#ambientai — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

☮ ♥ ♬ 🧑‍💻 @[email protected] · 2026-06-04 · 23:23 UTC

“She ( #LieslYearsley ) recalls an incident “many years ago” when she and her #Cognea co-founder #JohnZakos were in the office of a #SocialMedia giant, having built an #AmbientAI that could read a couple of sentences and get a pretty good read on someone’s personality, with a #conversational #UserInterface.”

“To my shame, I hesitated for a few seconds. I knew if I had said yes, we would have had an early exit and retired, but I knew this would lead to mass #disinformation. So I said ‘Yes, but that’s not why we are here’,” she says. “Someone else said ‘yes’, and we have the world we live in today.”

“Yearsley doesn’t regret walking away from the chance to make a fortune from #manipulating social media users, but it feeds into her cynical view of the motivations of the giant companies leading the AI charge.”

“They were there to pitch their technology as a way to detect young users at risk on the platform to provide support – but the unnamed social media giant’s head of mergers and acquisitions joined the meeting with different ideas. They asked if Yearsley’s AI could help it tell Republicans from Democrats, which it could, and also if it could be used to #predict what #news items #users would share.”

#Australia / #AIAwards / #AI / #ArtificialIntelligence / #technology / #Akin / #Startups / #founders <https://afr.com/technology/this-pioneer-wants-ai-to-be-a-force-for-good-20260526-p600xh?collection=p5zz3a>

#lieslyearsley #cognea #johnzakos #socialmedia #ambientai #conversational

☮ ♥ ♬ 🧑‍💻 @[email protected] · 2026-06-04 · 23:23 UTC

“She ( #LieslYearsley ) recalls an incident “many years ago” when she and her #Cognea co-founder #JohnZakos were in the office of a #SocialMedia giant, having built an #AmbientAI that could read a couple of sentences and get a pretty good read on someone’s personality, with a #conversational #UserInterface.”

“To my shame, I hesitated for a few seconds. I knew if I had said yes, we would have had an early exit and retired, but I knew this would lead to mass #disinformation. So I said ‘Yes, but that’s not why we are here’,” she says. “Someone else said ‘yes’, and we have the world we live in today.”

“Yearsley doesn’t regret walking away from the chance to make a fortune from #manipulating social media users, but it feeds into her cynical view of the motivations of the giant companies leading the AI charge.”

“They were there to pitch their technology as a way to detect young users at risk on the platform to provide support – but the unnamed social media giant’s head of mergers and acquisitions joined the meeting with different ideas. They asked if Yearsley’s AI could help it tell Republicans from Democrats, which it could, and also if it could be used to #predict what #news items #users would share.”

#Australia / #AIAwards / #AI / #ArtificialIntelligence / #technology / #Akin / #Startups / #founders <https://afr.com/technology/this-pioneer-wants-ai-to-be-a-force-for-good-20260526-p600xh?collection=p5zz3a>

#disinformation #aiawards #lieslyearsley #cognea #johnzakos #socialmedia

☮ ♥ ♬ 🧑‍💻 @[email protected] · 2026-06-04 · 23:23 UTC

“She ( #LieslYearsley ) recalls an incident “many years ago” when she and her #Cognea co-founder #JohnZakos were in the office of a #SocialMedia giant, having built an #AmbientAI that could read a couple of sentences and get a pretty good read on someone’s personality, with a #conversational #UserInterface.”

“To my shame, I hesitated for a few seconds. I knew if I had said yes, we would have had an early exit and retired, but I knew this would lead to mass #disinformation. So I said ‘Yes, but that’s not why we are here’,” she says. “Someone else said ‘yes’, and we have the world we live in today.”

“Yearsley doesn’t regret walking away from the chance to make a fortune from #manipulating social media users, but it feeds into her cynical view of the motivations of the giant companies leading the AI charge.”

“They were there to pitch their technology as a way to detect young users at risk on the platform to provide support – but the unnamed social media giant’s head of mergers and acquisitions joined the meeting with different ideas. They asked if Yearsley’s AI could help it tell Republicans from Democrats, which it could, and also if it could be used to #predict what #news items #users would share.”

#Australia / #AIAwards / #AI / #ArtificialIntelligence / #technology / #Akin / #Startups / #founders <https://afr.com/technology/this-pioneer-wants-ai-to-be-a-force-for-good-20260526-p600xh?collection=p5zz3a>

#ai #artificialintelligence #lieslyearsley #cognea #johnzakos #socialmedia

☮ ♥ ♬ 🧑‍💻 @[email protected] · 2026-06-04 · 23:23 UTC

“She ( #LieslYearsley ) recalls an incident “many years ago” when she and her #Cognea co-founder #JohnZakos were in the office of a #SocialMedia giant, having built an #AmbientAI that could read a couple of sentences and get a pretty good read on someone’s personality, with a #conversational #UserInterface.”

“To my shame, I hesitated for a few seconds. I knew if I had said yes, we would have had an early exit and retired, but I knew this would lead to mass #disinformation. So I said ‘Yes, but that’s not why we are here’,” she says. “Someone else said ‘yes’, and we have the world we live in today.”

“Yearsley doesn’t regret walking away from the chance to make a fortune from #manipulating social media users, but it feeds into her cynical view of the motivations of the giant companies leading the AI charge.”

“They were there to pitch their technology as a way to detect young users at risk on the platform to provide support – but the unnamed social media giant’s head of mergers and acquisitions joined the meeting with different ideas. They asked if Yearsley’s AI could help it tell Republicans from Democrats, which it could, and also if it could be used to #predict what #news items #users would share.”

#Australia / #AIAwards / #AI / #ArtificialIntelligence / #technology / #Akin / #Startups / #founders <https://afr.com/technology/this-pioneer-wants-ai-to-be-a-force-for-good-20260526-p600xh?collection=p5zz3a>

#disinformation #aiawards #ai #artificialintelligence #lieslyearsley #cognea

☮ ♥ ♬ 🧑‍💻 @[email protected] · 2026-06-04 · 23:23 UTC

“She ( #LieslYearsley ) recalls an incident “many years ago” when she and her #Cognea co-founder #JohnZakos were in the office of a #SocialMedia giant, having built an #AmbientAI that could read a couple of sentences and get a pretty good read on someone’s personality, with a #conversational #UserInterface.”

“To my shame, I hesitated for a few seconds. I knew if I had said yes, we would have had an early exit and retired, but I knew this would lead to mass #disinformation. So I said ‘Yes, but that’s not why we are here’,” she says. “Someone else said ‘yes’, and we have the world we live in today.”

“Yearsley doesn’t regret walking away from the chance to make a fortune from #manipulating social media users, but it feeds into her cynical view of the motivations of the giant companies leading the AI charge.”

“They were there to pitch their technology as a way to detect young users at risk on the platform to provide support – but the unnamed social media giant’s head of mergers and acquisitions joined the meeting with different ideas. They asked if Yearsley’s AI could help it tell Republicans from Democrats, which it could, and also if it could be used to #predict what #news items #users would share.”

#Australia / #AIAwards / #AI / #ArtificialIntelligence / #technology / #Akin / #Startups / #founders <https://afr.com/technology/this-pioneer-wants-ai-to-be-a-force-for-good-20260526-p600xh?collection=p5zz3a>