. And I believe AI needs to have a similar kind of more thoughtful approach to memory. It's not just like your entire history of all the interactions. And again, I don't know if you've thought about that for Thrive. Well, also what happens with humans is we often suppress memories that are painful or traumatic.

19:46But AI can help us uncover them and deal with them. I mean, one of our sayings is express whatever it is that bothers you. First of all, you have to acknowledge it. Often people bury these memories so deep, they don't even acknowledge how painful they were, and they're just there, festering in the darkness. so the philosophy the Delphic admonition of know thyself and not hiding your shadow as Carl Jung would call it from yourself is very important to a really full life so if you acknowledge a problem a grievance pain the next thing is to express it you know express it to yourself or someone you trust.

20:45And the next is transcend it. And I think one of the problems with therapeutic culture is that people never transcend it. What do you mean by transcend it? Like move beyond it. We're not defined by our traumas. And so many people, I mean, including friends of mine, end up going to a weekly therapy session and regurgitating their hurts. And, you know, at some point, it's like after you have acknowledged and after you have expressed, can you please transcend? Otherwise, you become identified with your problem. You know, your trauma, your malady, even your medical diagnosis is not your identity. And I suppose AI can help with that, right?

21:41Because it's there 24-7 and it could potentially be a conduit to having some of these reflective conversations. Yes, of course, AI, there are also problems, as we have seen recently. So I think it's very important to keep working to get it right. And part of it is AI cannot be as sycophantic as it has been and simply reinforce whatever you are saying. Oh, Rana, oh my God, I know, your ex-husband, wow, what he did was terrible. You know, that's not exactly what a good therapist would do. But AI has a tendency to tell Rana or Ariana what AI thinks we want to hear. And that's really keeping us in a state of arrested development, which is incredibly painful.

22:36And, you know, part of Rana, of the therapeutic culture we're living in, explains why we have had a mental health awareness month or day for 76 years now. We have 1.2 million therapists. We have over 10 ,000 mental health apps. And the mental health crisis has never been worse. Yeah. Why do you think so? Well, I think partly, I think it's because we have forgotten that we are also spiritual beings. And I don't mean that in terms of any particular dogma or religion. I mean it in terms of who we are. You know, I actually profoundly believe that Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit philosopher, was right when he said we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

23:28But even if you don't believe that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, we're definitely not purely human beings having a material experience. That's so true. Exactly. So if you believe that, then it's really important to find pathways to that center of peace, strength, resilience, love that is at the core of our being. So you have one approach to doing that, which is your idea of a reset video, which I believe is integrated into the Thrive platform. Yes. So first of all, what is a reset and why do you think it's important? And then you're going to play yours and I'm going to share mine.

24:16Yes, wonderful. So resets are one of my favorite features on the Thrive platform because they are microscopic. They're 60 seconds. We all have 60 seconds, right? Exactly. You know, that's it, Rana. You know, I've never had anybody who said, I don't have 60 seconds. Plenty of people who said, I don't have five minutes to meditate. But nobody says, I don't have 60 seconds. They're scientific. They're based on the neuroscience that while stress is unavoidable, cumulative stress is avoidable. And it takes 60 to 90 seconds to move us from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous system. and to interrupt the stress cycle.

25:09And all that it takes is focusing on conscious breathing and images that remind us of what we love about our life at the moment when we may not love our life at all. And also music, quotes, whatever. I mean, we have thousands upon thousands of resets. people have created. Thrive has hundreds of preloaded resets. They're all incredibly different. As you'll see from mine, there are pictures of my children. They are not like the pictures you would put on Instagram. They are pictures that mean something to you. You know, they may be silly or funny, but they activate something in you. Let's play yours.

26:05You can watch Ariana's reset on the video version of this episode on YouTube or Spotify. What you'll see are pictures of Ariana and her children, her grandchildren, and a sweet dachshund. There's quotes like Rumi's, live life as if everything is rigged in your favor. And at the bottom of the video, there's a gentle reminder. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. It's uplifting, sweet, and sentimental. I love that. How often do you play a reset? Oh, many times a day. And you can create multiple resets with multiple pieces of music. Also at Thrive, for every team meeting, we spin a wheel and one of us plays the reset.

26:55Oh my God, I love that. Which is also a great way to connect with co-workers since we are all spread around the world. And now for people who've never met me or don't know me at all, this gives them a little glimpse into me beyond my bio or my LinkedIn. Yeah, it builds a real authentic connection. Okay, so I'll share mine. Now you. You can also watch mine on YouTube or Spotify. I included lots of photos of my children, my sisters, my parents, and some pictures and videos of sunsets and blue waters, my happy place. And my mission statement, create a smile and a spark in people's eyes through the joy of learning and building.

27:45Yeah, what do you think? Oh, incredible. Absolutely. I want to play it for me. it that's what is so great you know we playing each other's resets also activates that peace and gratitude inside us yeah and it's funny when i was kind of selecting what pictures and videos to add in there you're right it's the it's like some of the pictures of my kids they just bring a smile to my face you know they're a lot older now but i'm like oh and i love the way you had your quote, you know, handwritten. So we get ideas also from each other. So when I do another reset, I'd like to copy that, you know. So it's a way to kind of stop and reconnect with something ancient and deep and strong inside us.

28:44After a short break, Ariana and I talk about guardrails, purpose and profit, and spirituality in the age of AI. Stay with us.

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30:29There's been a very public and ongoing conversation around mental health and AI. So, you know, AI therapists, AI friends. And obviously there's a lot of like potential good that come out of this, but also a lot of concerns. So how do you create these guardrails around Thrive's AI coach to ensure that people are using this in a safe way? I think we're just at the beginning of this journey. There is a lot of work to be done, starting with how we train the models, what the guardrails are. OpenAI is now launching something specific for teenagers, what is appropriate for children, appropriate for teenagers.