In this episode, Jalen Gildersleeve talks about MindHak’s revolutionary mental health and emotional development support technology, and how to use AI for good.
Episode Summary
- 2:00 This Bot Knows How You Feel | Learn how the MindHak app can learn your emotional patterns and beliefs to provide tailored content and resources to support your emotional maturity.
- 6:00 Self-Compassion and the Global Goals | Learn the 3 tenants of self-compassion and how having all 3 contributes to the UN Global Goals.
- 16:45 What’s Up with the Business Model? | Jalen talks about the three phases of their business model, and how they will collect enough human emotional data to power their algorithm correctly.
- 26:30 Creating an Exponential Technology from Scratch | Jalen has 2 key recommendations. Get mentors, and get your ideas on paper.
Full Post
“MindHak is a mobile app that helps everyone get access to mental health resources. We help people learn self-compassion, emotional maturity (which is emotional intelligence with integrity), and emotional resilience using AI technology.”
MindHak uses a chat box to help people interact with the technology, and then the tech analyses what the person says and provides resources that apply to them.
“The way cognitive behavior therapy works is that they would just recondition the way you think about a scenario… the way we plan on using the technology is that we use AI to have you realize that you’re reacting based on a presupposition or a cognitive bias.”
MindHak can create a scenario that includes your presupposition, to help you recondition the cognitive bias and not react to scenarios like in the future.
AI Accuracy Via Chat
The bot you chat with learns your emotional habits and learns when it’s assessments are accurate or not. You can rate the bot’s response, so it can provide you with the most personalized content.
“We’ve taken the world’s leading research from Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and UC Berkley… and we’ve realized you can moderate your behaviors to become better.”
People don’t know they can get support, and they don’t know how to access those resources.
“We’ve tried to create the ideal support system cybernetically.”
The 3 Tenets of Self-Compassion
- Self-kindness versus self-judgment: the first step to a healthy EQ.
- Common humanity versus isolation: how good of a teacher have you had to learn how to suffer?
- Emotional resilience: how to deal with suffering powerfully, and turn it into strength
“It comes from a lot of personal experience. I’m from one of the slummiest towns in the country. Everbody knows about Flynt. It doesn’t have water. But that doesn’t reduce my IQ. It has given me so much strength.”
Jalen talks about the way the Global Goals have unified people to solve big problems that he sees are totally possible to solve. He mentions goal number 16 as his target goal (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions). Jalen sees emotional violence as the core problem of any physical violence.
He also talks about goal number three, which involves mental health issues. “One in five people suffer from depression globally. We’ve made great strides in terms of technology, but in terms of humanity we’ve got a ways to go.”
AI and Neural Networks
The computer has a learning curve. When you gauge how accurate each response was on the 1-10 scale, the machine learning corrects your algorithm to know what you need more and more accurately.
“Our app helps you understand what morally is aligned for yourself. We provide resources to you, but we can’t tell you how to process those resources. It’s like having a best friend with a lot of resources.”
“I designed it for myself originally, selfishly, because I couldn’t afford a psychologist.”
Public Benefit Corporation
MindHak is about to enter their Beta app launch and just incorporated as a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC). The PBC incorporation allows for more transparency as a company and visibility as a research source.
“It’s like a new age nonprofit.” Jalen laughs.
Three Phases To Upgrade Planet Consciousness
Jalen breaks down the business model into 3 phases.
- Help 10,000 people: First, we’ll help 10,000 people in halfway houses, foster homes and homeless shelters. Those people are more volatile in their experience of trauma and emotional expression, so MindHak can create solid data on human emotional patterns.
- One-for-One: After that, MindHak will be able to implement a one-for-one model, where people who can pay for the app will provide access to someone who needs emotional support but cannot pay for it.
- Preventative measures: Then, MindHak will take a more preventative stand with HR companies and corporations.
“We plan on raising the consciousness of the planet. Once you learn emotional intelligence, you can receive knowledge from anywhere because you’re more open.”
The app will initially be $25 for life for the first 10,000 people, and that will include a whole suite of apps and tools that MindHak will continue to build over time.
They also plan to host business workshops to provide authentically preventative mental health support for their employees.
“We need to focus more on how to help technology help people.”
How to Create Exponential Tech from Scratch
Jalen recommends two things strongly.
- Find a team of members. People will want to help you, so be humble about it. Your idea is not about you. Make sure it’s an idea you truly believe in that you’re not willing to give up overnight. “I have five advisors.”
- Do great documentation for your app. Create an executive summary, wireframe or business model to poise yourself to get the right resources. “Get as much as you can on paper,” Jalen says.
Takeaways
- The power of EQ in the Global Goals. The goal is not to make perfect people, but to make more resilient people who can react to challenges powerful.
- Machine learning isn’t scary! Machine learning is a powerful tool to forward human development, and it’s pretty simple to understand after hearing Jalen talk about it.
