AI versus Marshy #12: AI therapy, voice memos, + really hard problems

Hello and welcome to the 12th edition of AI versus Marshy.

This humble little newsletter charts the glacial impacts of AI technology as seen through the eyes of a growth marketer.

A big welcome to our new subscribers - and a cheeky request…

If you feel like improving our mail deliverability, reply to this email with your favourite kind of tea.

In this week’s edition:

• 🧠 There’s going to be an AI for everything - yep, including therapy
• ⚒️ Tool of the week: Spacebar - a different kind of voice memo-ing
• 🤔 A perspective on leaning into even harder problems with AI

I was on a podcast earlier in the year to tell my story about mental illness and trauma - so unintentionally this week’s newsletter has a distinct mental health theme!

We’ve got this!

-Marshy 💪

AI therapy is a thing now?

Meet Lily! A therapist who can talk to you about how you’re doing, what you’re up to, and common challenges.

Where have you been all my life?!

I’ve got a lot of experience with therapy and was feeling brave, so signed up and started talking about what’s going on for me (writing this newsletter). And that focus can be an issue for me (because I find so many interesting tabs).

Lily was fast to point out this is common and asked me what strategies I’ve employed to combat this - I wound up the conversation because I had to finish this newsletter 😂

A magic sphere!

The interface was intuitive enough to use but I question whether talking to a sound wave sphere is going to be the optimal approach here.

Will it ever replace human therapeutic methods? I don’t think so.

But with the traditional mental health systems at breaking point - will technology play a role in mitigating the load? Or will this increased reliance on technology be our undoing?

It’s hard to know but we’ll start getting answers over the next decade.

Fun fact: there’s a startup out of my hometown called andromeda that’s looking at therapeutic approaches similarly - but with robots - Abi is designed to help loneliness.

Grace (co-founder), Abi (robot), and a new friend!

Tool of the week: Recording your thougths with Spacebar

Years ago my friend Paul suggested going for a walk and talking through your challenges on a headset. He said it feels VERY strange, but if you can get past that the rewards are there.

I actually did this for some time, and went as far as purchasing a trucker headset so there was much less background noise as I talked to myself.

​Spacebar adds to this experience by recording the summary in a funky green interface.

Now ear me out.

So I warbled some thoughts and it presented an accurate summary.

Pretty accurate!

They read very accurately - but the challenge with a lot of these tools is competing with the noise out there.

There’s already 100s of apps that do the same thing, or 1,000’s that do similar and vastly different positioned things (see - Lily therapist).

The challenge that any of the first-wave apps post-ChatGPT’s breakthrough moment - is cutting through all of that additional noise.

And the way you do that is twofold:

1. Have a really good product

2. Communicate it so effectively that anyone hearing about it understands their need for it instantly

People ask me if I’m worried AI is going to steal my job - I don’t think it will ever be good at #2 - and if it does… a human combined with that capability will still be better.

Focusing on harder things

I read all sorts of random things for you dear reader, and came across a newsletter pointing to the glut of first-wave AI startups (see above) not really being of value.

Michael Dempsey from Compound VC has a newsletter called “On My Mind” and wrote about the opportunity that sits today in deep tech.

Deep tech is a catch-all for all the thorny technology challenges out there. Think self-driving cars instead of another food delivery app.

Michael’s core argument resonates - which is:

Bonus points for understanding the word asymptotes.

If all startups are hard - why not just go for the most ambitions ones anyway?

He links to some theses of really hard problems out there today - including finding biomarkers for mental health.

This sort of thinking augurs well for AI’s potential int the future - it’s less about the voice memo app I just shared and fundamentally improving big hairy problems like health, inequity, and education.

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So I was a guest for Kintsugi Heroes podcast in January and the interview got published this week.

You can find the podcast in your regular channels or watch the YouTube here:

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Those that know me well know mental health is an issue close to my heart.

So have a listen if you’d like to hear a challenging story with a happy ending (yay!) and feel free to send any thoughts my way.

That’s it!

Thanks for reading 🙏🏻

-Marshy

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