Episode 7: Jeremy Wright on Building an AI That Actually Knows You Self Actual's CTO on self-honesty, feeling seen, and the year he was anti-AI Jeremy Wright and I have known each other for two decades, dating back to the early social media days, and he has always been the one pushing further into the technology than the rest of us. In the AI arena, he’s continued that approach building Echo, an AI that didn’t mimic him online, it actually knew him: how he worked, how he showed up as a dad versus a co-founder versus a writer in creative mode. That project became the seed for Self Actual, the AI platform. Jeremy now serves as CTO, and the seat is staying open for him as they raise money. Jeremy spent a stretch of his own life anti-AI, apologizing to people when he first started talking about what he was building. The shift came out of a hard year: aA major health crisis took him offline for months, his father was going through his own crisis at the same time, and when Jeremy came back online he stumbled into a friend's 30 Days of AI challenge with nothing but recovering brain energy and his own sideways way of working through things rather than following anyone's recipe. Two weeks in, he showed what he'd built to that same friend and got back the reaction that told him this was bigger than a personal project. Watch or listen to Jeremy Wright on YouTube! Don't forget to subscribe! Jeremy's insistence that building an AI that knows you requires knowing yourself first. I am impressed with the self-honesty it took to build Echo as much as the product itself. He told me about one of his most advanced users, whose Echo helped her realize she was autistic, and she cried for three days, not from sadness but from finally feeling seen. He is hopeful that an AI built to notices your flaws, and how to work with them rather than around them, is worth the conversation. Listen today on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts! 0:34 Who is Jeremy Wright and what is Self Actual 0:58 Building Echo, the AI that goes further than a digital twin 1:52 The Jarvis analogy: an AI customized to you 2:47 Jeremy's proudest AI success: the self-honesty it took to build Echo 3:47 The AI skeptic who ended up building an AI company 4:16 A health crisis, 30 Days of AI, and a two-week epiphany 4:47 Wtfisecho.com and the sideways path to clarity 5:41 The user who discovered she was autistic through Echo 7:13 Where Jeremy sees AI benefiting society most 7:54 Parting thoughts and how to connect
