Devshi Mehrotra on AI, justice, and public defense
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A lot of public defenders love being able to show up, as you know, friends and confidence to the clients that they're serving. And unfortunately, just the gruelling nature of their work takes away from a lot of that fulfillment many times. And so the way we think about IT is how can technology help them double down and focus on the work that drew them to this profession in the first place?

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Our criminal justice system relies on public offenders to advocate for those who cannot afford their own private tourney. please. You may well know the system is overburdened and at certain juncture, systematically flawed.

Public defenders are chronically given more cases that they can handle. As an example, the atlantic reported that some public defenders and orleans had ninety thousand cases per year at one point that translate tes to seven minutes per client. This means that sometimes innocent people are encouraged, take three deals and spend time in jail. Harvard public health suggest somewhere between fifty five thousand and one hundred and ten thousand people could be wrong fully behind bars.

So how can we give our public offenders more time and resources? How can technology less than the heavy burden that public defenders are Carrying? And how does this latter up to making a more just system for more people?

Our guest today is working day in and day out towards these answers. SHE is the cofounder and C E O of justice text and A I search tl IT condenses hours of body campvallon ge video calls and jail calls into a transcript so that public defenders can highlight key moments and understand a case more quickly. Justice text gives public offenders back the time that they so desperately need. As listers may know, i'm incredibly passionate about this space. I can't wait for all to learn about this much needed service.

Here's our conversation .

with death sa tra.

Then SHE am so excited for this. I want to kick off by reading a party or bio. Actually, like, I knew you're pretty well. You followed you along in this journey. And then I read IT. And IT says he is accumulated extensive experience applying deep learning algorithms to protect the progression of retina diseases, train robotic agents, and perform natural language processing and legal corpora, so will dig into the NLP, of course, and legal corporate later in the episode, but tell us a little bit about reino diseases and robotic agents.

My first introduction to the world of A I was in two thousand sixteen. This was the summer after my fresh room near in college, I had accepted an internship opportunity at a research lab out in beijing, china.

I was working with this incredible lab that was focused on, like, more fundamental biology and in physics research and the lab director at the time, he was really excited to have me on board because he had heard of this exciting new thing called deep learning and he said, you know what, she's a computer science swizz SHE can help us out um with processing and analyzing some of these cancers or images that we're collecting a little bit more efficiently. And so he kind of gave me a very high level overview of what he wanted me to accomplish. And little did he know at the time I had truly only taken an introduction, tory python and see course.

And I was a little bit overwhelmed. But this was my first summer. This is my first internship. I was committed to doing whatever I could. And so I kind of just dive braden.

I started um researching the very fundamentals of machine learning, making my way over to gradient to send to learning how neural networks work um how you come up with training validation data sets to convolution neural nets. And honestly, like the more I learned about this field, the more I was just blown away. IT was crazy to me that you could just drink together all these mathematical functions and accomplish all these really, really incredible and and complicated tasks.

And so by the end of that summer, I had a working prototype for them that would take in all the cancer, sell images that they were collecting and produce eo and uh, image segmentation. And so that was exciting. But I think the bigger take away for me for in that summer was holy crap, like i'd like discover this whole new field that I don't think a lot of people are talking about at the time um and I want to pursue this further.

Um I want to see where I can take this interest. And so the fallowing summer I turned that google brain, which seemed like the mecca of deep learning at the time. I was so excited um to have that opportunity.

I was just cool being able to hear from the research scientist directly that I had been reading about for so long after that. I went to microsoft research. I went to deep mind um and so I was you know just had this incredible opportunity to work on some projects that were more NLP focus. Others were more computer vision focus. There were also know an amazing work that was being done on robotics so that kind of what that line in the bio was referring to um but honestly, i'm just like that was like the foundation and the genesis for me of actually doing .

the work that I am today yeah I was IT was the right tour some of the a most interesting labs doing that. So doesn't surprise me that that created good spring board so uh now onto A I and legal not just because our investor um I think justice text is a great example of using A I for good um so I allow our listeners ers to get acquitted uh with its origin story. What inspired you and your co father to create justice text and say a little bit about what IT is as well.

So lusty and I we met on our very first day as undergraduate students, uh, the university chicago and both of us were saying computer science. We were in the same house. We also did the same for orientation program.

And so there are a lot of different touch points um for us in the very early days that eventually LED us to becoming cofounded ers. Um but it's just really cool to reflect on that because the priorities of program that we did together was actually focused on social justice and community leadership. So um topics that are pretty different from what we actually studied uh for all of our new computer science course works.

But I think it's set the tone for how I spent my time um as a college student in in so many ways three months into our freshman year um on campus is when the chicago police department released the dash camfed tage documenting the police murder of a seventeen year old unarmed like american boy his name was is the chon mcDonald and if you look at that video, it's it's truly horrifying the quon was the same age as both lessons in myself and I think in that moment I just reflected on the fact that as a seventeen old I was moving to a new city. You know, starting my college experience, meeting all these cool new friends and lucon for no reason that anyone could justified come up with, had been taken from this world and for being born hour in black in chicago. And I think for me, one of the things that I spent a lot of time reflecting on and just learning about in the next couple years was the history of specialized policing in the city.

And IT was really cool to see how my local community started to organize. And against a lot of this injustice um I would go to the local church and just see how people were coming together organizing after school programs. I would see how um you know there were so many teachers and pastors who would just come together um and fight for justice in the week of uh local government that had failed to provide um that say, security for them for so long.

And I think a lot of those conversations and just the people that I was meeting was really inspiring. Going into my senior year, I knew that I had to do something. I had no idea what that would look like. What I had studied, the skills that I had were as a computer science student. And so what lesly and I ended up doing was called calling our local public defenders office basically telling them, hey, guys were two college students with extra time on our hands.

We'd love to help you guys out however we can and um honestly, in that very first conversation they told us that we as public defenders are getting absolutely flooded with the volume of body worn camera footage, interrogation videos, jail calls that we're receiving in our data day case loads and we don't have a good system for getting through that. You guys are two computer scientists. Maybe you can help us out. And so um that was the genesis of justice tex. This was really just aside project that we built for a handful of attorneys in our city and overtime realized that the problem is so much bigger than what we initially realized.

I love it's just such a typical start up story where your meeting customers and you're serving an unmet need and you know you guys were activists and not instead of but in addition to your fury about what was happening and you said, let's figure sort of a more systemic solution. So for those of us who aren't familiar with sort of the day to day work of public offenders, can you go in into a little bit more, maybe like a case example of what sort of they are up against? And then when justice text comes in, how is that helpful?

Public defenders are representing low income individuals who oh wise cannot afford an attorney um in many ways they are that last line of defense to help this individual navigate this gruelling bureaucratic um criminal legal system that we have in amErica and unfortunately, public defenders today are grappling with incredibly high case loads um to the point where in some jurisdictions they estimate the average public defender only has around ten minutes to spend on an individual case.

And due to that um this issue that we stumbled upon with body camps is really fascinating because in addition to these high case loads all of the sudden over the past ten years, these attorneys are also receiving hours and hours of boy on camera footage, these shale calls of nine one one calls um as part of each case, this footage can be incredibly powerful. M previously an attorney would have to just rely on what was written in the police report and kind of take that at face value. All of the sudden they have access to the data that can help them CoOperate, that information, and actually get to the truth of what may have transpired during that police interaction.

But it's very hard to say that all this footage is actually leading to greater accountability if they don't have the tools, resources, time, infrastructure to actually be able to go through IT. So that's why we built a solution that essentially allows attorneys to upload all of that data onto justice text. Within minutes, you'll get an automated uh, transcription that they can search through.

They'll get summaries of all that information we will look out for key moments. When was someone brandished? When was someone administered red a fields of bride test? When were they placed under arrest? Did the client ever request a lawyer um and then a tiny can use that platform to create video exhibits that they actually use in court to potentially in peach an opposing witness or or to use as part of their opening or closing presentation.

Um and so if I had to share an example, there's an attorney out in northern california who had received a case where her clients vehicle had been searched. Her client was spanish speaking and um you know in the police report IT had just been written as we searched the car we found X, Y, Z. That's why this individual is now detained.

When SHE actually looked at the video when he uploaded IT to justice ducks, what he was able to identify was her spanish speaking client had never been read his rights and in fact the officer had indicated to the english speaking friend to just time to go along with that. And that was just a very small, brief encounter that could have been brushed aside. And all of you know the paperwork that you're for a given case, it's more define, just like those three seconds where the officer saying he just talent to accept.

Um but because of having a tool that made IT easy to navigate all this video, SHE was able to clip out that portion in peach the cop during a hearing and get the case dismissed. And so I think that's just a small example of how when you give public defenders the tools to actually sit through this footage um that's when you get true accountability. That's when you get that true transparency in the system.

What did you decide to do this as a um as a company versus for example, of five, one, three, three?

There's a lot of things that I could say about this, but I guess what i'll start off with is um the right to a strong and well resource public defender system that's a constitutional right. That's a Mandate that the state needs to be taking on um and needs to be investing in. And so we're not selling to um legal aid organizations that are doing this as kind of you know out of their own goodwill.

This is um a responsibility of the state as part of the democracy that we live in and unfortunately, we live in a country where in many jurors icons the police department's overtime budget is greater than the entire budget of the public defenders office. And what that contributes to is an environment where technology vendors, they look at the criminal justice space, they look where this opportunity they realized. There's a lot of budget for tech innovation on police and prosecutions on side of things.

So that's where a lot of the coal meal technology and up being built. We don't think that's how the system should Operate. We think public defenders should have you know a line item in their budget to be able to invest in high tech solutions, to be able to invest in sustainable innovation.

And for us, IT was definitely an uphill battle because hardly any of the public defender agencies that we initially started selling to um how the line I on for video analysis tools um by a large they just invested in case management things and uh microsoft office. And so I think the case that we've been trying to make us, no, we should go to the county board legislature. We should go to the state legislature and tell them um that this is something that you need to be able to uphold that constitutional rate and this is something that's going to make you a lot more efficient.

And so I think from the beginning, one thing that we realized is that if we give justice texas a free resource, it's simply not going to be successful because IT takes a lot of hard work and effort and you know just like thought in intentionality on the public defender side to be able to roll this out efficiently. And so when they go through all of that process getting that budget approved, um that's when you know justice tex becomes a core part of their workflow um that we can then double down on. And then from our side, it's one thing to kind of just build a fun school project and give IT away for free.

But if we want to continue hiring the best engineers, if we want to continue incorporating the latest technology and justice text in expanding more file formats on our platform and providing that concern support, we need to be able to fund that ourselves. And so we can either spend a good chunk of our time, you know, going out and seeking terrible grant funding, which is a fine option, or we can go directly to the source, directly to the customers that we're trying to serve um and make sure that this is something that they're actually willing to pay for. So that's kind of how we've thought about IT in, in our positioning .

in this space will make sense, especially to have the kind of the connections the customer is, the back they have to they they have to adopt their work processes part of IT. So engaging in the customer relationship versus a you know what maybe kind of tools that they never invest in is part of doing IT isn't one of the things that, that then add to your chAllenge that know there's limited budgets. It's you know how do people you know get persuaded this is something to to kind of pay a attention to like what is the sale cycle look like? Because you almost like you're creating a new market here.

Yeah and that's been a really fulfilling part of the journey, honestly because um we truly are sitting down with a lot of public defense leaders, um very well respected folks who are then coming to us and asking food but is on, hey, how can we pitch this technology? Have you know county board meeting coming up um many times we are go creating narratives with them.

We are putting together you know entire data sheet, fact sheet um to help them make that case. And over the past year, year and a half, we'd notice that, that public defenders have been able to meet this case successfully. And that's been really exciting to see actually.

Um when IT comes to navigating procurement, there is so many different options that you can go through. Um sometimes you know there's like a competitive bidding process. Sometimes you might be below the thresh hold of um what needs to be put out for a competitive bid.

Sometimes if you have a very different traded solution, you can go through source procurement. So for us, we've at a huge learning curve of understanding what's the best way to partner with these government agencies and um navigate those cell cycles. But honestly, I think that become like one of our core competencies at this point. And we really started off as just like two college students knocking on a lot of focus doors. And people have seen as over the years, just continue to keep added and continue to grow the skill of our impact. I was at a conference with a lot of public defense leaders earlier this year, and so many of them had a memory of getting a cold email for me when I was like a senior and polite and IT was I was just cool because I feel like they recognize our genuine interest and motivation and serving them. Um and for that reason, they've been willing to kind of give us tips and tricks on how to navigate kind of the the sales and improved revenue side of things as well.

So I love the idea that you're not gna let the government with the federal government, the local government, whatever like, pass the buck on this responsibility. You're like, no, no, no, this cannot be legal aid. This is in the constitution like you guys have to do this and you have to pay for IT.

So IT is meaningful to you. You give us an idea of who, who and where are you servings. We have an idea of your scale.

And then obviously, you were created to help public defenders. And you said, you want to get to sort of truth and accountability, but to prosecutors use you. Is that okay? Like how do you think of the flip side of the coin?

Yeah, we're working with around sixty individual public defenders agencies at the moment, and that includes entire statewide system like tana, ca and massachusetts rolled out earlier this year. Um major cities like porter land, houston, Austin which is where I am right now um but also small like rural um public defender agencies with maybe five battery ys.

And it's actually been a chAllenge to figure out I says a technology providers, what does a that customer support, that customer success function and look like for us when we're serving a massive system with a lot of resources, a training director versus a much smaller office that may not have a lot of in house technical support. And so that's been really interesting because if you're trying to work with public defenders in america, you have to recognize that the delivery model is very different colony by colony um state by state. I think one thing that we tell all of our partners is that you're not just getting a piece of soft where we will sit down with you.

We will do office hours with any attorney who wants IT, we will train them, we will come visit you in person. And that's just been such a critical part of being able to serve this community given how overwhelmed and overworked a lot of them are. And then on the other side of things, I think we have been very focused on public defenders indigent defense from day one.

I think it's all our ethos, uh, just recognizing that there are a lot of folks were building cool new tech solutions for prosecutors for um police um but this is a very, very um serious and and needed gap that we can focus on. We have branched out to uh private criminal defense atterley and so they may be representing individuals who do have the means to to hire a lawyer. And so I do think there's a jacon um communities uh adjacent markets um that we have already started to serve um where there is a lot of opportunity for growth and expansion um but I do think we have stayed true to the mission of um focusing on the defense um in our journey of until now.

Will be back right out for this break. What does the AI revolution .

mean for jobs, for getting things done? Who are the people creating this technology? And what do they think?

I ronna alca U. B. An A. I scientist, entrepreneur, investor and now hosts of the new podcast, pioneers of A.

I think of that as your guide for all things. A I is the most human issues at the center. Join me every wednesday for pioneers of A I, and don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune IT.

And now back to the show.

So let's bring in clip from a public defender that that works with you.

being able to upload almost all forms of audio, whether it's court hearing or studio camera footage, radio traffic or witness interviews, and then being able to search the accompanying text, make clips, add subtitles and download excerpts, is incredibly helpful. So for example, I recently had a case with about a thousand body worn camera clipsed. And there is no question that we were using justice text.

At least we were the most prepared attorneys in the room, having been able to evaluate each and every minute of the digital evidence to find bits and pieces that further are defense and highlighted problems with the state's case. In that particular case, the state would call a witness without any prior notice. We could use justice text to access that officers body one camera in real time through the transcript while the officer was testifying.

and gather impeachment material. That's a clear, awesome use of justice takes. What are kind of features that are being asked for or what are they kind of additional products to, to elevate the game here and make sure that no folks who are using republic ican, you know eventually private defenders to to have a new bus defense.

One really fascinating request that has only come up over the last couple months is um the ability to actually upload a police report and then for us to use kind of R A I system, our generation A I capabilities to automatically flag potential inconsistently between what what was captured on footage and what was written that police report we've also heard folks ask us about.

You know i'd love to be able to just like find every instance in which this red car showed up on video. Um we've also not done as much of the visual analysis component, but I think it's something that more and more people are asking for. Um so yeah, those two areas were were really excited .

about and and like you said, one of the reasons you want to do a four profit and get the best engineers and have the latest technology so you can always be updating your tools. But the that's because new technology arising well, that's because new youth cases are coming up. You're talking to new customers. Would you mind running us through a demo of a new feature of justice text?

Yeah, hundred percent. So essentially what i'm showing you right now is the justice tax platform, where if you're an attack y you can go ahead and upload your audio and video discovery. I have uploaded a dash cam video in a courtroom proceeding to this case holder. And one of our most recent features on the farm is an A I system that we call Manda AI.

What Manda A I can do is take an entire cache holders worth of discovery um whether that you know dozens of phone calls or or dash cam videos, IT will scan across all of them, generate a five to ten sentence summary of the main topics of conversation, and then you can actually interact with Manda A I and ask IT high level natural language questions that helps you discover all of that um or understand that evidence Better so I can ask you to generate a timing of key events. This is one of the core functions of what a defence attorney is trying to accomplish, especially if they're getting body cam videos from multiple different officer perspectives um and they're just trying to piece together who said what at what time um having access to this tool can be really powerful. We had an attorney out an organ who was able to use Manda AI to build a high level timeline of multiple different officer perspectives.

And he basically said that the response he got in a matter of thirty seconds was the same thing that he had compiled um over hours and hours of pouring over all of the footage. And so um another thing that you can ask this tool is, you know this is A D Y stop. Is there any evidence of intoxication? And um what the tool will do is when IT generates its responses, IT will reference a very specific file and timestamp um and so if an attorney is using justice text and they want to cross reference any of the responses that the assistant is giving them, you can do that very easily just by hobbing over um that response is something that we highly emphasize when we train new returnees on justice CS as well um because um like with any A I tool, there are possibilities of you know uh information that maybe left out. So yeah um if I wanted to take a look at this instance, whether you know asking individual to track a red light, I can just click on that and justice text will navigate me to that point in that particular dash cam video.

Thank you so much. This is fantastic. And I think obviously with A I A lot of the worries about what's going to happen to jobs and I share those concerns and I am so worried about what's going to happen over the next, you know, two, three, five, ten years.

But I think this gives a great example of A I that is helping folks to their jobs. And they are not taking away anyone's job because these are jobs that just weren't getting done. This is stuff that underfunded public defenders departments, underfunded you legal, a legal votes who are trying to do the right thing. They just didn't have the time to do this. And so without the technology won't happen.

No, I appreciate that point because the work that draws public defenders into choosing this line of work is wanting to help people in their community, is wanting to um E O. Provide alternatives to our incarceration to understand their perspectives, understand their limitations. It's really that like human centered work, a lot of public defenders love being able to show up, as you know, friends and confidence to the clients that they're serving.

And unfortunately, just the grilling nature of their work takes away from a lot of that fulfillment. Many times um these attorneys are getting burned out. I hear from a lot of offices that are suffering from retention issues. And so the way we think about IT is how can technology help them double down and focus on the work that um initially drew them to this profession in the first place.

So one of things about entrepreneurship go into this is you now have a peal kind of good understanding the market ecosystem in network, what's going on on what do you think are the key elements of cup technological support to try to the best baLance the the the the the as a where the the the under resource um within the judicial system, the reason .

why the intersection between government and technology is so exciting is because low income communities in this country comes of colour is proportionately rely on the government to Operate efficiently. Uh whether that's for um subsidized health care services, whether that's for you know social security benefits, whether that's food stamps, legal services, what have you and um for the longest time, we simply have not delivered a reasonable user experience to these communities.

We've been okay with inefficient systems, with government forms that don't work or having to call you know some hot line that doesn't pick up ten days in a row before you can actually get a resolution. And you know if things like our dorm ash up works so seamlessly ly and so efficiently like we can strive for Better within our government services. And that's why i'm super excited about the potential of our technology to be incorporated um by different agencies to solve their specific needs.

As an outsider, I would have never known public defenders are struggling with body cam. So I can even tell you the specifics of how this technology can be used or um applied。 But I think it's kind of a culture shift around um our government agencies thinking about what are the unnecessary of inefficiencies and how we deliver our services and how can we address them. There is so much low hanging fruit, you don't even need generate A I sometimes it's just a basic type form or a calender integration that could truly cut down on hours and hours of work that someone is currently, you know, manually pouring over. So you really don't even need to use the most, uh, high tech fancy technology to to have a really big impact on the space.

So going on that same theme of local governments being able to realize technology, to your point, to be able to provide Better government services, I do think actually this is like a key, like people would believe more in democracy in government if our government worked for them.

You know, even if IT was as simple as filing taxes or whatever IT might be um but do you think that these local governments are starting to shift their perspective on A I? Or when you mention A I, is that a positive and negative or people nervous? Is that make them excited? Like how does that interplay with you know all of the new media around A I and its capabilities? Both were good and bad.

That's a really good question because I have seen such a stark shift in how these governments are thinking about A M over the past six months or so. Um we are getting AI questionnaires from every county, every state. They have entire written policies that they want our responses on as a technology vender.

How are you storing your data, how you securing IT? What are you training um or what are you using to to train these models? Are you using our data to train these models? And honestly, I think it's an incredible step in the right direction because the answer can't be we're not going to use A I or we're not going to touch this technology.

Let's ban IT out, right? I think local governments are realizing that there's a lot of potential here um but they also need to be concerned with the potential risks like a lot of data is not public information and if it's used to train, you know, a lot of these public models, that could seriously harm and a lot of folks. And so i've personally been excited to see this IT creates more work for us honestly, like we have a lot more that we need to do to get just as textbook and get IT over the line when we're going through that sales and procurement process. But I think this is the start of a really cool era in which I think governments want to be on the cutting edge of this technology and and do so in a responsible manner.

Have you thought about um what are the other finds that could be part of the as a republic infrastructure like does that make sense to have software A P I inclusions in body camps or other kinds of things that would help the know the kind of justice process um and and what kinds of things with those big definitely .

I think one of the big chAllenges um in Operating within the criminal justice space has been you have a lot of different players who are creating proprietary technology that is an inter Operable with you know their competitor system. And that IT goes all the way from jail call providers and all the way to whose recording the courtroom proceedings to, of course, the body camps.

And I think IT really is gonna have to be um local governments that push a lot of these vendors to um create A P S in in a greater ability for other systems to interact with their own. Um because honestly, in building justice takes, that's been a huge hurdle um that we've been encountering and actually made really great progress towards. We get a lot of proprietory file format.

Sometimes we go to a county and eighty percent of the food that they're receiving requires a special file player to be able to view um and attorneys are spending more time trying to get you know that failed to play, then they are even reviewing IT in some cases. And so we've reverse engineered a lot of these preparatory file formats so that they upload and Operate seamlessly on justice tax. But that's not necessarily what we should have to do.

Um these private vendors um shouldn't have so much um say in in authority in in those types of decisions. There is also risks um we definitely don't want to be contributing to an environment where every action anyone makes while walking on a public street can be easily surveyed and used for um analysis by their local government that they may not be consenting to. Um and so when IT comes to the use of that hardware and software, I think that something that we all have to be wary of. But yeah, I definitely think there there's potentials for more integration.

So what question i'd love to ask entremets s is if you had a phone line that goes through time and you will call your Younger Younger um to not with oh and the world looks like this are you know talk to you but don't talk to bob. But like like a learn like a decision in learning algorithm, like what to do more of, what to do less of. What would you tell your Young yourself?

I think for me what I would tell my Young erself is built up that scale of delegation because IT is genuinely so cool and it's so beautiful. When um you bring on a new team member, you show that trust in them, you give them a responsibility and they're able to execute IT Better than you ever could have imagined.

And the best leaders that I see are the ones were able to surround themselves with other Stellar um individuals and just inspire them to do big things. And um it's something that I continue to start for and actively working on. But I think this next stage of scaling justice tex is really gonna be about investing in in the people that I work with um and just know thinking about their leadership journey and growth.

So on that note, give us a little bit of a preview and you can answer this however you like. Like what is the future for justice tax? Are there adjacent fields? Do you want to be in all fifty states to have a five year vision? Like just give us a little bit about the future for you guys and what you're shooting for.

We are in a time of really rapid growth right now. Um we are close to finalizing to additional um statewide partnerships in addition to the two states that were already fully to. And um we have tons of like growing interest in states where there's you know increasing polls of funding for discovery and body care alysa, all sorts of stuff.

So I think where I are really, really exciting point in our journey ah where very, very motivated to continue pushing forward and continuing to get our product into the ends of more public defenders. Um we recently partnered red with this really incredible orange zone called sellers. They are focused on media story telling to combat um outdated narratives around uh criminal justice and in the country and to push forward like a more progressive view of what public safety looks like.

And we partnered with them to make a video about our work in kentucky with their public defenders. And so we did a road trip around the state, met a lot of our tourneys, told their stories, thought that was beautiful, that was fantastic. tic.

So i'm excited to share that, and i'm excited to do more things like that. And then lastly, on the product side, IT. IT really is what I was talking about earlier, you know, just the advancements in general. A, I IT seems like every week there's something new going on that we need to keep an eye out for. And so whether that's using alums to analyze more that written discovery, analyze, please report its or start doing more of that visual analysis, I think that's where a lot of luzi, who's my co founder, where he's gonna focus over the next couple months.

So let's do rapid fire. Is there a movie, song or book that fills you with optimism for the picture?

There's this one movie um this indian movie called queen, which honestly is probably one of my sports. It's about a Young woman who was essentially left at the alter and decided to go on her honeymoon to europe by herself. And SHE had never left her small village in india before then. And you know, he shows up in paris not really knowing the language, not understanding a lot of the cultural and nuances.

And so there's a lot of this communication that takes place, a lot of embarrassing moments um but he pushes through that and he built a life for herself SHE is able to decenter this idea that marriage is the one and true source of value um her life and honestly, it's just like such a cool and beautiful story. Um so me personally as a Young woman who comes from a culture where women aren't always able to travel the world, start their own companies um and live life on their own terms. I think watching that movie um means a lot and um fills me with optimism as well.

There's a lot of things are fixed in the world, but it's also pretty cool to think about how far we've come as as a gender, as a species, as as all of the things. Uh, rap fire number two uh, what is a question that you wish people would ask you more often?

I love talking about my experiences um solo, traveling, living abroad. I spent a good chunk of time over the past two years living in ln america. So did my co founder. And you know, when you show up in a country where you don't know a single soul, where you don't know the language and you still have to fend for yourself, you learn a lot about yourself.

So where do you see progress or momentum outside of your industry that inspires you?

I am really inspired by how multicultural a lot of the stories that are being told in the media are now ah if you got a netflix amazon who u um it's really cool to see a lot of just like niche stories, niche communities um having entire movies or entire T V shows made about them and their lived experiences especially when you live in a country like the united states that is so deeply multi cultural and unfortunately also um to the state pretty secreted. There's no way that you're going to have the lived experience of every other american. So yeah, i'm excited to see more and more untold stories um come to life on on screen.

Can you leave us with a final thought and what you think is possible in the next fifteen years if everything breaks humanity's way? And what's the first step to get there?

One thing that I think a lot about is um how a lot of the power of A I in in automation has been restricted to the world of software up until now. Like how do you take enormous amounts of data, synthesize the efficiently and quickly? Um but there's a lot of very intelligent people working on how do you use um you know physical objects, whether that's cars or robots, um little vacuum cleaners to parts of our data, a physical lives.

And I think about that in the context of the burden of domestic labor um especially on women, so many women are now bread winners in their family and or know pursuing these incredibly fulfill careers and installed LED grappling with um the incredible burden of managing the household, of taking care of all these kids and all their activities. How can um the next wave of A I of automation help alleviate some of that burden so that families can focus on the things that matter the most, which is spending time with one another? I think this has implications on elder care as well.

I think I hear from so many friends who have grandparents that you know are are struggling with this new era in their life where they don't have a lot of people that can talk to them um they're not physically able to do the things that bring them joy. And unfortunately, you know working parents are already incredibly overnight. So I don't really have any answers, but i'm very, very excited to see how a lot of innovation kind of on the hard ware side of things can help to address some of those burdens.

Possible is produce by wonder media network is hosted by R A finger and me read often, our showers is shown. Possible is produced Candy sards E D ala serious lead a dran bae and paloma vero gene caplin is our executive producer and editor.

special thanks to strip yellow man Shelly, so you to E N Alice greg biao, part patel and then realised. And a big thanks to jav, an urban and little monster media company.