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OpenAI Startup Fund & Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Global Create New Company, Thrive AI Health, To Launch Hyper-Personalized AI Health Coach

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Health and wearables product leader DeCarlos Love leaves Google to serve as CEO

The Alice L. Walton Foundation to be a strategic investor to leverage AI to make a healthier life accessible to all

SAN FRANCISCO, July 8, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — The OpenAI Startup Fund and Thrive Global announced today the creation of a new company, Thrive AI Health, exclusively devoted to building an AI health coach. The company’s mission is to use AI to democratize access to expert-level health coaching to improve health outcomes. This will also address growing health inequities by bringing the power of behavior change to the urgent challenge of chronic diseases. 

The company will be funded by the OpenAI Startup Fund and Thrive Global as lead investors. The Alice L. Walton Foundation is a strategic investor in the new company, underscoring Thrive AI Health’s focus on health equity.

As Sam Altman and Arianna Huffington wrote in an op-ed in TIME, “So much of the conversation around AI has been about how much time it will save us and how productive it will make us. But AI could go well beyond efficiency and optimization to something much more fundamental: improving both our health spans and our lifespans. Because health is also what happens between doctor visits. In the same way the New Deal built out physical infrastructure to transform the country, AI will serve as part of the critical infrastructure of a much more effective health care system that supports everyday people’s health in an ongoing way. These are some of the ideas behind Thrive AI Health.”

DeCarlos Love, a product leader who was most recently at Google, will be CEO of the new company. At Google, he led sensors, AI & ML algorithms as well as health and fitness experiences across all devices and platforms, including Fitbit by Google Fitness, Pixel Watch and Wear OS. Prior to Google, Love held product roles at Apple and Athos. His passion and experience are further cemented from spending time as a coach for different sports as well as developing a childhood obesity program in his hometown of Minneapolis. 

Thrive AI Health will use the power of generative AI to hyper-personalize and scale behavior change across the five key and interconnected daily behaviors that govern our health: sleep, food, fitness, stress management and connection. Given that behavior accounts for a significant share of health outcomes than medical care or our genes, by adopting healthier habits in these five behaviors, people can make dramatic improvements in health outcomes.

The Thrive AI Health Coach will be an essential tool for both prevention and for optimizing the treatment of disease through an AI personal context engine that understands the user and generates personalized AI-driven insights; proactive, multimodal, expert-level coaching as well as nudges and recommendations unique to each user across the five behaviors. They will all be powered by a unified health data platform with robust privacy and security guardrails to deliver a transformative health experience. The Thrive AI Health Coach will be trained on the latest peer-reviewed science, biometric, lab and other medical data, as well as users’ personal preferences and goals around the five key daily behaviors. 

The new company will leverage resources from OpenAI and Thrive Global, including Thrive Global’s leading behavior change methodology, Microsteps and content library. Thrive AI Health will also take advantage of the latest developments in AI, including enhanced long-term memory capabilities and a custom-developed behavioral coaching model with domain-specific customization, to empower individuals to take action across these five daily behaviors and improve health outcomes.

“Recent advancements in artificial intelligence present an unprecedented opportunity to make behavior change much more powerful and sustainable,” said DeCarlos Love, Thrive AI Health CEO. “AI has shown a remarkable ability to assimilate large datasets, extract actionable insights, recognize patterns, and deliver personalized recommendations. However, despite these technological advances, the current landscape of large language models (LLMs) still falls short of delivering a truly comprehensive and effective personalized behavior change and coaching experience. Thrive AI Health Coach is the product to solve the limitations of current AI and LLM-based solutions by providing personalized, proactive, and data-driven coaching across the five daily behaviors. This is how it will improve health outcomes, reduce healthcare costs and significantly impact chronic diseases worldwide.”

“Through AI, we can make health and wellness opportunities more accessible for all,” says Alice Walton, founder of the Alice L. Walton Foundation, Heartland Whole Health Institute, and the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine. “Thrive AI Health offers the potential of increasing access to tools that can change behaviors and ultimately increase quality of life.”

The aim for the AI Health Coach is to finally reduce the trendlines on chronic diseases, which are skyrocketing around the world. In the U.S. alone, around 90% of our $4.1 trillion in healthcare spending — 17% of GDP, up from 5% in 1960 — is for the treatment of chronic and mental health conditions. A staggering 129 million Americans have at least one chronic condition, and in 2023, eight chronic conditions, including cardiovascular diseases, depression and diabetes, hit all-time highs. The status quo is unsustainable — a challenge that AI-driven hyper-personalized coaching is uniquely positioned to address.

Given that chronic diseases — like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases — are directly related to daily behaviors but not distributed equally across demographics, the Thrive AI Health Coach will leverage the power of AI to reach underserved communities. Dr. Gbenga Ogedegbe, Professor of Population Health & Medicine and Director, NYU Langone’s Institute for Excellence in Health Equity, will serve as Health Equity Advisor to Thrive AI Health. 

Thrive AI Health has established research partnerships with leading academic institutions and medical centers which will include bringing the AI Health Coach to their communities. Stanford Medicine, the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine and the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute at West Virginia University are launch partners.

“Working together with Stanford Medicine and Thrive AI Health, we are excited to engage our faculty and future physicians to explore the use of AI Health Coach in ways that reflect our whole health approach,” said Dr. Sharmila Makhija, Founding Dean and CEO of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine. “We strongly believe AI will positively change the future of health care, from medical education to clinical care, and we are committed to leveraging this technology to its full potential.”

“At Stanford Health Care, we are committed to delivering transformative digital experiences that enhance patient care, enable cutting-edge research, and help train tomorrow’s health leaders,” said Dr. Michael Pfeffer, Chief Information and Digital Officer for Stanford Health Care. “We are excited to explore the potential of AI Health Coach to advance these goals for the benefit of patients and providers alike.”

“For the last five years, the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute has partnered with Thrive Global, conducting clinical research studies involving over 3,000 participants linking our Human Operating System and AI-driven real time digital health insights with Thrive Global’s behavior change methodology, Microsteps and content,” said Dr. Ali Rezai, Director of the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute. “We are excited about this next stage collaboration with Thrive AI Health to accelerate the impact of personalized coaching to improve health, especially in rural America.”

About Thrive Global
Founded by Arianna Huffington in 2016, Thrive Global is a leading behavior change technology company with the mission to improve productivity and health outcomes – one Microstep at a time. Thrive helps individuals and organizations improve well-being, performance and mental resilience with its AI-powered behavior change technology platform. Thrive’s Microsteps – small, science-backed steps to improve health and productivity – have been adopted by employees at more than 200 organizations in over 160 countries, from frontline and call center workers to executives at multinational companies. For more information, visit www.thriveglobal.com.

Contacts
Libby Duke
Head of Communications, Thrive Global
libby@thriveglobal.com
917-698-4993

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/openai-startup-fund–arianna-huffingtons-thrive-global-create-new-company-thrive-ai-health-to-launch-hyper-personalized-ai-health-coach-302190536.html

SOURCE Thrive Global

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Supreme Court Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin Joins Elementary Students for Live Virtual Q&A and Chapter One Storybook Reading on Sep. 24

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The Honourable Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin, the first Indigenous person appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada, will join elementary students in a live virtual Q&A on September 24, from 1:00-2:15 pm ET, following a reading of the children’s storybook, “Daanis the Judge.” This event is hosted by Chapter One, a children’s literacy charity, to commemorate the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Lawyer Victoria Perrie, writer of “Daanis the Judge,” will read aloud the inspiring story, which is based on Justice O’Bonsawin’s remarkable journey. Illustrator EJ Miller-Larson will join Justice O’Bonsawin and Perrie in a moderated Q&A session with over 1900 elementary students.

TORONTO, Sept. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — The Honourable Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin, the first Indigenous person to be appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada, will join elementary students in a live virtual Q&A following a live online reading of the original children’s storybook “Daanis the Judge,” on September 24, from 1:00-2:15 pm ET. The event will be hosted by Chapter One to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Chapter One is a children’s literacy charity that provides 1:1 high-impact reading tutoring and co-creates original storybooks with participating communities nationwide.

“I am very humbled and proud to be a part of the book, “Daanis the Judge.” My hope is that this book will inspire youth to dream big and know that anything is possible. I am evidence of that!” – Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin

Métis-Cree lawyer Victoria Perrie, who wrote “Daanis the Judge,” will lead the live reading. Students will ask questions during a moderated Q&A with Justice O’Bonsawin, Perrie, and illustrator EJ Miller-Larson, of the Fond du Lac Band and Oneida Nation.

“Daanis the Judge” was inspired by Justice O’Bonsawin’s trailblazing career. It tells the story of a young student, Daanis, who dreams of becoming a judge after learning about Justice O’Bonsawin’s achievements.

The story is part of Chapter One’s growing collection of original children’s e-storybooks, co-created with Indigenous writers, illustrators and communities. The e-storybooks celebrate Indigenous experiences and perspectives, and feature audio clips of Elders pronouncing foundational words in their communities’ first languages. All e-storybooks are provided for free through the Global Free Library.

About Chapter One

Chapter One (chapterone.org/ca) is a global nonprofit and registered Canadian charity that provides one-on-one early literacy tutoring programs to 2,300 children in eight provinces and territories across Canada. Its proven “short burst” high-impact tutoring approach—five-minute sessions, three to five times a week—is ideally suited to young children’s attention spans and aligns with the Science of Reading. In one of the largest randomized control trials conducted on early literacy instruction, researchers from Stanford University found that 7 out of 10 students receiving Chapter One high impact tutoring achieved phonics benchmarks by the end of Kindergarten, compared to 32% in the control group.

Children at risk of reading failure receive 1:1 reading support from trained, paid paraprofessional tutors through Chapter One’s online reading platform and custom software. Programs are delivered in-person and virtually in classrooms through agreements with schools and school boards, and at home on families’ smartphones, connecting struggling readers with individualized reading support—regardless of location and circumstance, even in some of the most geographically remote communities in Canada.

In addition to its tutoring programs, Chapter One collaborates with Indigenous communities to co-create children’s stories that represent the communities’ priorities and experiences and advance language revitalization efforts. The e-storybooks are provided for free online, as part of the Global Free Library.

Event details

The Live Virtual Q&A and Reading of “Daanis the Judge” with the Honourable Justice O’Bonsawin takes place on Tuesday, September 24, from 1:00-2:15 pm ET via Zoom. The event is open to elementary classes (Grades 1-6). Teachers/principals must register their classes in advance using this link.

Media Contact

Denise Orosa, Chapter One Canada, 1 4374224825, denise.orosa@chapterone.org, chapterone.org/ca

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prweb.com/releases/supreme-court-justice-michelle-obonsawin-joins-elementary-students-for-live-virtual-qa-and-chapter-one-storybook-reading-on-sep-24-302254639.html

SOURCE Chapter One Canada

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PEAC Institute Launches “24 Hour Pause for Peace: A Global Concert”

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24 Hour Pause for Peace Will Be the Largest Peace Initiative Ever Worldwide, Unifying 96 Countries on Six Continents Through Music

MONTCLAIR, N.J., Sept. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — On this International Day of Peace, PEAC Institute, part of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize winning team, has launched “24 Hour Pause for Peace: A Global Concert,” the largest peace initiative ever organized worldwide through music.

“Now, we need companies, government entities, other nonprofits and donors who care about our cause for peace to join us in lifting up the biggest event of this generation.”

On October 4, 2025, this ground-breaking program will activate a massive network of youth ensembles that spans 96 countries and territories across six continents and host two 24-hour commercial festivals featuring some of the biggest acts in music and entertainment. This extraordinary day-long event will be live-streamed globally, allowing millions to participate simultaneously.

“It has been 40 years since Live Aid and We Are the World historically unified and changed the world through music,” said Rebecca Irby, president and CEO of PEAC Institute. “With our planet riddled with post-pandemic fatigue, climate chaos, unsettling wars and more, we believe it is time to create a new trajectory for humanity by inviting everyone around the globe to a 24 hour pause for peace to enjoy the sounds of music and feel the transformative power of human connection,” Irby explained.

Additionally, 24 Hour Pause for Peace plans to amass more than 100 million ambassadors to sign an appeal to the United Nations calling for a 24 hour ceasefire during the children’s concerts and commercial music events. All countries are welcome to participate with no exceptions. One of Pause for Peace’s core beliefs is everyone has the right to be equally respected and heard, particularly in collectively calling for peace.

“Achieving this ambitious global endeavor requires the support and participation from the most impactful brands, organizations, and influential leaders, artists and celebrities,” said Jennifer McKenna, 24 Hour Pause for Peace CEO.

Pause for Peace is a $165 million global initiative. Currently, it is in its first phase of raising seed capital through consumer brand-aligned sponsorships and private donors. Funding for the program is tax-deductible through PEAC’s 501(c)(3) status.

“We have assembled an exceptional executive team of change agents in entertainment, production, consumer marketing, charitable development and global security to make this extraordinary, worldwide peace event happen.” McKenna added. “Now, we need companies, government entities, other nonprofits and donors who care about our cause for peace to join us in lifting up the biggest event of this generation.” To become involved in 24 Hour Pause for Peace: A Global Concert as a sponsor, partner or donor, sign up to be an Ambassador, or for more information, go to www.24hourpauseforpeace.org.

About PEAC Institute

PEAC Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in the United States. PEAC stands for peace, education, art and communication. It was formed in 2016 through a campaign with partner organization, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which garnered a 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. PEAC now holds special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations and has a global presence working with countries and territories worldwide to reach the most marginalized youth through art and communication activities to help them explore and express. For more information on PEAC Institute, go to www.peacinstitute.org.

Media Contact

Chadwick Boyd, Pause for Peace, 1 4046060611, chadwick@24hourpauseforpeace.org, www.24hourpauseforpeace.org

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prweb.com/releases/peac-institute-launches-24-hour-pause-for-peace-a-global-concert-302254527.html

SOURCE Pause for Peace

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Global Times: China opens 12 nuclear research facilities to global scientists

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The involved facilities span areas such as basic nuclear research, isotope production, nuclear environment simulation, equipment testing, and radioactive waste treatment and disposal.

VIENNA, Sept. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — China will open 12 nuclear research facilities and testing platforms to international scientists and institutions to enhance global cooperation, a senior Chinese official said here on Monday.

These include the China Advanced Research Reactor, the new-generation tokamak device Huanliu-3, and the Beishan Underground Research Laboratory, Liu Jing, vice chairman of the China Atomic Energy Authority (CAEA), said at a meeting on the sidelines of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) annual general conference.

The facilities span areas such as basic nuclear research, isotope production, nuclear environment simulation, equipment testing, and radioactive waste treatment and disposal.

Monday’s meeting, themed “Share for Development,” was organized by the CAEA to promote international cooperation in nuclear technology research and development, as China marks the 40th anniversary of its accession to the IAEA.

Yu Jianfeng, chairman of China National Nuclear Corporation, said at the event that the company aims to deepen cooperation with the IAEA and expand international collaboration. He expressed hope that opening China’s nuclear research facilities will contribute to advancing nuclear technology globally.

IAEA’s Deputy Director General Mikhail Chudakov commended China’s remarkable achievements in nuclear energy development and highlighted the long-standing, fruitful relationship between the IAEA and the CAEA.

Welcoming China’s decision to open up more of its nuclear research and development facilities, Chudakov said the move will further strengthen the agency’s technical capacity to support its member states.

On Monday evening, the CAEA and China’s permanent mission to the United Nations (UN) and other international organizations in Vienna jointly held a reception at the UN headquarters in Vienna to celebrate the 40th anniversary of China’s accession to the IAEA. More than 200 participants, including IAEA representatives and foreign envoys to Vienna, attended the event.

Li Song, China’s permanent representative to the UN and other international organizations in Vienna, said at the reception that China and the IAEA have expanded practical cooperation and jointly promoted the development of nuclear energy over the past 40 years.

China, he said, will continue to strengthen collaboration with the IAEA and its member states to address emerging challenges in international security, safeguard the global non-proliferation regime, and promote the use of nuclear energy and technology for the benefit of the Global South.

At the reception, Liu, Li and IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi jointly unveiled a bronze statue of Qian Sanqiang, a renowned Chinese nuclear physicist and one of the founders of China’s nuclear industry.

The statue, donated by China, will be permanently displayed at the IAEA headquarters, alongside sculptures of Polish-French physicist Marie Curie and other prominent figures who have made significant contributions to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Contact: xutianshu@globaltimes.com.cn

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-times-china-opens-12-nuclear-research-facilities-to-global-scientists-302254830.html

SOURCE Global Times

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