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By Dr. Paul Jurcys (Co-Founder, Prifina) Happy Valentine's Day! On this day when the world celebrates love and connection, I would like to share a few thoughts about a rather new paradigm - our relationships with Personal AI assistants and “AI buddies” that are gradually becoming our daily digital companions at work as well as our private lives. I have no doubt that you have been increasingly relying on AI tools such as ChatGPT, or myriads of other AI assistants that helps solve various tasks, I wonder:
 Generalists vs. Personal AI Assistants
The emergence of Siri, Alexa, and ChatGPT reveals a fascinating landscape of technological advancements tailored to our personal, professional, and intimate lives. At the outset, I believe we should distinguish between “generalist AI assistants” and “Personal AI buddies.” Generalist AI assistants, such as ChatGPT and Alexa, designed to provide a broad range of services without accessing personal data. They excel in offering information, performing tasks like setting alarms, answering general queries, and controlling smart home devices through voice commands. Their strength lies in their versatility and the ability to serve multiple users without customization. On the other end of the spectrum, personal AI assistants take customization to the next level. Such assistant are able to tap into a wealth of your own personal data (e.g., data from wearables like Apple Watch or Oura Ring, your own Google Maps starredlocations, and payment histories from your personal credit card records) to offer highly personalized advice, reminders, and insights. These Personal AI buddies can be playful or very practical. Think of a My Fashion AI advisor that knows the styles I like, the shoes I have, as well as the colors I hate to wear. I can talk to my fashion AI advisor about the outfit I should wear for tonights date with my Valentine. In the wake of shortage of human experts (yes, we will never have enough doctors, coaches, or emotional support friends!), specialized AI assistants are becoming increasingly meaningful. Think of an Personal AI doctor who has access to my hearth rate data and sleep information from my wearables, and is capable to monitor different health metrics, suggest activities based on location and preferences, and predict certain events based on my own biometric data. It is not hard to imagine a personal AI finance advisor that knows my spending patterns and history, and can help manage my finances by tracking spending patterns, and nudging to save more wisely to achieve certain financial goals. Assistants According to Functions Performed Simple Personal Avatars help users represent themselves in virtual environments, such as video conferences or virtual reality platforms. They are designed to mimic the users appearance and mannerisms but do not necessarily require deep personal data access. Digital Twins is a step further in terms of their complexity. Digital twins utilize extensive data to simulate and predict outcomes in various scenarios. For instance, a digital twin could use health data from wearables to forecast potential health issues, enabling preventative care. Conversational Interfaces: AI assistants with conversational interfaces, such as ChatGPT, serve a wide array of problem-solving purposes. They can range from general assistants answering any query to specialized ones like AI nutritionists offering certain healthy diet advice or "intimate buddies" providing emotional support. These AI assistants rely on natural language processing to understand and respond to user inputs meaningfully. AI Agents Performing Tasks: These AI assistants are capable of executing specific tasks on behalf of the user, such as purchasing concert tickets or booking appointments. They might access personal calendars, preferences, and financial information to autonomously carry out tasks, streamlining the user's daily routine and ensuring engagements align with their interests and schedules. The Privacy Paradox in the Age of AI Creating personal AI assistants that genuinely understand and cater to our unique preferences and needs, requires a nuanced approach to data utilization and privacy. Let’s take a very practical illustration: what does it take to build a truly personal travel AI advisor? What specific user-generated data would be needed to build a truly personal travel AI? The answer largely revolves around integrating user’s own data from various sources that could help inform the AI to make truly personalized travel recommendations: Accessing Calendar Data: your personal AI travel advisor could benefit by integrating with your calendar data. This connection could offer insights into your available free time, potential holiday slots, and preferred travel durations. By understanding when you are planning to take time off, the personal travel AI advisor can suggest travel options that align perfectly with your schedule. Leveraging Google Maps Data: Further personalization could be achieved by analyzing your Google Maps data. This could include places you have frequently visited and enjoyed, restaurants that align with your culinary preferences, and even destinations you have marked as "want to visit." Such data could enable the personal AI travel assistant to craft travel suggestions that resonate with your past experiences and future aspirations, making every recommendation feel tailor-made. Incorporating Airbnb Booking History: Additionally, integrating our Airbnb booking history could provide the AI with a deeper understanding of your accommodation preferences and budgetary constraints. By analyzing the types of places you have stayed in the past, the personal AI travel advisor can tailor its accommodation suggestions to match your taste and financial comfort zone, further personalizing the travel planning process. However, the aspiration for such a highly personalized AI travel advisor encounters significant hurdles under current data privacy regulations and the reality of data silos maintained by tech giants. These barriers often prevent the seamless integration and utilization of data across platforms, limiting the potential for truly personalized AI assistants. To overcome these challenges, a radical reimagining of the data ecosystem is necessary, where individuals have sovereignty over their data. In this envisioned future, personal AI assistants operate directly on user’s own data, where data is private-by-default, ensuring personalization does not come at the expense of data privacy. This shift towards this more human-centric and user-controlled data ecosystem not only promises to enhance the personalization of AI services but also represents a critical step towards reconciling the competing interests of data utility and privacy. By placing individuals at the center, we can unlock the full potential of AI in personalizing experiences while safeguarding our right to privacy. Reimagining Consumer Experience in the Age of Personal AI’sIt’s time to recognize that we are rapidly entering an era dominated by personal AI assistants who will be seamlessly integrated into many aspects of our daily lives, including our most intimate spheres. It is also obvious that the way how we interact with apps and digital services is set to undergo profound transformation. Rather than having hundreds of apps, we will have one single portal with personal AI agents that have different specializations, and know us deeply (based on our own data). This transformation beckons us to ponder deeply about the nature of our future interactions with intelligent AI assistants and agents and the implications of such relationships on our emotional well-being and the essence of human connections. How Do We Build Trust with AI Companions? The foundation of any meaningful relationship, whether with humans or AI, hinges on trust. Therefore, understanding and building trust with these synthetic agents becomes paramount. Trust in such Personal AI assistants will not solely be about reliability or accuracy but will also encompass ethical considerations such as privacy, data security, and the AI's decision-making processes. How do we ensure these AI companions act in our best interests, and what mechanisms will be in place to safeguard our autonomy and privacy? Transforming Interactions and the Future of Intimacy The proliferation of AI agents will redefine our interaction with the world and each other. These AI companions could become our confidants, advisors, and caretakers, managing not just our schedules and health but also providing emotional support. The depth of these interactions raises questions about the nature of companionship and the role of AI in fulfilling human needs for connection and empathy. Will these sophisticated AI agents be able to discern and adapt to our emotional states, offering comfort and advice akin to a human friend or therapist? Relying on AI for emotional support and companionship introduces a paradigm shift in the understanding of intimacy. As personal AI assistants become more integrated into our lives, it's crucial to consider how this will shape our perceptions of love, friendship, and emotional support. Will AI companions complement human relationships, offering support where human availability is limited, or might they supplant traditional human connections in some aspects? Implications for Human Connection and Love The advent of emotionally intelligent AI raises profound questions about the future of human connection and love. As we form bonds with AI entities capable of understanding and responding to our emotional needs, it's imperative to reflect on how these relationships will coexist with human-to-human connections. Will the convenience and consistency of AI support erode the value we place on human imperfections and the unpredictable nature of human relationships? Or, conversely, could the presence of AI companions prompt a deeper appreciation for the unique aspects of human connection that AI cannot replicate? The journey into a future with personal AI asisstants invites us to embrace the possibilities and opportunities of improving our daily lives. The vision of such AI-powered future also requires us to critically assess and navigate the challenges that lie ahead. Let us embrace this new reality and work together in shaping the future.
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In December 2024, SITRA, the Finnish Innovation Fund, honored Prifina as one of the most innovative consumer data companies. We are thrilled to receive this recognition and remain dedicated to reshaping the personal data economy for the better.  Below is the English translation of a special article about Prifina which appeared on SITRA's webpage on December 11, 2023. Prifina returns consumer data from major corporations back into people's control. Prifina has built a solution where individuals manage their personal health and fitness data, for example, through their own data clouds. At the same time, it offers opportunities for all companies to build applications where they don't have to manage user data but instead access users' personal data clouds. Prifina's goal is nothing less than a revolution in personal data management. For instance, when a person goes for a run wearing a heart rate monitor, producing personal data, currently, that workout information typically remains in the ownership of the software company providing the health app. In Prifina's vision, the data doesn't remain with the app provider but is stored in the user's personal data cloud. So, the running app only comes to work and, once the workout is done, it leaves the measurement results to the customer. Prifina offers a place for this data as a service. "The architectures, features, and pricing of major cloud services have evolved so much that it is possible to build infrastructure where people retain and manage their data. Applications simply use the data stored in people's personal data clouds," says Valto Loikkanen, Co-founder and Platform and Usability Architect at Prifina. Prifina: Back to the Future"Before, applications primarily ran on our computers, and we managed the associated data ourselves. Then the data moved to user accounts on the internet. An assumption arose that software companies owned user account data and used it in their business as they pleased." Things can be different, and many would benefit from it. According to Loikkanen, many companies would gladly relinquish data management during tightening data protection regulations and data breaches, focusing on their core business. Many people are also concerned that their personal health or driving data ends up with international data giants. The opportunity to control it is appealing. Real-time and comprehensive insights into one's well-being"We want consumers to derive value from their data primarily for themselves. Only after that comes data-driven business," says V. Loikkanen from Prifina. Value can be generated in many different ways. Health and fitness data collected, for example, through location information and sensors can offer a comprehensive view of a person's activities, such as their well-being. Other types of data and use cases from various life areas, such as an automatic diary, can also be integrated into the solution, as discussed below. Prifina's AI connected to the data cloud can provide recommendations based on the data to improve well-being or achieve fitness goals, for example. The more Prifina knows about its owner, the more detailed recommendations the user receives. Prifina encourages third-party developers to create new services using individuals' data that operate privately within users' data clouds. If they wish, data cloud owners can share their data for free or for a fee outside their own data cloud for the use of companies or researchers if it makes sense to them.  The data ownership revolution begins in 2024If in the future, apps visit the data, app marketplaces will also change. In Prifina's app store, consumers can buy apps built on their personal data. Consumers pay Prifina for the use of their own data cloud and for the apps to their developers, as they do today. Of course, there are also free apps available. The app provider, in turn, pays Prifina a commission for using the marketplace. "There are so many opportunities associated with personal data ownership and utilization in software development that we cannot and do not want to come up with all of them ourselves. That's why it is essential that anyone can build and publish various services on top of Prifina's data clouds," says V. Loikkanen. So when will the data ownership revolution become visible and audible to consumers? According to Loikkanen, Prifina has been prepared determinedly but without haste. At the turn of the year, Prifina will launch a diary app that automatically writes diary entries based on phone location data, pictures, and the calendar, which the owner can then enrich. In the initial stage, the diary app's data will remain on the phone, but gradually Prifina will start offering data cloud as a location for the data. The goal is that people understand the benefits of the service and become interested in other apps developed around the idea of data ownership. So, the diary app is the first directly consumer-focused step in Prifina's revolution. In other respects, Prifina has been developed in cooperation with various app developers and companies for a long time. The plan is to launch the service as a whole when there are more apps available that illustrate the use of personal data between different apps. Prifina aims for a data ownership revolutionPrifina, soon to be launched on the market, is a solution that offers consumers data clouds. With these, they can manage their personal data. Prifina enables individuals to combine various data sources, such as health and fitness data, to gain a more comprehensive picture of their well-being.
Additionally, Prifina offers a marketplace for software companies where they can sell applications that do not store people's data on company servers but use individuals' own data clouds in their operations. Consumers can purchase these apps for their use. What they're saying about Prifina's solution "We want to offer our users a unique user experience where our skiing products, such as boots, have sensors that, based on their data, allow us to provide, for example, digital skiing instruction and improve safety on the slopes. Through collaboration with Prifina, we avoid significant investments and costs related to data management. With Prifina's help, we can demonstrate that we respect our customers' privacy." -Hans-Martin Heierling, Founder, Swiss skiing brand Heierling" On September 19-21, 2023, the Prifina team attended the largest frontier tech event of the year in the Bay Area - TechCrunch Disrupt 2023. We had an opportunity to meet new and current partners and showcase some of the use-cases where Prifina’s partners are leveraging Prifina’s personal data platform to offer services on top of users’ own data. In the post below, we summarize some of our main accomplishments during TechCrunch 2023, and also provide some insights about the current trends in the consumer data and AI market.  Prifina's Hub at TechCrunch Expo Hall This year at TechCrunch Disrupt, the Prifina had a booth located in the very center of the expo hall thus becoming a hub of attraction for people who came to see what are the latest developments in frontier tech. At our booth the Prifina team primarily aimed to focus on two areas of our work:
Showcase of sensorized products At Prifina's stand, visitors could see and experience how sensors are added to the physical products we use daily. Specifically, the Prifina team brought real sensorized helmets and headbands produced by our partners Haierling (making sensorized ski boots) and Samphire Neuroscience (producing menstrual neuromodulation devices). Those devices helped us illustrate how Prifina empowers individuals to collect data from various sensors and platforms and build compelling solutions on top of consolidated users' data. In the case of a ski coach, for example, the user not only gets a report about the ski performance but can also talk to a personal AI ski coach about the recovery after an intense ski experience. Such recovery is possible because the user can collect data from various data sources (e.g., ski boot sensor and a sleep tracking device such as Apple Watch or Oura Ring). Showcase of Personal AI Applications As we enter a world where every service we use is transforming into AI-powered assistants, one question remains: how do we make AI assistants really personal to the user? With Prifina's human-centric data infrastructure, it is rather simple to build AI-powered assistants: we need to build the assistant to the user, and tap into the combined of the user. Here is how it looks in practice: assume you want to build a "Personal AI travel agent" app. What data would such an AI assistant need to make recommendations that are truly personal to me? In this case, perhaps it is about: (i) my previous bookings on AirBnb platform, (ii) my starred locations on Google Maps (places I liked and places I marked as to be visited in the future); (iii) obviously, my calendar(s) so that I could plan accordingly, and (iv) perhaps my payments history. In Prifina's architecture, the user downloads the "Travel AI Assistant App" and runs on top of his/her own data, which includes various data sources, also possible is the four mentioned above. Such Travel AI Assistant app runs privately (on top of device, or in my own personal data hub which only I can access). Prifina's human-centric data architecture received much attention; we are onboarding new partners to build applications that run privately on the combined data set that users have in their personal data environments. General Takeaways and Market Trends After spending three days and talking to hundreds of founders, partners and investors, we have the following three takeaways about the market trends: 1. AI everywhere, even where it is not needed There is so much buzz about Artificial Intelligence. There is no question that AI tools and AI solutions are coming to many areas of our work, social life and leisure. AI tools will help curtail the amount of redundant tasks and help people focus on things that matter more, increase efficiency. In fact, this process of AI tools has been already taking place for quite some time, but the emergence of OpenAI's tools such as ChatGPT has made it really obvious. We also observed that the AI hype could get out of control: namely, we see how startup founders and builders are trying to add "AI" even to those areas where it does not make any sense. The result? Clumsy and complex UX, forced functionalities that are not needed. We understand that is a natural process of trial-and-error; we just hope that it will not take too much time and resources. 2. Sensors and Empowerment with Raw Data Similarly to other technology conferences in 2023, we see witnessed the wave of sensors rapidly entering every aspect of your physical lives. From sensorized running shoes, sensitized toilet seats, complex sensorized exoskeletons to sensorized workspaces, sensors and transforming how we live, work and recover. 3. Predictive Analytics for Consumers At TechCrunch we evidenced many fertility, sexual, reproductive, and other solutions that rely on sensor data and provide insights and nudges for consumers. Some of those solutions are diagnostic and clinical focusing on sophisticated biometric data, others are simple consumer-facing apps. Yes, one of the key common thread among sensors and AI-powered apps that offer predictive analytics is the need to adopt a more holistic approach to data. That's where Prifina's human-centric data model for user generated data has received most attention and validation. We are looking forward to continue our work with Prifina's current and new partners to unlock the value from users' data created across platforms and devices. Showcase of sensorized products At Prifina's stand, visitors could see and experience how sensors are added to the physical products we use daily. Specifically, the Prifina team brought real sensorized helmets and headbands produced by our partners Haierling (making sensorized ski boots) and Samphire Neuroscience (producing menstrual neuromodulation devices). Those devices helped us illustrate how Prifina empowers individuals to collect data from various sensors and platforms and build compelling solutions on top of consolidated users' data. In the case of a ski coach, for example, the user not only gets a report about the ski performance but can also talk to a personal AI ski coach about the recovery after an intense ski experience. Such recovery is possible because the user can collect data from various data sources (e.g., ski boot sensor and a sleep tracking device such as Apple Watch or Oura Ring). Showcase of Personal AI Applications As we enter the world where every service we use is transforming into AI-powered assistants, one question remains: how do we make AI assistants really personal to the user? With Prifina's human-centric data infrastructure, it is rather simple to build AI-powered assistants: we need to build the assistant to the user, and tap into the combined of the user. Here is how it looks in practice: assume you want to build a "Personal AI travel agent" app. What data would such an AI assistant need to make recommendations that are truly personal to me? In this case, perhaps it is about: (i) my previous bookings on AirBnb platform, (ii) my starred locations on Google Maps (places I liked and places I marked as to be visited in the future); (iii) obviously, my calendar(s) so that I could plan accordingly, and (iv) perhaps my payments history. In Prifina's architecture, the user downloads the "Travel AI Assistant App" and runs on top of his/her own data, which includes various data sources, also possible is the four mentioned above. Such Travel AI Assistant app runs privately (on top of device, or in my own personal data hub which only I can access). Prifina's human-centric data architecture received much attention; we are onboarding new partners to build applications that run privately on the combined data set that users have in their personal data environments. |
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The User-Held Data CompanyPrifina is a venture-backed data platform based in San Francisco dedicated to enabling Personal AI Twins and personal data ownership. Prifina empowers individuals to collect, combine, and leverage their personal information, giving them full control over their digital lives. Consumer brands and developers can create AI agents and apps that deliver personalized customer experiences while ensuring users retain ownership and control over their data.
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