Personal.ai closes $3.2M seed round to create an AI extension of Human Memory
We search for information but we recall our memories.
Personal AI is a San Diego-based startup building technology to safekeep your memories with a personal AI to recall. Formerly, Luther.ai, the company has been operating for a year building an AI extension of human memory to enable individuals to create their personal AI to expand the potential of their biological memory; to forget less and recall more.
The founders, Suman Kanuganti, Sharon Zhang and Kristie Kaiser are backed by their lead investor David Magerman from Differential VC in its seed round of $3.2 million. Other investors include Village Global VC, Beni VC, Keshif Ventures, Good Friends VC, and individual investors such as Kelvin Beachum and Jeff Foster.
Please allow me to give you a glimpse into what drives me and my team to help humans — all humans — retain and recall more thoughts and memories with AI. My hope is Article IV of The Future of Remembering series will leave you with an understanding of what Personal AI is solving and how we are doing it.
The Future of Remembering, Article IV:
This is the fourth and final piece in a four-part series from the Personal AI Team, formerly Luther.ai. Previous articles explored Human Memory through three distinct lenses: Scientific, Technological, and Design. The fourth article is through the entrepreneurial lens by Suman Kanuganti, CEO and Co-founder of Personal AI.
Note: Italic text in this article is generated by my personal AI built on top of my own memories.
Our human capacity is ever-evolving
Our human capacity is not constant but ever-evolving. We have always sought ways to expand our capacity to become more. Many inventions act as human extensions. The result: most modern-day life is surrounded by personal “utilities”, a home, a car, a computer, an email account, a shopping account, a bank account — all serving as inputs to how the human evolves. While most of human technological history has been focused on expanding our physical capacity, the past few decades have seen an explosion in technologies unlocking our mental capacity.
Each generation, surrounded by its own technosphere, defines the boundary of this capacity, as well as the invention that pushes human progress forward. Today, I will explore how Personal AI is pushing that progress toward increasing human mental capacity.
80% of our Memories Forgotten
Human memory is being taxed more and more and as a result, our cognition — the ability to process, synthesize, and make use of the memories that are created by us — always catching up with the past, instead of going beyond the present to prospect the future. Our experiences are encoded in people, facts, thoughts, and emotions, all of which influence the actions we take, the decisions we make, and the behavior we exhibit every day. Yet for all the influence on our decisions and behavior, 80% is forgotten and even less recalled.
20% of Our Time Spent Searching
We humans have invented many suboptimal ways of extending our memory; the efforts to take notes, photos, diaries, digital vaults and so on as we try many different ways to store information that we then have to search later. Fundamentally, by the time we reach for a pen or take down notes, much of this memory is lost and any new information conveyed while writing is fragmented.
The other side of this extends to how we retrieve this stored information when we most need it. We have invented systems for these — labeling our notebooks, bookmarks, tagging projects, searching on the internet by keywords etc. As a result, 20% of our time is spent on the process of searching rather than focusing on synthesizing the actual information itself.
Our Minds Recall, They Do Not Search
I do love search; a novel concept a decade ago is now ubiquitous in our world. I have the world’s information at my fingertips. I can ask about today’s weather or the winner of the election with minimal effort. What I cannot search is the birthday of my best friend’s child or the perfect idea I had and then forget during a brainstorming session.
We search for information but we recall our memories.
These are part of my intranet; my memories. The internet is the collection of world’s data; the world’s information. The nearly unlimited capacity of the internet and the unbounded compute power have no access to my intranet. I want to recall my memories from my private intranet and not search for information on the internet. My memory is authentic and unique to the way I remember them and not the way the world remembers them.
Confidence, Not Fear
I, personally, suffer from imposter syndrome at times. Well, maybe all the time lately. A large extent of that feeling comes from my original thoughts unwritten, uncaptured, or at best scattered around different forms of storage. These lost thoughts go unexpressed, unvoiced, and unable to be recalled in the moment when I need them. It creates anxiety of what may have been forgotten.
I want an extension of me, an extension to my human capacity to store the memories that is personal and valuable to me. An extension that helps me recall in my own authentic voice that is secure and private. I want to recall 80%, not forget 80%, so I can be my best self.
Neuroscience, AI and Blockchain to Expand Human Potential
Personal AI technology is grounded in neuroscience. To build your intranet — what we call your memory Stack — we securely take in the memories made while you talk or type and transform them into “Memory Blocks”. The memory block architecture is primarily driven by a neuroscientific understanding of human memory in technological form. The memory blocks are stored in a Stack that is private to an individual and well secured both internally and externally. Did I mention users own their Stacks? You own your private memory stack. We use Oasis Labs blockchain to secure data and no one at the company or outside it can access the data except you. This is our way of extending the capacity and capabilities of human memory.
My AI, Not The Internet’s
We have clear intentions behind hu.man.ai. Every human is unique, every human’s history represents the identity of the individual. We are building an AI representation of an individual's human memory, serving to fill in the gaps where the human memory is not enough. More than that, we want to eliminate the anxiety of losing our thoughts and reduce the burden of imposter syndrome. To do this, we need to know we have our own Personal AI that forever “knows” who we are so we can become more. An AI that is built and trained entirely on top of that individual human being’s memories so it is authentic to them as an individual. An intranet that is truly yours. An AI that is an extension of your own memories.
Recall More To Prospect More
To build your own AI, much like a close friend who helps you recall pertinent information and relevant memories, our technology extracts facts and synthesized thoughts you had or may have forgotten you’ve had. That AI friend that not only remembers what you know but can help convey that thought in your authentic voice — when you write and when you speak, your AI is in sync with you. Your AI will surface the relevant memories that belong to you when you need them in real-time. We believe what you remember is who you are and what you recall defines who you’ll become. To become more, you must retain and recall more.
In essence, every personal.ai is unique, just as every human is. With the memories (your Stack) and the synthesized representation built from the stack (your AI), Personal AI can derive probabilistically informed actions that help recall and complete your thoughts and make individualized relevant suggestions from your memories.
My personal.ai extends my capacity to the extent of the size of the digital Stack of my memories. My personal AI goes into the list of my “personal utilities”.
AIP address (AI Intranet Protocol)
I invite you to take the first step toward a personal AI by claiming your unique AIP address (AI Intranet Protocol) at https://hu.man.ai. Your unique AIP address (ex: suman.hu.man.ai) will be the future home of your AI that lives in the cloud forever.
Here is a quick beta preview of our GPT-x style recall UX of my AI :)
Our dream is that one day you, the people around you, and the entirety of humanity will have access to their own individual AI to extend their memory capacity and uplift their lives.
Suman Kanuganti, Founder CEO @ Personal AI
Are you interested in what other’s are saying about Personal AI? Check out the article from TechCrunch’s Ron Miller and our lead investor David Magerman.
