AI, Brain Health & Human Performance The Future Of Optimization With Thoryn Stephens

0:00Forget frequently asked questions. Common sense, common knowledge, or Google. How about advice from a real genius? 95% of people in any profession are good enough to be qualified in license. 5%? Go above and beyond. They become very good at what they do. But only 0.1% are real geniuses. Richard Jacobs has made his life's mission to find them for you. He hunts down and interviews geniuses in every field. Sleep science, cancer, stem cells, ketogenic diets, and more. Come the geniuses. This is the Finding Genius Podcast. The Richard Jacobs. Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius Podcast. I guess today is Thorin Stevens. He's a scientist. He's working on adaptive AI to model and ultimately emulate human behavior. He's a data visionary, a pioneering space for adaptive AI, human behavior and biology intersect. He's the founder of CEO of Brain.1. So we're going to talk about what he's doing in the world of AI and it promises to be very interesting.

1:02So Thorin, welcome. Hi. It's a great to meet you and happy to be here. What's happening? Have you been around the AI world for many years and now it's kind of a new thing for you that you're heavily engaged in or have you been working in the trenches for a long time? And now things seem to be coming together. That's a great question. So I began my career as a molecular biologist and focused in biotech and drug development. And this was in the 2000s, essentially, when I graduated college, we just sequenced the human genome. And at that time, we were doing bioinformatics. So it was really that intersection of biology with advanced computing. I really got into AI, it's a roughly early 2010-ish. And as I transitioned out of biotech into essentially data science, it was through that experience that I really began to, kind of access to these massive data systems and then began to dabble into machine learning. And I had a number of mentors there that were very innovative and early in this space, including Dr. Gail and Buck Walter.

2:03And Gail and they built, you know, they were doing production level machine learning at a company called the Harmony. You know, back in, gosh, 25 or so, you know, 2005 in forward. So about 20, 30 years. But anyway, it's I know. So yeah, very much ingrained into how do my world view and then definitely into my most recent research. And the question of why, why all of a sudden, you know, yeah, I've been around for a long time. Perceptions, all kinds of different models. Why all of a sudden in 2023 was there's a huge breakthrough in terms of ability. Like, what, what do you think caused for realizing? I think part of it is computational power. And honestly, just price has dropped so substantially. I mean, we were doing, when I, as I got into data science and I was doing more consumer research and testing and optimization. We were doing, you know, production level AI, you know, with meta and in brands like man roughly 2015. So let's say 10 years ago. And I mean, even back then, you know, it was still a bit clunky. You know, relative to the models and the data management side of this.

3:05And it's just got so commoditized. And really product ties that it's, you know, really part of our day to day, you know, at this stage. So you think the amount of computing power created this emergence of ability is LLM's. I mean, it's weird, you know, they're, they're essentially interpreting what would be said next in the conversation. But they seem to be intelligent, even though they, how could they? Yeah, I mean, 100%. I mean, being in the trenches, you know, for at least a decade or so. I mean, what we've seen is that, you know, first and foremost, oftentimes when companies say they're using AI or machine learning. I mean, number one, that's not necessarily even true. You know, there was that implosion of that big AI company about a year ago where it turned out much of what they were doing was actually like rule based or worse like, you know, human level interaction to get the things done. So I think historically, you know, it's, it's actually been misused quite a bit. It maybe wasn't truly machine learning or AI. And again, a rule based approach to solving a problem. But again, I think just, yeah, the technology has really gotten commoditized.

4:05Easier to use, more consumer friendly, you know, a lot of those pieces. And now it's, it's pretty exciting. You know, people ask me this pretty regularly. I think it's important for humans to embrace the technology and understand it. And then at least come from an informed position or opinion. What other emerging properties are you expecting or postulating with even more opinion power? Yeah, just in general or relative to health or in one area. Oh, from here, from this point, let's say computing power, 10 access. What do you expect that will be possible or emergent at that level? Yeah, I can, I mean, again, I can tell you what we're seeing. So our, we have a member of the team. His name is Dr. Galen Buckwalter. He's a chief, chief brain futurist. And so he's really on the cutting edge and has been, I've known Galen for decades. And he is in, you know, he's an AI scientist, behavioral scientist. And his research just spans decades. And so in Galen's case, he's also a quadriplegic. And he has six neural implants called BCIs or brain computer interfaces.

5:05And he's in the middle of a clinical trial at Caltech. And so we will go to Caltech. And I've gone with him a few times. And, you know, he's, he's sitting there. And essentially he has these six chips that are actually on his neural tissue, measuring down to a single neuron firing. Like never in human history if we had this depth of brain resolution. And essentially what's happening is these arrays are measuring his electroactivity of his brain. And then it's using AI to then, you know, essentially allow him to control a robotic arm is one of the, you know, the immediate exercises, essentially. And so in that instance, you know, right now we're seeing the intersection of biology and machine. And it's our generation is literally right now. Galen is a pioneer there. And any end that's also, you know, both on the ability to measure the brain, to excite the brain. And then also to drive AI to, you know, allow you to control an artifact of the brain. And again, like let's say, I know you're not him, but just based your experience, computing power like a hundred X. What do you think would be possible generically that is not possible now?

6:06What would you notice? What do you think could be done for a thousand X? I mean, a thousand X. Yeah, I mean, again, you know, computational probability just goes through the what roof. You know, one of the most, I'm a biologist by training molecular biology and cell biology were my research for a number of years. And so where we're seeing that applied are areas like, you know, protein folding. And so what could that do? Well, that advanced processing power of a thousand X could allow us to understand interactions on a, on a protein amino acid level that have never really been able to be modeled before. And so theoretically, that could also help us in the drug development cycle, you know, to really understand if we have the right specificity of this molecule delivered, you know, in this very particular way, it could, you know, ultimately help curve a disease. Okay. So what is brain diet one? You know, go ahead and see of it. What's the premise of the company? What does it do? Yeah. So brain one, we are, we are focused in the concept of, you know, the mission first is to reach a billion humans and help them optimize their brain and their biology. And the vision of how we get there is through the idea of a hyper-personalized health protocol.

7:10And so what is a health protocol? So I come from the world of advanced or I'd say endurance sports and, you know, things like lawn and iron man's and so in those worlds, you're following a protocol to achieve a goal which could be, you know, racing an iron man as an example. And you're following a plan. And so a protocol basically is just a breakdown of a plan. It includes microhabit. And then it includes the non-negotiables in health. So things like nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress, connection. Those are some of the major pillars. And then it breaks it down into microhabits that, you know, a human can follow to ultimately improve their health or well-being. And that's the, that's been the, you know, really the where we've come from, the genesis of the company we started off in brain. And an example could be, you know, dementia is preventable if you make certain lifestyle modifications. And there's a paper written called the Lancet 2024. We will take that paper. We will ingest it into our AI developed editorial. And then ultimately a protocol that ideally our grandparents could follow, our parents could follow. And ideally again, reduce the possibility of getting dementia through these modifiable

8:14lifestyle changes. That's the problem. Well, let's say you're running a marathon. And you have this pump connected to you. And it's looking at the levels of a hundred different biomarkers every second. And its sense is that you're low in X, Y, and Z and two high in A, B, and C. And it's electively releases co-factors or enzymes or ever it may be to keep you in balance on a like literal second by second of minute by minute rate. I wonder how much you can improve someone's run or performance. You know, it isn't like real short term instead of long term. What do you think something like that could do? Oh, I think it's an awesome hypothesis Richard. I'd love to test that. I mean, we're doing that now to a degree, but of course it's the feedback loops. It's not in a real time yet. You know, meaning when I started doing travel on 20 years ago, you know, there's big bulky garment watches and they've only gotten better and then you know, have additional biomarkers or biometrics, you know, out of the box basically. And so now as we're training and, you know, doing these types of races, you're getting feedback. The piece that's missing though is like the, you know, the real time optimization,

9:15like to your point, oh, your carbohydrates are down or, oh, you're, you know, getting dehydrated or you need to improve your electrolytes. So that level of feedback is not there yet, but you know, I think it could be coming. Another example that we're seeing pretty prevalent or things like continuous glucose monitoring. You know, there's devices and tell you in real time what your glucose is looking at. Like that's a good example where you can immediately, you know, definitely tie trade up or down, you know, depending. But yeah, I mean, I think it's exciting in what you're proposing. You know, we're not quite there yet, but you know, I think we're moving in that direction. Yeah, and it gets for the long term. Again, it would do the same thing at a much lower sampling rate. But let's say you have a biological pathway where you can't process B vitamins unless they're in the methylated form. It would be tailored to you and it could give you recommendations on the fly. With your unique biology, I guess it would craft an ongoing changing plan for you based on what it's seeing so that you could you really optimize quickly. Yeah, so we're we've built parts of that now.

10:15It's not yet in real time, but you know, the concept of adaptive AI. Are you familiar with with that term? I was gonna ask you because that's the main thing that you have in your bio. So what does that mean for listeners? Yeah, so it's a it's considered a type of artificial intelligence. And it continually learned and ultimately evolves in real time. And you know, that's based on different data inputs. In our our case, it could be biometric. It could be our biomarkers. And then it could also be clinical assessments. And with that allows us to start to understand again is the it's the composition of the human. And then further we can use that data to then adapt to their health protocol, you know, to them at that moment in time based on their data. And so an example could be you wake up in the morning and we're agnostic to the wearable. We integrate into over 300, but let's say you have an aura ring. And your aura ring shows, you know, ultimately Richard your HRV is down. And you're like, okay, why is my attribute down? Well, I had a glass of wine last night and you know, that'll certainly do it. But then the adaptive part of this would be like, okay, your HRV is down 25%.

11:15You know, you didn't sleep as well as you normally do. Normally we would maybe recommend a micro habit like cold plunging. But you know, maybe since your parasympathetic is a little bit more more taxed, why don't we recommend something like breath work? And so that's what we've built again, an adaptive AI in the context of a health protocol. That's an integral part of the brain one solution. And I think there'll be, you know, a very near point in the future where again, people are utilizing, you know, these tools to understand their health in real time. And then it's adapting to them based on their biology, ultimately. No, that's really cool. I'm sure that again, the performance is certainly a lot better with that. I imagine, you know, I was imagining like two MMA guys and you know, what if you had a series of out of sensors so that you could see what one guy is going to punch you and you can counteract it. And you know, I guess you could probably do it on a microsecond or you in faster level. And you could block any punch or kick and just it would just be really interesting to have something like that. I guess there's so many applications for this. Yeah, 100%. And again, you know, the one that's like, I would say out there in real time would be, you know, the glucose example

12:16where, you know, humans are managing their glucose in near real time. But yeah, this will absolutely expand to other areas of, you know, one on the measurement side, different types of biomarker measurements, but then potentially, which you were leading to earlier, you know, the optimization of the biology, you know, based on whatever the, you know, up regulation, down regulation might be of that, you know, particular gene or molecule, you know, whatever it might be for that human at the time. So that's certainly the goal. You'll be interesting to retract, you know, you know, a whole bunch of biomarkers, let's say on a, you know, second by second basis, and you look at it over a month's time. Yeah. You'll be interesting to see as these increase and these decrease, it would show patterns that you would never have seen before. You know, oh, I didn't know that these, these seven seems always responding this way when these three change. And, you know, what if it looked like diurnally or in response to stress or response to exercise? And yeah, there's so much learning I guess hidden in there, we just can't see it. Oh, yeah, I mean, 100%. Yeah, we look at, it studies in a couple different ways, you know, one is we can, you know, have a study where we will look at biometrics,

13:19and then we'll give a human a protocol essentially of different types of lifestyle modifications and microhabits, you know. So again, things like circadian regulation and direct sun in the morning and hydration and, you know, cold plunging as an example. And then we hit, you know, then we have a measurement of, you know, they're, let's say they're core biometrics over a time series. But what's also interesting is that we can also capture what are the other microhabits they're doing as part of their day to day. And so it actually fills in this bit of a void, you know, relative to the other things that, you know, your point could really impact their, you know, their biology. Yeah, what are, what are some examples of microhabits, like how long is the habit how many times? Yeah, sure. Yeah, so, you know, when people ask me like, okay, well, what is a protocol, what's a microhabit? So the way we think about the world is the microhabit is the smallest action that really has compounded impact, you know, it might seem small. And so a couple examples would be if you're familiar with Andrew Huberman, the Stanford Neurobiologist, we know we've analyzed every protocol on longevity ever written or every protocol that's ever been published, you know, by Huberman as an example.

14:22And one of the, the number one things he evangelizes is the concept of circadian regulation and specifically getting direct sunlight in the morning. Are you familiar with that microhabit, Richard? I've heard it's good for you, but, you know, what is the, what is the study show? What is it? Yeah, I mean, so it's, what's interesting is, again, this concept of the circadian clock, which essentially is a biological clock that helps juristic when you should be going to bed. And what's a little bit ironic is that in the clock, it also, it starts first thing in the morning, basically. So if you want to work on your sleep, you know, which is in whatever 12 to 14 hours from the time you wake up, it actually starts with that moment that you wake up. And so getting direct sunlight in the morning, and it needs to be, I mean, ideally it's, it's, it's direct no sunglasses, no filters, you know, and so forth. But what that does is to your, assertially, your nervous system, it helps regulate it such that you're, again, setting the, you know, your circadian regulation for what will happen that evening. And so that's an example of a microhabit 15 minutes in the morning, as soon as you wake up, as soon as you have direct sunlight, and just getting outside.

15:27You don't need to do anything. I mean, you could go on a walk, but that would be one very specific microhabit. And then, and then you get into things like, you know, duration and frequency. Another one could be cold plunging. I'm a big fan. I live here in Colorado. We go in the rivers, you know, right now, they're about negative two Celsius. And we'll go cold plunge. And so in the winners, you know, what are the variables you're looking at? You're looking at the temperature of the water, which obviously you can't control. But you can control how long you're in the water for. And at that temperature, I can, I can maybe do 90 seconds. You know, it's, it's literally below freezing, but it's moving. And then you also have things like frequency. So temperature, duration, frequency. And those are some of the variables that we tune within the microhabits and the microhabits then form a protocol, which is, again, is just a structure or just a list of, you know, task things to do. And then the protocols form a program. And a program usually is a time bound, essentially objective, you know, you're trying to reach like it could be, could be mental health. It could be weight loss, you know, could be anything under the sun, better sleep. But that's how we generally think of the world with the microhabit is, you know, the nucleus.

16:30I think the big win will be when you do the microhabits for people. So like, let's say you saw a sleep mask and you know the different frequencies of, you know, morning sunlight. And at a certain time, it's programmed to emit that light directly onto your closed eyes while you're sleeping, you know, in the last five minutes before you wake up or something and prepare you for the day. So you don't have to go outside, not at a laziness, but just, you know, has to do anything in order to accomplish that microhabit or, you know, it is just that's temperature of the room. At certain times, optimize your sleep or yeah, yeah, just does all kinds of stuff like goes your bed down to 55. Well, you laid the cold plane. Exactly. And they actually have that right now, Richard. Like, do you know that mattress sleep eight? Have you seen that? Well, I used to know the cooler and then there was a few other ones. I guess the newest one is the eight, right? Yeah, it means, you know, similar. It's circulating cold water, but to your point, and it's, it's really about the feedback mechanism. And then how real time is that feedback? So, and I don't, I want to sleep eight yet. I, I pretty much own every wearable you can imagine, but I haven't bought one of these yet, but I have a friend that has one.

17:31And it's, it's honestly pretty incredible because my understanding is that it is self-regulating. So, you know, it feels temperature going up. I believe it will like cool the mattress or a certain version well. And it's that again, that idea of the, you know, the feedback loop. Another example actually is that there's a device called the Apollo Neuro. Have you ever seen that thing? I know. Essentially wearable. It's see about the size of an Apple watch. And I know Catherine and Dr. Dave Raven, he, they're the co-founders. It came out of some of his research at University of Pittsburgh, but the concept is it's a, it's a vibrational device. And it absolutely, it supports parasympathetic nervous system. And as an example, what it will do is it will see if you are getting stressed, it will send a signal, and you have the device on, and the device automatically plays a frequency. And it's like just a vibrational frequency. They call it a vibrational song, but they've actually run a number of clinical trials, and they've seen really positive data around this. But that concept of vibration, again, helping, you know, maybe, you know, improve your hurry, variability, or just your stress at that moment as an example.

18:32So more of this stuff is becoming real, not quite down to like a biomarker or, you know, delivery of a molecule, maybe outside of glucose. But, you know, we're starting to see more and more of this every day. I think it's pretty exciting. Yeah, that's really cool. So what's the way for people to keep tabs on all the innovations, you know, they, they you recommend what's a good sensual repository or place. But you know, that's a big question. I mean, it's something we're building a brand one. We really, we have a system for taking peer reviewed articles and then summarizing them. And that's something that we have built in the platform. You know, I'm a big fan of Huberman. I think he has done an incredible job for science and helping evangelize, you know, three hours of content. I think a lot of the tools that he's talking about. I think on the women's health side, there's a woman named Caleb Barnes. She's doing some really innovative stuff around women's longevity. Yeah, I mean, I think these are some of the people that are, you know, on the kind of the cutting edge of the technology. And it's changing so quickly, you know, on a nearly day by day basis, but very excited. It would be interesting to be to go all the Huberman's podcasts, put them in and then, you know, how to suggest which topic he hasn't covered or barely covered, you know, see.

19:38You cover everything, you know, or paste that against what's trending, et cetera, you know, sure they'll be useful to him. Yeah, I don't I mean, that's, you know, I mean, does he is he following trends or leading them? I guess I would ask. I don't know, but you know, he definitely seems, yeah, ahead of the trends on those things. If you want to know about a certain condition and you could have, you know, I don't know, 100 of the top podcasts and that subject reviewed and all their content assess to see who speaks about what. And then a summary report prepared for you. That would be pretty cool too. Yeah, we could we could build that Richard. And you think it's on the data. You know, the first question that's like we have more data and computational power than in, you know, ever else in human history. So yeah, we could literally do that exercise. I think fairly, fairly easily. It's a good idea. Well, excellent. We'll throw in thanks so much for coming. I appreciate it. I know you're doing quite a few podcasts. So I hope this one was a good one. And you know, thanks for your time. No, great, great questions, Richard. I really appreciate it. If you like this podcast, please click the link in the description to subscribe and review us on iTunes.

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