The OpenAI Startup Fund and Thrive Global, San Francisco,  announced in July the creation of a new company, Thrive AI Health, devoted  exclusively to building an AI (artificial intelligence) 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.

Sam Altman and Arianna Huffington wrote in an op-ed in Time Magazine, “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...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. ”

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 also will be a 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.

To learn more about the new company and the AI health coach, click here

To read the Time magazine op-ed, click here