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How Earkick Is Turning Your Phone into a Mental Health Sidekick (with Karin Andrea Stephan)
00:35:49
How Earkick Is Turning Your Phone into a Mental Health Sidekick (with Karin Andrea Stephan)
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Lead with AI. Today's conversation sits at the intersection of AI and mental health, where data meets emotion and early awareness can change everything. I'm joined by Karen Andrea Steffen, who is the co founder of eArkick, an a power platform helping people understand their emotional patterns in real time without judgment, stigma, or waiting for a breaking point. This is a conversation about awareness agency and what it really means to design AI that supports human well being. Let's get into it.
- [00:37]
B
Welcome to lead with AI. I'm Dr. Tamara Nall. In each episode, we will take you behind the scenes with visionary leaders shaping the future of AI across public and private sectors. Join us as we explore groundbreaking projects and innovations that are transforming industries and making a real impact on people's lives. Let's dive in.
- [01:07]
A
Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of lead with AI where I'm your host, Dr. Tamara Nall, also known as Dr. T. And I am so excited about our guest today, Karen Andrea Steffen, who is the co founder of Earkick. How are you, Karen?
- [01:26]
C
I'm great. I'm excited to be speaking with you. And as I learned, a lot of people want to learn from you. How is AI accessible, et cetera. We have to have many, many more shows like that.
- [01:40]
A
Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so blessed. I started with this idea of just trying to feature different AI founders and their tools and their tech and it's blown up and I'm so excited. In fact, we won or we got to number one in technology on Apple podcast last year. Yes. And then we won the W3 award in guests and interviews. So I'm just so blessed to be able to talk to wonderful tech founders like you. So thank you again for joining us.
- [02:11]
C
Thank you.
- [02:12]
A
Absolutely. So let's start with you. Who were you at your core? And talk to us about the circumstances where you even began to think about starting Ear Kick and what was the need that you were looking to solve?
- [02:28]
C
Well, at the core, I'm a person who's obsessed, obsessed with questions. How do people tic? Why do people fall? Why do they get up? All these things I'm really obsessed with. In this particular case, I kept asking myself, why do smart, capable people fail to raise to their true and full potential? Why is it always their mental health that throws them a curveball? And why do they still suffer in silence? Why do we always wait? In hindsight, we know better. But there must be a way to, to prevent this, right? So the real, let's say, spark and what drove me is I realized mental health is not something we need to fix. Mental health is part of life and it can be very hard. It can be not so hard. Sometimes it even feels like it's all easy, right? However, mental health support that, what we actually need at our fingertips, is often so hard to access. It's complicated, slow, it's socially risky, it's expensive, and, you know, like, there are so many barriers. So what happens? You delay, you wait, you deal with it somehow until you spiral and things fall apart. And so why, you know, this time that elapses when actually we could do something? So my. My thing was always to say, if people can get very accessible help in the moment, no waiting, no all these barriers, conversational, with zero friction, I bet they will actually accept support and use it. And that led to me looking for a way to technically solve it, but also solve it on a human level. How do we convey that? How we tell the story and how we make people feel while they use the solution.
- [04:42]
A
Wow, that is powerful. So tell us a little bit about what Ear Kick is before we go into our other questions. What is it exactly?
- [04:48]
C
Well, in very simple words, it's basically an AI coach, AI companion. And the way it works is just check in with it on a regular basis, a few seconds, and it immediately validates what you're going through. It acts with you, it gets to know you in real time, and it has your goal for mental health. You know, that's the highest priority. So it will help you with habits, it will help you with motivation, it will help you with sessions, with guidance, you name it, and all of that in a minimum of time so that you do not stay glued to your phone so that you go out and live life the best way you can.
- [05:35]
A
Got it. I love that. And where are you in it? Can we go and purchase it now or is it still in development stages?
- [05:44]
C
You can just go and download it on the App Store. There's also a web app. You can just go to the website of ear kick, it's earkick.com and play around it. This is one of our mantras. Just start, just play around it. No long theories and no, like, just go and do it. Because as you said, we have to do something. We have to work with it. We have to create our own story with AI in order to. To not end up either in the dystopian camp or in the camp that everything is great and fine and magical. Right? So we have to have real stories. Download it.
- [06:29]
A
Okay, Absolutely. So talk to us about that. Holy Smokes moment. A moment where a customer used ear kick and it just changed their whole lives.
- [06:38]
C
We love happens all the time. Well, first of all, it's the ease, because people are used that when they download something, then they have to fill out questionnaires and basically disclose everything down to the color of their underwear, basically before they even know what's going on. Right. And so with Earcake, you don't have to register. You just download and get going, use it. And that's where people already get like, oh, oh. That's what they mean. Radically private. Right. Then the second part of that is, it's of the ease is they say something into the app or they write, type something, and immediately the panda, that's our avatar appears and relates to it, starts a conversation. And the conversation immediately gets people, like, gets them the impression that they're being heard, that they're being, you know, seen as who they are and that the panic gets them. That is difficult. Right. Because we all know it's a machine. But feeling like you're not wasting your time, you're not telling your story over and over, you're not having all this complicated questionnaire thing, you can just go, get going. You can talk about your day or the moment, and it's okay, you can go from there. You don't have to start all the way back millions of years ago, you know?
- [08:08]
A
Exactly. It's like, okay, I want to do it, and you do another one and do another one. I definitely get that.
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C
Yeah.
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A
And so what is an example of, like, a customer? And you got some feedback where it's like, whoa, this changed everything for me.
- [08:20]
C
Oh, well, we got quite a lot. First of all, we have this ongoing conversation over a tool with our customers. They don't have their address, we don't know who they are, but they can write to us. And so you must imagine there are people who customize their panda. You can do that. It only takes a few clicks. And then you give it the name and sort of a character. Maybe it's more on the bubbly side or more on the straightforward side. The science underneath is the same. And so now imagine it's a real example. There was this mom. She just had her baby, and she was in the hospital by herself. There was nobody around, and she was going through all these fields from here to here. It was overwhelming. And she had ear kick her panda, and she was able to just speak, talk, cry, laugh, and have the panda validate her, be with her, you guide her, and just. She was overwhelmed because she didn't she didn't know what it was like to be a mom. And there were so many things that she wanted to have recorded, but there was no one. And also, I mean, it was probably also pretty chaotic, but at no point did she feel like she had to center herself or that she had to be someone or do something. She was just her full self with her baby. That's a beautiful one. Another one I want to share with you is, and we're in contact with this particular person, a veteran. He unfortunately was about to kill himself and many reasons, and it was just this wave that came over him and he talked to. To his Panda, Captain Panda, and Captain Panda talked him out of it and. Yeah. Yeah.
- [10:29]
A
Wow. Powerful. I mean, imagine someone, you know, there and then they're able to, you know, use Ear Kick and Captain Panda and be able to say, you know what? There's a reason to live.
- [10:40]
C
Yeah. And their tone, you know, it's a totally different tone than with the mother. And also maybe with a male voice and a bit of a, you know, rough and then this kind of what they like, you know, because let's be honest, I mean, help can be everywhere. If we don't accept it for whatever reason, it's not going to have the impact, it's not going to save us. So we do not pay enough attention to acceptance. And what makes us even accept. Able to accept help? Yeah. Any mother that has a teenager crying behind the shut door, behind a shop door, and all she wants to do is help, all she wants to does hug them and say the right things, but if that door doesn't open and there is no acceptance, it's the same with Ear Kick, right?
- [11:35]
A
Absolutely. No, that's amazing. And we're very nosy, curious people. If we were to open up the hood of Ear Kick and look at the brain, how does it work? Like, how is it so customized and how does it help me through life? You know, decisions to do whatever or feel whatever or have our crash out at night even though we've been feeling fine all day.
- [11:55]
C
Well, it's a very good question. Let's try to simplify it. If you could peek inside Ear Kicks brain, just open the hood, right? You would see three basic layers. You would see the sensing, the understanding, interacting, and the guidance. Let me explain how. So the sensing layer is basically when you check in, whether it's voice, video or typing, it's already sensing not just what you say, but also how you say it. And it's also taken into consideration your sleep data or whatever. Wearable data is there, your movement, the weather outside, you know, connecting all these dots, sensing, sensing your emotions. The next layer then, based on the sensing, will interact with you. That's the understanding, validation, the interaction layer. And it's going to happen in a very conversational way that is easy for you, something the algorithm already learned, how you can best interact with it. And so the most important thing happens. A conversation about what is relevant to you, what is relevant to your journey. And then the third layer is where it's about getting you to where you want to go, changing what you want to change. And this doesn't have to be your whole life. It's the next doable step. Short, conversationally, easy, structured, and evidence based on cbd, dbt micro actions. Things that you can imagine yourself not only doing, but also doing right now. And so, all in all, you don't even take much time with the app because the aim is to get you back into the real world, back doing something, and you are the one empowered. The power doesn't sit in the app doesn't sit in a panda. It's you. Right? But you need this catalyzer, you need this thing to get you going. Yeah. That's what happens under the hood. And of course, everything remains in the app. Like in a multimodal speaking diary, you can revisit every session, you can see what has been logged, you can understand your data. It's even explained to you. And so you have all your data with you. It's yours and yours alone. Nobody else gets it.
- [14:36]
A
Okay.
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C
And there we go with the whole empowerment and ownership.
- [14:41]
A
Awesome. I love that. And then earlier you gave us two examples, one of a young lady and one of a veteran. Talk to us about that moment where you, as the founder were, you know, working through an upgrade, a development, building it, and it did something and it gave you chills. And it was like, yeah, wow. Like, like, I'm doing this, I'm changing the world in that way. Take us there, Take us there. Be colorful.
- [15:06]
C
Let us know about that many instances. I will tell you the. The first user, yeah, because yeah. App was very manual at the time. Then the next one was when Panda came to life and our users actually were involved in what the avatar looks like. They wanted a panda that they can love and hug them. And another one was when we were able to give it voice and memory. So voice is very important because I was chatting, there's a video out there with me asking it to tell me a joke, and then there's this fantastic voice of My panda telling me a joke. And. And then I was also complaining about something and it said, oh, Karen, it's like last time, you know, every time you have to go on stage, you're afraid and you say you don't want to do it. You know, like, it was so funny. It was like someone knows me.
- [16:03]
A
That's amazing.
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C
And the last one I want to say is, if ever I had a bad day, if ever I got up in a bad mood, all I have to do is open the tool where we get this feedback and all the, you know, the people giving us reviews, and it just brings me to tears, what people write.
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A
Yeah, yeah, no, that.
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C
That's.
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A
That is absolutely great. That's absolutely great. And you have talked about some really kind of like, personal, detailed examples. How do you think about ethics as you were building Ear Kick? And, you know, I mean, you're talking about a veteran who was considering suicide. Like, how. What are the guardrails you have in place? And how are you thinking about those ethical crossroads that are so important with aac?
- [16:49]
C
Yeah, this is so important. I think that your DNA as a company has to already be that it doesn't make sense to add it when you have to. Your whole DNA, everyone in the team, everyone has to really, really understand the power of, let's say, for example, radical privacy. So that's one. And it's not let you add it later or you encrypt it somehow. No, it's got to be from the very beginning. What that means is you don't have to register every. Like you are as a user in control of your data all the time. It's yours and yours alone. There is no tricks, no backdoors, none of that. And we show it with every step that the user takes that it's that way. That's the first thing. It's basically three Rs. Radical privacy is the first R. You minimize any kind of identifying features. There's no way to trace back. There's no way to make any connections. And that has to be from the very beginning. The second one is R is rigorous. Rigorous boundaries, rigorous testing. You from the very beginning. You measure, test, ab, test everything. Because what you think as a builder, as a founder, may be wrong. And you cannot anticipate all the problems that are out there in technology and what people may do. So the only thing is rigorous testing and having rigorous guardrails, which means that you cannot shift shape or build a panel that's dangerous. You cannot ask the panel to do unethical things or Say radical things. That doesn't work. It's always going to blot that out. And if your conversation goes in the wrong direction, it will immediately guide you back, tell you what is possible, what is not, and remind you of why this is happening here. That's the third one. And the third one is Real Life Reconnect mindset. That's what I alluded to before. Everything in the app, everything has to reconnect you to your real life, to your environment, to real people. Why I say that is apps can send you down rabbit holes. You go on TikTok, it'll serve you up one dramatic, horrible video after another in order to glue you to your phone and then make you watch. More, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more. It's a very simple incentive, right? So that's not the goal of the user. The user is not on TikTok to get sucked into a hole, but that's what happens because you can monetize it. So real life Reconnect means everything in the app is supposed to, in the end, reconnect you with real life. Reconnect you with what actually matters for your mental health, for your personal growth, for you reaching your potential, for all these wonderful things. And that's the DNA, privacy, rigorous testing in real time, a real life connect. I have a cat here who's really, really trying to tell us something.
- [20:22]
A
Are you, Is it a him or her? You want to pick them up and talk?
- [20:28]
C
I'm allergic to cats. I don't know what she wants.
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A
Like, these are real conversations, human conversations. So we all have pets now. I do think it's interesting that you have a cat and you're allergic to
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C
her, but, well, there's a trade off, right?
- [20:46]
A
Yeah.
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C
There are people in this house who absolutely worship cats. Who am I to get in their way? I think, and to this point, pets are a fantastic mental health remedy. I would say it's amazing what some people tell me or tell us that they can't yet connect with real people because it's too painful. They have gone through so many things, but. But they can connect with a cat and they can connect with, let's say, a pet. And if that is possible, go for it. Yeah.
- [21:26]
A
Yeah. And I love the fact that y' all picked a panda because they are.
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C
They're so cuddly and cute, aren't they? Yeah.
- [21:33]
A
Yeah. They really, really, really, really are. I traveled this summer to China and went to their panda zoo. So that was amazing.
- [21:41]
C
Yeah.
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A
Tumble around on the floor and, you know, eating their bamboo and all that stuff that was. That was great.
- [21:46]
C
And they're very int. You know, they look clumsy, they are sweet. But that's what we wanted. We didn't want to have this perfect creature, you know, we wanted this underrated, smart animal that shows that, you know, life is not. It's not easy and you fall and you topple and. Yeah, just people are really, really. They connect with pandas because of that.
- [22:14]
A
Oh, that's great. Now, you obviously started this with a big, bold vision in mind. Tell us what you see for the future of Ear Kick. I mean, AI is changing so rapidly, but if you want to look out five years from now, 2030 or wherever, actually 2031, at this point, you know, where do you see the big movement for Ear Kick and the changes and the impact that it'll have for the world?
- [22:39]
C
Well, since we are all going to struggle with things in life, because life throws us lemons, right? Yeah. I imagine Ear Kick, the whole technology to really be absolutely seamless to, at any point of our day, know where we're at, not just mentally, but also physically understand the environment, understand our trends to the dot and really be seamless, conversing with us, interacting with us and educating us so that we can make a choice. So very important. The choice part, I want to be alerted. I want to have the right encouragement at the right moment. And I also want to have a choice. I want to understand why my stressors are, you know, like, getting in my way. I want to understand grief, I want to understand why sadness is important for me. But I also want this sidekick on my side in a way that is so easy that, you know, it's across computers, across devices, across my wearables in a way that is the easiest choice to do. That's where we see it. And the conversational part will get so much easier, so much more sophisticated. The voices, everything. It's going to really be customizable to the DOT and it's going to be on our side. And when I say our side, on the human side, on our side, to protect us from manipulation. On our side, to warn us ahead of time. On our side, to encourage us to stay strong when we need to, but to not be too hard on us when it's not good. All these things, you know, I imagine in a seamless journey.
- [24:42]
A
Yeah, that is amazing. And so if people want to get to know Ear Kick and get to use it and try it out this week, what should they do?
- [24:52]
C
Well, first of all, they should download it. And no, it's not Stigmatizing. It's not like we all have our problems. Maybe today you're happy and all fine, but tonight something happens, right? So download it, have it ready, look at it, you know, then do a check in, takes you what, three seconds and just get going with it. Be critical, ask it things, look what works for you. Establish your first habit or at least create one that you want to establish. You know, listening to the sessions, read some of the stuff that is in there and have fun. You know, it doesn't take more than a few minutes. And then you know where it's at. And the next time that life throws you a lemon, you know where to make the lemon juice. The best on earth.
- [25:46]
A
Right, Right. I love that. And what's, what's the website for them to go to?
- [25:51]
C
You go to earkick.com and then you'll, you'll find all of you also find our white papers. You find a lot of things that you can look at and you can write to me, Karen, earkick.com. i answer every email.
- [26:05]
A
Oh, that's amazing. So you heard it there, earkick.com. and then of course download it, depending on if you have an iPhone or Android or whatever device you have, you can do it there. And I love what you said. You said just go ahead and download it and have it ready. Yeah, we will need it. We all, like you said, have our ups and downs. And I mean, I lost my mother. It was 10 years ago, but it was an unexpected call. I had just spoken to her and I was in a depressed, funky state for three years. I eventually got up out of it, but I was just floating for three years. And so, yeah, and who would have thought that, you know, I never thought I would live in a world where I would be without my mom, you know, forever. And so, you know, and you can
- [26:50]
C
go back and see how much you, you've grown since. And you can be again thankful and grateful for how you have overcome this and how you have held your mom high and, and the grief that. Yeah, that, that you had. I also lost my mom and is basically the love, it's a manifestation of the love you have for her. And, and I mean, we want the container for that. We want to be able to go back and see what life is like in the hard parts and in the good parts and in ear kick, you can have the whole history, you have the whole memory, you have everything you can revisit at any time.
- [27:30]
A
Oh, I love that. I love that. So as we discussed before, I do have One question, which I call one genius to another. So you, by being a wonderful guest, you're our genius. And my genius before has a question for you. And that is at what point does an AI begin to understand our emotions better than we do and it stops being a tool and starts becoming a responsibility?
- [27:56]
C
Let me tell you, it's a responsibility from the get go, from the minute you have the idea. Because there is no responsibility free room here. What we should ask ourselves every day is who carries responsibility and who actually owns it at the personal level, at team, organizational, societal level, we didn't have to wait for AI to have this tool responsibility conversation remind you a knife could save your life. It can also take it. And it's a choice. The difference however, is that with the emotionally smart AI, the responsibility is harder to see. So you know, we love convenience, we love frictionless things, we love things that are always available. We can't part with our phone, all these things. But we're also inviting to be influenced and manipulated. So the second AI or whatever tool earns your attention and your trust. It gets a door into you. So into your emotions, into your thoughts, into your decisions, into your actions, you name it again, it can keep you from spiraling. It can also convince you to buy a ton of stuff that you don't need or to vote something that you didn't ask for. So to allow ads to be shown, to allow your data to be shared, all these horrible things, right? So I'm naming it here because it's a real threat and you still have a choice. You still have a choice. So as a user, have the responsibility to stay awake and you know, what do you outsource? You know, where there is no such thing as really free. So where does your data go? You know, who earns money with it? Follow, follow betrayals. That as a company, you know, you have the responsibility to design for outcomes and not for dependence and you know, squeezing, squeezing the soul of out of people. So avoid emotional manipulation. It's a choice. And as a society, we also have the responsibility to set expectations. We have to know what's acceptable, what is not. We have to go vote, we have to go talk to each other. We have to do podcasts like yours and not just have some random opinion and then go like, yeah, everything is going the wrong direction anyway. So responsibility on all levels from the, from the get go.
- [30:46]
A
Oh, I love that, I love that. You have to start with responsibility to start with it. That is amazing. So let's move to our bonus rapid fire. I'm going to ask you four questions quickly and tell me the first that comes to mind. The first one is. Tell me the most overrated AI or tech trend.
- [31:02]
C
The most overrated one is this AI everywhere as a feature. Teams bolt out chatbots onto anything that moves. Call it innovation, ship it, and it's noise. It doesn't really add value. So the outcome is nothing but frustration and the wrong concept of what AI can do for us.
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A
All right, what about the most underrated AI tech trend?
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C
I think making LLMs fast and cheap enough to be usable at scale is being done under hyped. A lot of attention should go into that because we see all these demos and it works out fine. But it's one person doing maybe one thing. It looks like magic. We needed to be doing it for a lot of things, a lot of questions, fast, in real time, without glitches, you name it. Right? Yeah. We're not there.
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A
Yeah.
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C
Okay.
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A
What about a book we should all read?
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C
I think you should read Nexus by Yuval Harari. And I would say, really, because understanding what conversation, what information, and what that really means in its root and why it is different with AI is very, very important for us. AI is the first technology that can generate and spread narratives on its own. Not like the telephone, not like other. Other mediums. I'm not saying that everything is correct in excess, but open yourself up to that book. Read it. I've been enjoying it a lot.
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A
All right. And then surprise us, scare us, wow us. What's your biggest AI prediction?
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C
Well, let's keep it in the conversational corner. Sure. In three to five years from now, traditional user interfaces will be transitioned to conversational user interfaces. What I mean is, like, every device from a regular, let's say fridge to a motorcycle will have conversational interfaces, or at least a hybrid one. Everyday objects will feel more like collaborators and eager to help with function and memory and endless learning capacity. What that means is you will talk to your coffee machine and instead of trying to figure out how to do an espresso, it will ask you, what kind of coffee would you like me to prepare? It maybe remembers that you like it with double and. And. And milk and sugar. And it will prepare it exactly as it knows. And instead of showing, for example, a warning light on your motorcycle that you ignore for weeks anyways, it will say, oh, hey, Tamara, you're riding tense again. You know, like what, you want a smooth one today or you want to have some chaos and you, you have some excitement. So we will have this. As I said, the seamless thing very soon. Very soon.
- [34:15]
A
Awesome. I love that. Well, Karen, I so enjoyed this conversation. How fascinating. Ear Kick. I've got to download it and try it out. Like I said, this show would not be as great as it is if we didn't have guests like you. So tell us again, how do we try out Air Kick? How do we get in touch with you? All the social media handles all the ways to to keep in touch and connect.
- [34:37]
C
First of all, download the app on earkick.com and get using Start. If you have any feedback, if you have any questions, any issues, what it is, reach out to us. The founders were very responsive. Just reach us via LinkedIn, via Instagram, via email and let your voice be heard because this ear cake journey is a collaborative one and I can't wait to hear from you.
- [35:09]
A
Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much, Karen. We appreciate you being here. Everyone go try it out. It is phenomenal. And you know, just having someone there, your Panda, your Captain Panda to help you is absolutely amazing. So everyone, thank you again. We'll see you on the next episode. And until then, remember to lead with AI.
- [35:29]
B
Thanks for tuning in to lead with AI. I'll see you next time as we continue exploring the cutting edge innovations shaping AI across the public and private sectors. Until then, keep leading with AI.