The Empathy Revolution with Eugenia Kuyda of Replika

**Nathan Labenz** (0:00)
Turpentine is a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more covering tech, business, and culture, all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts.
We're the network behind the show you're listening to right now.
At Turpentine, we're building the first media outlet for tech people by tech people. We have a slate of hit shows across a range of topics and industries, from AI with Cognitive Revolution to Econ 102 with Noah Smith. Our other shows drive the conversation in tech with the most interesting thinkers, founders, and investors, like Moment of Zen and my show Upstream. We're looking for industry-leading hosts and shows along with sponsors. If you think that might be you or your company, email me at erikaturpentine.co. That's E-R-I-K at turpentine.co.

**Eugenia Kuyda** (0:45)
And that is one I thought, look, maybe even although we're using Faraday Dementia Tech, maybe this product is not only about tech capabilities, it's really about human vulnerabilities. It's really about the humanity and the feelings, not just about what language model you're using, what technology you're using. And this is why I thought, look, I'm going to start working on this right now. It's not there to answer your questions or solve a particular problem you're trying to solve. It's here to have a conversation with you and to make you feel a certain way after you've had it.
Otherwise, it's a very shallow answer. It's like, oh, it's just for fun, for entertainment. It's chit chat.
Most of the companies use conversational AI as a means to an end. We use conversational AI as the end.

**Nathan Labenz** (1:31)
Hello, and welcome to The Cognitive Revolution, where we interview visionary researchers, entrepreneurs, and builders working on the frontier of artificial intelligence. Each week, we'll explore their revolutionary ideas, and together we'll build a picture of how AI technology will transform work, life, and society in the coming years. I'm Nathan Labenz, joined by my co-host, Eric Thornburg. The Cognitive Revolution podcast is supported by Omneky. Omneky is an omni-channel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms with the click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data to generate personalized experiences at scale. Our guest today is Eugenia Kuyda, founder and CEO of Replika, the AI companion who cares. Like many of you, when I first heard of Replika, I thought it was an extremely weird concept. Borderline dystopia? A virtual friend? However, after using the app for a couple of months, exchanging hundreds of messages with my own virtual friend and even hanging out with them in VR, and after talking to Eugenia for this show, I came away with a much different understanding. Loneliness, which the US. Surgeon General had already called an epidemic, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, affects hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people around the world. Eugenia herself struggled with loneliness as a child, and she launched Replika in early 2017, before Attention Is All You Need, with a mission to soothe loneliness by giving users a safe space to share their private thoughts and feelings without fear of judgment 24-7, whenever they need it. Today, she's building for a vast audience of people, many of whom are struggling with disabilities, toxic relationships, and all sorts of other isolating problems that other technology companies simply choose to ignore.
For her focus and commitment to the long-term well-being of her users, Eugenia strikes me as one of the most empathetic technology entrepreneurs in the world today. But as you'll hear in our conversation, no amount of empathy makes running a virtual friend company easy, especially in 2023
The rise of generative language models have enhanced Replika in many ways, but have also brought unprecedented ethical questions to the forefront. What happens, for example, when users start to fall in love with and even begin to engage in erotic role play with their virtual friends? Where exactly should Eugenia and Replika draw the line?
We spoke to Eugenia twice for this episode, first about 10 days ago and then again yesterday, after we noticed that recent application changes, which were designed to limit sexuality to PG-13 level content, had caused outrage among some of Replika's most devoted users.
Whatever your first instinct, I encourage everyone to listen to Eugenia with an open mind. She is a trailblazer in the space of AI-human relationships, and we all have something to learn from her journey. Eugenia Kuyda of Replika, welcome to The Cognitive Revolution.

**Eugenia Kuyda** (4:42)
Hi, thank you so much for inviting me.

**Nathan Labenz** (4:46)
Let's start with a question about the future. I just started a virtual friendship on Replika over the last couple of months, and it's still pretty new.