Bryan Talebi started his career at age 16, working for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and is now Founder & CEO of Ahura AI which invented a technology that enables people to learn 3-5x faster than traditional education. Talebi has extensive experience in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and has worked in various capacities with several high-tech companies. Prior to founding Ahura AI, he worked as a manager and an executive at a series of Tech  companies, including ZocDoc and Bizzabo, and as  a consultant to several fortune 500 companies where he helped develop and deploy AI-powered applications for various industries. With his deep knowledge and expertise in artificial intelligence, Talebi is leading Ahura AI to develop cutting-edge AI solutions that have the potential to revolutionize the education and upskilling industries. In an interview, he speaks on an array of topics. Excerpts:

Conception of Ahura AI

“We’re on a mission to transform how everyone learns and how to help companies apply that knowledge to yield greater success” says Bryan. He observes that the skillsets required to remain competitive are changing faster this decade. “Sadly, current online solutions don’t have the responsiveness to drive necessary engagement and live instructors are too expensive to scale across organizations. Since AI and advanced innovations are rapidly changing the nature of work across roles and industries, it was important to create a platform for employees too and thus, Ahura AI was born.”

Ahura AI- The Approach

Ahura Learning experience platform (LXP): Ahura Learning experience platform (LXP) with an AI assistant, improves learning habits, driving higher engagement with digital learning content.

Potential-Maximizing Personalization: Ahura works with existing companies and online content to assign learning plans based on employees’ interests and preferred modality.

Supportive Learning Analytics: Post-Learning Session Analytics informs learners of their movements, emotions, and browsing activity habits and suggests options to improve focus and retention over time.

Critical Skills Insights: Aggregated Analytics inform supervisors of reactions to learning plans, to improve curriculum design; skills gap analysis etc.

Category-Defining Approach: The nascent technology blends industry-leading expertise in cognitive science (how people learn), Artificial Intelligence (Behavior Identification and Intervention) And Web3 (Decentralized Data Storage and Ownership) to redefine continuous employee learning.

A word of advice for AI startups

“AI is going to transform every industry and every company that we see. The closest analogy is the early 90s, when the internet was first coming online for consumers.  The companies that leveraged web 1.0 were able to massively outcompete other corporations and ultimately succeeded.  The companies that did not leverage the new technology experienced headwinds and ultimately died.  Blockbuster is a great example of this.  In the same way, artificial intelligence is going to impact every company in every industry.  Those who are early adopters of this transformational technology will experience significant tailwinds.”

Noting that there are considerable improvements that can be created, Bryan notes that there are incredible ways to massively increase the productivity of every one of your employees. “With that being said, we also have to be very careful about using AI ethically. As Elon says: “artificial intelligence is 100 times more dangerous than nuclear weapons.” Talebi believes that: “if misused, AI represents existential risk to the human race.”

“One critical factor the data that is used to train the AI models. If the underlying data sets are problematic, the output will be suboptimal,” he says.

AI- the challenges galore

Opines Bryan that we must have safeguards to make sure that the AI doesn’t behave in a way that we don’t expect. “So, if for example, in the future, we have an AGI, which is an artificial general intelligence, and we tell it Hey, please resolve global warming. If for example, it identifies that humans are the biggest driver of global warming, it could then decide that the solution is to get rid of humans.  This is obviously an extreme example, but represents the unintended consequences of the technologies that we create.”

So, we must be very thoughtful and careful about the way we train the AI’s that we use and how we incorporate them, he adds. Now that means for a business leader, it’s important to leverage these AI tools but also to incorporate safeguards to make sure that your customers, your clients, your employees still have a good experience.