Sue Ennis: From Bitcoin to AI Robots — Will They Replace Human Connection?

Sue Ennis (0:00)

We created North America's first AI companion in 2018, and her name was Harmony. So they blink, they talk, they remember you. It's like a full conversation that you can establish.

Natalie Brunell (0:09)

How did you pivot into all of this from Bitcoin mining?

Sue Ennis (0:12)

A lot of what I started to see in AI looked a lot like what I saw in crypto in 2016 That is hundreds of millions of dollars flying around. Nacent technology, no real rules at the table.

Natalie Brunell (0:22)

As far as your customers go, is it mostly men, mostly women?

Sue Ennis (0:26)

No, I'd say 50-50. Really? 50-50? A lot of disabled people, a lot of ex-veterans with PTSD, and then a lot of married couples. I have a lot of customers who live by themselves, or a lot of divorcees whose kids have left the nest, and they're lonely. There's something like 680 million people globally who use AI companion, just the chat apps, monthly.

Natalie Brunell (0:48)

But don't you think people will replace human connection as opposed to just supplement it with these technologies?

Sue Ennis (0:53)

So I do think that-

Natalie Brunell (1:00)

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Joining me this week is Sue Ennis. She is the president of Realbotix. We actually met when she was head of investor relations at Hut 8 So she has a big background in Bitcoin. But what you're doing now is fascinating. I'm sure we're going to have a very interesting conversation. So Sue, welcome to the show.

Sue Ennis (1:19)

Thank you for having me. Super excited to get into it today.

Natalie Brunell (1:22)

Well, let's just start with these Realbotix that you're working on. This is companion robotics. Well, what is this field even?

Sue Ennis (1:29)

Yeah. So let me explain sort of how the structure of the company is. So I am president of Realbotix. I specifically run their direct to consumer business, which is called the parent company. The parent name of that is intima.ai, and intima.ai owns RealDoll. So RealDoll is one of the oldest intimacy hardware manufacturers in the USA. We have been producing and handmaking intimacy hardware products since 1996 We were also the creators of the world's first, or sorry, the North America's first AI companion robot in 2018 We also created the middleware layer for embodiment. So what does that mean? It means that effectively, anyone who's built a relationship behind a screen can upload that relationship to our middleware and through that middleware have an embodied experience with our product that we again manufacture in the USA.

Our warehouse is about just 10 minutes outside of the strip. Now, I've been on the board of Realbotix, which is the parent company of these two companies. We are in the process of splitting. So Realbotix is up listing to the NASDAQ. I'm going to become CEO of Intima AI that owns RealDoll. They are two completely separate companies, two completely separate use cases. What Realbotix does is they do robotics for health care situations. For example, imagine you had an aging parent with dementia who wants to watch the same movie 30 times in a row. You're not able to sit with them to watch the same movie 30 times in a day. Now, imagine a robot that can sit with them that looks like a human because that human layer, that interpersonal layer between screen and human is one of the areas where we specialize.

That robot can sit with your aging parent who's mildly or severely cognitively impaired and feed the interaction data back to you and the healthcare provider. Are they asking different questions?

How are they responding to their recent medication and treatment protocol? Also, this idea of having robots in schools that can help as teachers assistants. We're not purporting on either side of these businesses to replace humans, but we create tools that can complement and provide support where there are gaps right now, whether it be in healthcare or in the intimacy and companionship side.

Natalie Brunell (3:46)

I mean, all of this is blowing my mind. This is an emerging tech. We're going to have robots among us pretty soon. You're talking about robots that are with senior care in schools as teachers, but also people are going to have relationships with robots.

What is that side?

Sue Ennis (4:03)

Yeah. I think if we zoom out a little bit, the idea of sculpture worship and attraction to intimate objects, actually none of that is new. There's actually agomatophilia, so that's the attraction to statue has been recorded since way back into ancient Greece and ancient Rome. You have different stories throughout history of like Laodamia or Pygmalion, where Laodamia lost her husband and then she created a bronze statue of him and took him to bed with her. Pygmalion creating a bronze statue of his preferred partner and then she ended up coming to life.