Let the Wounds Humans Inflict Be Healed by AI: A Conversation with Joshua, CEO of Linjian Healing Room, and Hezi, CMO
June 10, 2024
"Forest Healing Room" is an AI companionship app for mental wellness that has earned genuine affection from its users — more than one friend has enthusiastically recommended it to me. So I approached it with strong curiosity, spent a considerable stretch of time with the product, then sat down for two conversations totaling three hours with CEO Joshua and CMO Hezi. This podcast episode is the result.
AI is a means, not an end. Its ultimate value will show in how it empowers every industry. And first in line, carrying the weight of the highest expectations, is how AI can help people live better — help people achieve better emotional and mental health.
On an earlier episode of Crossroads, we covered Y Combinator's 260 AI startups this year, including Sonia and Maia — two products focused on having AI play the role of therapist. This is the path most AI x mental health startups are taking today.
But Forest Healing Room chose the road less traveled. They want AI to play a vulnerable figure capable of generating genuine empathy. They don't have AI deliver direct psychological counseling. Yet they believe that trauma sustained in relationships can only be healed through relationships. So with AI as the medium, Forest Healing Room hopes to offer a healthy, stable relationship — one resilient enough to withstand the impermanence of the world.
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🎬 Timeline:
01:04 Are humans destined to be lonely?
02:31 What is Forest Healing Room?
04:12 Why did Forest Healing Room only become possible with AI?
06:53 With AI, you don't have to be the "good kid."
08:23 Why target young people as your core users?
09:56 Character AI vs. Forest Healing Room
13:01 When a user says "Rainy days make me emo," how do Forest Healing Room and Character AI respond differently?
14:32 How would a therapist agent respond to the same prompt?
16:55 User experience map & North Star metric
19:37 Professional therapist vs. Forest Healing Room
22:00 Hume.AI vs. Forest Healing Room
24:20 A friend in distress reaches out — how should you comfort and respond?
30:42 In Forest Healing Room, what share comes from psychology versus AI?
38:08 Entrepreneurship
38:16 Team size and composition
39:18 Full-stack engineers
40:23 Everyone understands AI, everyone uses AI
42:38 A mental companionship product that "plays vulnerable" — how do you ask users to pay?
46:08 How to register large models and algorithms in China?
47:17 User stories
47:21 Letters from little animals
48:16 The user who spent 7 hours a day in the app
53:28 When do you recommend users seek professional psychological counseling?
54:59 What felt positive and optimistic about 2024
01:01:59 Final question: Some say "AI may not be able to heal people — only people can heal people." What do you think?
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🚦 Welcome to subscribe to Crossroads. We track the industry transformations and entrepreneurial opportunities brought by the new wave of AI technology. "Crossroads" was Steve Jobs' metaphor for Apple — standing at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, where great products are born. AI is reshaping every industry. We seek out, interview, and bring together the "active participants" of the AI era. Together with them, we explore and embrace the new changes, the new possibilities.
👦🏻 Host Koji: Co-founder of The Fair and Tangdao, and an active participant throwing himself into AI. Jike, A self-introduction from Koji
👧🏻 Host Ronghui: Works at a tech VC, former Silicon Valley correspondent for Yicai Weekly. Jike
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