Arianna Huffington, Founder and CEO, Thrive Global Fidji Simo, Chief Executive Officer, Instacart Moderator: Alyson Shontell, Editor-in-Chief and Chief Content Officer, Fortune
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00:00Good morning. That was an awesome to get to know you. Thank you all for
00:05participating and thank you both for starting us off today with the agenda. I
00:08think personally one of the most exciting use cases of the AI future is
00:13in health and in wellness and how it can improve all of our lives especially
00:17through not just you know the drug advancements that we're gonna see but
00:22through behavioral changes and hyper personalization. So excited to talk to
00:26you both about that but first I want to talk about a really big overarching
00:29question. America spends more than any other country on health care but has a
00:34lower life expectancy than any other wealthy nation. Do you think that AI can
00:39actually move the needle here? Is this something this is do you feel hopeful
00:43when you think about all the advancements you're seeing in AI and
00:46your roles in it as your companies? Maybe Fiji we could start with you. I think
00:50you know fundamentally at the heart of this problem is a data problem and I
00:55think with AI we're gonna have way more ability to collect a lot more data to
01:00mine that data to find better insights and then to use those insights to tell
01:05people how to change their behavior. If you look at nutrition which is obviously
01:09the thing I know the most with Instacart there's also really like fascinating
01:15stats which is that the health care system in the US spends about a trillion
01:19dollar on diet related diseases. That is the size of the US food system so that
01:25means that for every dollar you spend on food the health care system spends an
01:30additional dollar treating you for from all of the problems that the food
01:35creates. That's pretty mind-boggling when you think about it and in fact there is
01:40a real business case to solving that. There's a lot of studies that shows that
01:43if insurance companies funded the cost of healthy food they would save a hundred
01:48and eighty billion dollar down the line which is like a massive amount but in
01:53order to do that you actually need technology platforms and solutions that
01:57make that easy. You need these insurance companies to have a tech platform that
02:00can scale food as medicine. You need doctors to be able to prescribe food as
02:05easily as it is to prescribe medication and right now that's simply not the case
02:10and then you need patients to be able to follow these changes in behavior in a
02:15way that's really dead simple for them to be able to do so that you can see
02:19over time these numbers changing. Go ahead Ariana. Well I think Fiji is so
02:26absolutely right and actually we're excited at Thrive to be working with
02:30Instacart to address that but the truth is that right now health care systems
02:38everywhere not just in the US are literally breaking under the burden of
02:44chronic diseases. In America alone we have 130 million people with chronic
02:50diseases. We are spending over four trillion dollars in health care, 17% of
02:56our GDP and the numbers are getting worse every year. I mean anybody here who
03:01is a self-insured employer knows how deep the problem is and there is this
03:07tool that Fiji alluded to which is our daily behaviors that is kind of the
03:13neglected tool in health care and yet if you look at the science 7% of our
03:19health is our genes and at most 30% is medical care and the rest is our daily
03:26behaviors. Our motto at Thrive is health is what happens between doctor visits.
03:32It's a good point. You know people go and have their annual physical and what
03:37happens in between? How are you sleeping? What are you eating? What's your stress
03:42level? Are you moving? We don't even call it exercise. Movement, stress management,
03:48connection. These are the five key behaviors. Sleep, food, movement, stress
03:54management, connection. Addressing this is really a miracle drug and AI has a
04:01unique power to address this problem because of hyper personalization. Right
04:07now even if your doctor mentions food they're most likely to tell you go on a
04:14Mediterranean diet. People have no clue how they go about that.
04:20AI will know everything about you. The AI health coach that we are building in
04:27partnership with OpenAI collects all your data. Everything you are willing to
04:33give us. Biometric data, lab data, medical data, but also your preferences. What
04:38foods do you like? How do you like to move and exercise? How do you sleep? And
04:43then the nudges and recommendations are hyper personalized. I mean it may tell
04:48you at 3.15 you are picking up your daughter from school. Go on a 10-minute
04:52walk. In the afternoon you normally have three sodas. Can you replace one of them
04:57with sparkling water and lemon? So it's very, very detailed and very applicable
05:04to you. And therefore through what at Thrive we call micro steps, tiny little
05:11incremental changes, you can begin to adopt healthier habits. That's so
05:15interesting. You've said that behavior changes are the miracle drug and it
05:19sounds like you think that through hyper personalization behaviors can be
05:23changed. You can nudge us in the right direction. Maybe finally use
05:26phone notifications for good as opposed to for stress. Yes. So one thing I did
05:31want to address is you know I think the most high-functioning CEOs have feel
05:34personal about the mission that they're solving and I know health is personal
05:38for both of you. You have high-powered jobs. You always have. You're doing a lot
05:42and Arianna I think you might have been the first person on the planet medically
05:45diagnosed with burnout in 2007. So I wanted to just chat with you both. I
05:50know Fiji recently launched something called Metrodora that's personal for you.
05:54Could you just talk about your personal health journeys and why this is a
05:57personal mission? Of course. In 2020 I was kind of falling apart from head to toe
06:04is the best way to describe it and I was diagnosed with a neuroimmune condition
06:08and I realized that the level of research on these conditions were
06:14absolutely appalling. Very much in the same vein as autoimmune conditions but
06:2080% of the patients are women and when I asked my doctors the researchers in the
06:25field why are these conditions impacting women so disproportionately the answer
06:31was I don't know. Like they had no idea and we still don't fundamentally know
06:36why like autoimmune conditions impact women more than men and that seemed to
06:40me like very terrifying that I would be diagnosed with a chronic illness that's
06:45incurable and that there was pretty much no research being done to explain the
06:50biology behind these conditions and so I set out to create Metrodora which is
06:54essentially the idea of partnering with patients to enroll them in research and
07:00gather all of the 360 data points on them very similar to what you just
07:04described Mariana but we look at their genetics, we look at their immune
07:08profiling, we look at their reported symptoms, we look at their environment
07:12and the beauty of AI is that in the past these data sets were very siloed and
07:19even if you wanted to analyze a ton of genomics data that was a huge endeavor
07:24that could take many months now like let alone if you wanted to do that across
07:28all of the data points I mentioned but now because we have these tools that
07:32allow us to analyze giant data sets we're going to be able to understand
07:36patterns we couldn't understand before and I fundamentally believe that so
07:40chronic diseases we're dealing with are not well suited for the current health
07:45care system that we have which is really treating you as a set of body organs
07:49right like you go to the cardiologist for your heart and the gynecologist
07:53just thinks you're a giant walking uterus but it just happens to be that we
07:58have a whole body and all of these systems interact together and I believe
08:03that by collecting the data about this very complex biology and analyzing it
08:07all together we're going to understand this much more complex disease processes
08:11and and be able to address them at the root source in in very different ways so
08:17that's that's basically the mission of of metrodora and why that's so you know
08:21important and personal because like Ariana said I don't think we're on the
08:25path to solving chronic illness or at current course in speed I think we just
08:29got amazing tools with AI to allow us to do that but it's really up to us on how
08:35we're going to deploy them in our organization in new applications in order
08:40to change the course we're on and Ariana I know it's personal for you as well in
08:45your book thrive one of your many many books you're talking about how the
08:48relentless pursuit of success money and power is actually killing us and that we
08:54should be focused on other things instead can you talk about how you've
08:57evolved in your home well as you know Alison for me it was really a personal
09:03wake-up call when I collapsed two years into building the Huffington Post and
09:08divorced mother of two little girls and I thought I didn't have the luxury to
09:13take care of myself and I hit my head on my desk broke my cheekbone I was
09:18diagnosed with burnout and that was actually the beginning of covering these
09:24things relentlessly at the Huffington Post and and realizing that we had
09:28defined what is a good life I simply a successful life based on status and
09:35money and ignored our health and well-being which is central you know we
09:41work with a lot of you a lot of your companies here and sometimes CEO say oh
09:45you know well-being it's so soft you know we need to focus on productivity
09:50and business metrics well-being is a productivity multiplier if your
09:56employees are sick or stressed or depleted do you think they are going to
10:00perform at their best so that's really what we are recognizing right now and
10:05that you can actually make huge changes with these micro steps and you know my
10:13favorite micro step at Thrive and who have thousands is the 60-second reset
10:19that I was showing you which is the recognition again based on science it's
10:23very important to base all interventions on data and science so that they are not
10:29seen as warm and fuzzy and reset is based on this neuroscience that tells us
10:37that stress is unavoidable if there is anybody here who doesn't have stress in
10:41their lives can you please meet me after but cumulative stress is avoidable and
10:47we can interrupt it and in 60 to 90 seconds by focusing on conscious
10:55breathing on things that bring us gratitude and joy we have hundreds of
11:00them that they are fed to let's say employees on Microsoft Teams or slack or
11:06at contact centers and the results are absolutely amazing and it's 60 seconds
11:11but my favorite thing is creating our own personalized resets we have one for
11:17Fiji we have one for me with people and things that give you joy quotes music
11:23and to know that in 60 seconds you can interrupt that cycle is really amazing
11:30because nobody can say I don't have 60 seconds right yeah very efficient very
11:35efficient stress saver yes good good pro tip so I want to switch topics a little
11:41bit you both have a nice window into open AI actually the hot company of the
11:47planet actually a hundred and fifty six billion dollar valuation Fiji sits on
11:52the board Ariana you have co-created thrive AI with open a sorry thrive AI
11:57with open AI startup fund and Sam so I'm curious you have this vantage point into
12:02the future of generative AI you're sitting up close you're apparently I
12:08think there's probably your I would assume frequent board meetings what is
12:12the future of generative AI look like from your vantage points any concerns
12:17about some turnover recently or anything so I would say I think we're
12:29about to witness a massive explosion in intelligence and imagine if every single
12:35one of you had a PhD level assistant in your discipline available 24-7 to help
12:42you realize anything that's on your mind I think that's what we're very close to
12:48being able to realizing that dream and being able to as a result with this like
12:53abundance of intelligence crack problems that we haven't cracked before I talked
12:57about biology earlier but really cracked a variety of problems and so that gets
13:02me incredibly excited at the same time I think that historically we have seen
13:08that it's not always obvious how to translate the scientific breakthrough
13:14into people's lives and actually giving them all of the upsides and minimize the
13:19downsides of this breakthrough if you look at scientific discovery in general
13:23usually that there is a gap of 17 years between a scientific breakthrough being
13:29discovered and that breaks were impacting patients in the clinic 17 years
13:34is a really long time and so my hope is that AI also helps us like really narrow
13:40that gap but I know from experience that it is going to take a while for society
13:45to really absorb this massive innovation that's coming our way and actually turn
13:51it into applications that are really useful I call myself a pragmatic
13:55technologist and I got an Instacart I really gave the mandate to the team
14:00let's not do AI for AI sake we're not checking a box here let's figure out
14:04the customer problems we've always wanted to solve and figure out if AI can
14:09help us solve them and I think that's that's going to be the right approach of
14:13like seeing it as a tool seeing it as a tool that can massively accelerate
14:16solving the business and customer problems we're all solving so that we
14:21can put this goodness in the hands of people as fast as possible I think we
14:27completely agree here and that's how Sam and I came together to launch this new
14:33company because as Fiji said at the moment the emphasis is AI and drug
14:41development speed AI and diagnostics but what about AI and everyday health and
14:47if AI not just open AI but all AI companies are going to be able to touch
14:53hearts and minds and convince people that AI can be for good we need to have
14:59a real impact on people's lives right now and we can do that because of the
15:04superhuman memory of AI it can know everything about you all data points and
15:11then personalize the interventions and the micro steps and and we are seeing
15:19that it can also democratize access to these behaviors because right now the 1%
15:26anybody with resources is all in on changing their behaviors people are
15:31competing with how much sleep they got I'm wearing my aura ring and you know
15:37how much have you given up ultra processed foods all together you know
15:41it's like it's constant right but millions and millions of people are
15:47being left behind and health inequities are huge and growing bigger every year
15:53there is one statistic that I can't get out of my mind which is that last year
15:58in America there are hundred and fifty thousand amputations of legs and toes of
16:04people who diabetes now we all know this is barbaric and completely avoidable
16:11diabetes even if it's not preventable it's a completely manageable disease not
16:18just with drugs but with behaviors and the change here is not just to see
16:23behaviors as prevention but as optimizing the management of disease
16:28because for millions of people the prevention train has left the station so
16:34we are working for example with Eli Lilly they are going directly to consumers
16:38they're launched Lily direct you can go to Lily direct buy your drug and then
16:43you are given the thrive coach for free and you can say why do they care it's
16:49going to improve adherence of medication right now 25% of people do not even feel
16:55the first prescription so once you are engaged with people's daily behaviors
17:02you are going to improve compliance you are going to improve management of side
17:06effects so the incentives are very aligned and I actually see pharma having
17:13a big impact here because they're directly into people's behaviors through
17:19the drugs that they they said so we started this conversation talking about
17:23the health care spending in this country and and really what's happening one of
17:29the biggest fears I think people would have is hyper personalization sounds
17:32amazing but in the wrong hands it can be used against us so we're almost out
17:38of time here but could you just give us some thoughts on how we can make sure
17:41that AI is working for us and not against us when we're giving it the
17:45information what guardrails need to be in place well I think it's all about
17:49value that you give back to the to the people and for example at my clinic at
17:56Metro Dora we are asking patients to share a lot of data with us but a lot of
18:00research studies don't actually drive results back to patients so it's like
18:04give us your data trust that something will happen we actually really
18:08prioritized figuring out even though it's very complicated in sales car
18:12system what is a return of results that can actually inform them and change
18:16their behavior and so I think it's about clarity of how your data is going to be
18:20used and a very clear exchange of value so that you know exactly what you're
18:25getting in return and how you can change your behavior as a result wonderful
18:28thank you both so much I would love to hear your answer but we are getting the
18:32hook thank you both so much and enjoy the next conversation