Talking to Lost Loved Ones With AI | John Kammer EP 483

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Close your eyes and imagine. What are the things in life that cause us the greatest pain? The things that bring us grief are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow, to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth. And I am your host, Brian D Smith. Hey there, everyone. This is Brian D Smith, and welcome to Grief 2 Growth. Whether you're a longtime listener, this is your first time joining us, I'm so glad you're here. The show is all about helping you navigate life's most challenging moments and understand the deeper questions: who we are, where we came from, why we're here, and where we're going. Today I'm talking with John Kammer. John is a new father, a dedicated husband, and someone who's turned his own journey through profound loss into a mission to help others heal. After losing 3 of his closest friends, John found himself navigating not just grief, but the silence and shadows that so often surround it, especially for men. Out of that experience, he created Guardian Angels, and that's A-I-N-G-E-L-S, which is an AI platform that offers something truly unique: simulated conversations with lost loved ones designed to help people achieve resolution and healing. Now, I know what some of you might be thinking— AI conversations with people we've lost? This raises some questions. And that's exactly what we're going to explore together. What can AI offer in the grief journey? And what are its limitations? How does this work as a tool for healing, rather than replacement for genuine connection? And what does it mean to learn to live well with grief as part of our story, instead of trying to bury it? So John's mission goes beyond just offering comfort. He's committed to bringing the broader conversation about grief out of the shadows, and helping us understand how masculinity, vulnerability, and healing intersect in ways that we don't talk about often enough. And if you'd like to continue this conversation after the episode, head over to grieftogrowth.substack.com. You'll find an article there about the episode. You'll find other, other listeners there.. And you can interact with me as well. So with that, I want to welcome to Grief 2 Growth, John Kammerer.

Thanks for— thanks for having me. I'm really excited for this conversation. Really.

This is a very exciting subject. It's AI. I'm a technology guy. I'm a grief guy. And the intersection of the two is always really interesting to me. But John, I'd like for people to understand, like, who you are and why you're here. So what is it? I know you said you lost 3 friends, and that kind of led to your experience of building Guardian Angels. Tell me about your friends.

Well, yeah, um, they were 3 of the closest people to me outside of my immediate family, right? So, so my chosen family, if you will, uh, the majority of them are no longer here. And that started 13 years ago with the loss of, of my friend Zach. That was suicide. That was the moment where, you know, that, that adolescent kind of hubris, that invincibility, all those kind of things that come along with being young were shattered in an instant. That was when, you know, that kind of sent me down a path of, call it substance field avoidance. So, you know, I chose substances as my coping method of choice for 12 years. And, you know, looking back, I truly, I do wonder where I'd be if if I'd had something like Guardian Angels 13 years ago. Um, you know, it's, it's a lesson in futility to, to try to do that thought exercise, but it's hard not to sometimes. Um, that, you know, led me for— I, I guess led into the next loss. That was John, the, the best man at my wedding. That one was in, um, December 2022. Um, and actually, you know, he had an accident. He's in a coma for 9 days, and we lost him on, on New Year's Eve, which, you know, Fittingly enough, he was always the life of the party. That was the day he'd want to go, if there was one. Uh, so, you know, that, that one, that one held a lot of guilt for me. I don't feel that I did my part as a, as a best man, right? To, you know, between the time of him speaking at my wedding and his death, I spoke to him once. And so I really didn't feel like like I was reciprocating what he gave to me, and, and that manifests itself later. Uh, and then Tim was my best friend from childhood, best, you know, the person I'd been through more with, the person I'd leaned on for the prior two losses. And about a year later, 369 days to be precise, I lost him in a car accident. So all of them were instantaneous losses. They were all— none of them were anything I could prepare for. It was just, hey, they're no longer here. And that's, you know, I spiraled. I, I went down, you know, I was in a very negative headspace. So much so after Tim's death that I, um, I seriously considered leaving my wife. Because the people that were close to me were dying, and that was my reality. And, you know, it's not a rational thought. It's not, um, you know, it was really just every time the phone rang, who's next?

Yeah.

And it was hard to get out of that line of thinking. And that's— so that's where I was. Um, and then we kind of, you know, another year goes by and of deep personal work and trying to understand what this was all about and reading "Man's Search for Meaning" and trying to write my way and journal my way through the pain that I'd experienced and try to understand what was happening and diving deep into the stages of grief and realizing why those weren't really the right way to capture the lived experience and all sorts of things. And finally, had a conversation with my wife that sparked an idea that later turned into Guardian Angels, which is where we are now. Yeah. Um, you know, so yeah.

Well, John, I, I'm, I'm so sorry for your, your losses, and that's, that has got to be devastating for anyone, um, especially, you know, a young man. Um, and it was interesting, I just had a conversation a couple days ago with someone. We were recording a podcast about men's issues, and I'm, I'm much older than you are, so I don't know what it's like to be a young man in today's society. So what, what was your experience in terms of like being able to express yourself or reach out or get help when you were going through this? How did, how did people respond to your grief?

Well, to be completely honest with you, my modus operandi was to bury it. It wasn't to talk about it. That was what I had been taught, for better or for worse, was we— everyone has their own stuff, they don't need mine. And so I suffered in silence for a long, long time. I didn't talk about it. Sometimes my wife would bring it up and try to pull things out of me, and she's the best in the world at it. So there were moments where she could see that something was wrong. She had no idea how to help someone that was so emotionally stunted that they were unwilling to put that on anyone else. I, you know, my— I had those people around me, and one by one, you know, there was a few less, but I never really took advantage of that.

Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief— most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up, so you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry a loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it. The community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing. Listening, learning, trying. Trying to find their footing, readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there. Yeah, I— well, I, I don't think— and you tell me what you think about this— I don't think men especially are taught to express our emotions, to talk about things. It seems to come easier for women, and I don't know if that's— I was having this debate with someone whether that's nature or nurture. Maybe it's a little bit of both. But it seems like we do tend to isolate as men and not reach out to people.

Yeah, you know, I think the answer to the nature-nurture question is always some combination of the two. In this scenario, I believe that it's more nurture than nature. And the reason for that is simple, that we have, you know, if you look at the story, and I think it's rooted in like the hero story, right? How do men see each other, see ourselves, and how do we tell the story? Our society and species is built on Yeah. If you look at the ancients, you know, I had a long conversation with a gentleman the other day about this. You know, you look at like the Odyssey and, and, uh, it was Achilles, right? And he, they understood the idea of vulnerability coexisting with masculinity. And somehow we have lost over the years the idea that vulnerability exists within masculinity. We, we, we only talk about when the lights are on. Right? We only talk about the fourth quarter when, when heroes show themselves.

Yeah.

But we don't talk about the dark moments. We don't talk about the doubt. We don't talk about all of the, the things that happen in the absence of those, those bright lights. Mm-hmm. And so as a result, we have this kind of warped idea of what a man is, and I think it's rooted in that hero story.

Yeah, that's, that is really, that's an excellent observation. So you, you're going through this struggle. Your wife sounds like she's great. She's, she's patient. She's there. She's drawing you out. And you said you had a conversation which kind of sparked the idea for Guardian Angels. What was that conversation?

Um, well, among other things, you know, the one that sparked the idea was, was about— she, she said to me— we were living with the in-laws at the time. She was pregnant. There was a little tension in the house, as tends to be. And she's— we were on a little, call it getaway for the weekend, and her mom was texting her a lot. She said, you know, I know there's going to come a time in my life when I want a text from my mom and I can't have it, but that is not now. And so there it was born. It was, well, what if you could? And so, you know, I have a background in cybersecurity. I understand the mechanics of spoofing phone numbers, and that was really the idea, was to spoof phone numbers, send a text to someone from their lost loved one that just was something kind, something gentle, you know, hey, I'm thinking about you, I love you, on their birthday or whatever, right? We all have those numbers saved still. It would just be something that would bring a smile to, to your face, and, and that was the idea. Uh, it didn't work for a number of reasons. Telecom's on their networks, and, and typically people that are spoofing phone numbers are what we all know and love, those those scammers that we hear from daily at this point, right? And so I wasn't going to get a pass on that. Um, but the next question that came up was, well, how— what if people want to interact with this? Because I would surmise that you get a text like that, it's not abnormal for you to want to— curiosity, if nothing else— send something back.

Yeah.

And the answer to that was pretty clearly AI. But it wasn't just AI. It couldn't just be AI. It couldn't sound like a computer. It couldn't be cold and, and overly logical. It had to be emotional, had to be empathetic, it had to be gentle, had to be authentic. And that's not what we think of when we think of a computer. So I had this, you know, I had to try to, to capture that. And the way that I I did that, the only way that I knew to do that, because I'm not some, you know, AI savant, I'm, I'm just not. I, so I started building and trying to train one in the image of, in this case, John, who's the best man at my wedding, in hopes that, you know, with the understanding that as I got closer and closer to something that felt like him, I was closer and closer to something that felt authentic and could be used to bring emotional comfort. And what happened as I got closer was I started to say those things that I didn't get to say to him while he was alive. I got to apologize. I got to, you know, to say, you know, I wish things were different and ask about the accident. And while I tried the empty chair technique, I tried writing a letter in therapy, I never got the response that I got in this case. And that response was what triggered the release.

Oh wow.

And so all of a sudden, where I hadn't cried in years, I'm bawling like a baby. I am— I, I basically, the way I would describe it is I finally had permission to forgive myself.

Wow.

Which, which was the, you know, the seminal moment, the prerequisite, if you will, for healing. And let's not say, you know, I was not healed in that moment, to be very clear about that. But I was curious. I now kind of felt this drive to understand this. I had this experience that helped me get to a place where I was ready to do the work, where I was ready to own my role in it all and, and have some uncomfortable conversations if that's what it came to. And if it could do that for me, I thought it could do that for other people. So that's—

yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And when you talk about the guilt, that is, um, is so common in grief. And it's, it's really interesting to me. I work with a lot of parents, and a lot of times parents, we feel responsibility for our children no matter how old they are, no matter what the circumstances are. But it's not just limited to parents. It's spouses, it's friends. We all, we all find ways to say, I should have done things better. Even if it's not— you had nothing to do with their passing, Maybe I wasn't as good a friend as I needed to be. And as you said, that release that people say to me, I wish I could just have one more conversation with them. I wish I could tell them I'm sorry. And my belief is that you can because they're still here. But what we don't get is the answer back. We don't get that. And we can try techniques, but it works for some people. It may not work for everybody. Where you're doing automatic writing or journaling or something like that. So this is a way you could actually get a response, correct?

And, and, and one, you know, point of clarification here, right? We are not talking to a person, right? This is not a digital séance. This is not some communication with the dead. It is not necromancy. It's not Black Mirror. What we're doing is we're talking We're having a conversation with this persona, this inner representation of that relationship that lives within us already. Mm-hmm. Right? Because what we know is that though the person may die, the relationship does not. And so we give that— we give you the— an outlet for naming that experience, for giving it language. Where it didn't previously exist. And, you know, since the last time we spoke, and, you know, so where Guardian Angels started, right, was kind of that digital séance space. It— that wasn't intentional, but that's where it started, right? The idea was have this conversation with your lost loved one, it will help you achieve— I don't like the word closure— so resolution, right? So that you can move forward. And while that worked for me, it was accidental in how I got there. And I had been on this journey for 13+ years.

Hmm.

So to expect somebody who's in the throes of it to be dropped in there and just start talking to an AI that might sound a little too much like a person that they miss, are meeting them at their, arguably their most vulnerable point. Is very slippery at best.

Yeah.

And so what we've done is we have, you know, I brought on some licensed therapists that specialize in grief to help me put some guardrails on this thing, to, to give it form and structure. And so what we've done is turn this into basically an interactive journal where journaling used to be a monologue, it's now a dialogue.. And so your persona, or we kind of have a trap, kind of a catch-all track of just a— call it a grief counselor for people that aren't comfortable with, with the idea of, of have conversing with that, that presence that walks you through Worden's Four Tasks of Mourning, which, you know, is an evidence-based framework for dealing with loss. And so these, all of these prompts that you get at predefined intervals, whether that's, you know, 3 times a week, 5 times a week, or daily, are designed to help you. Task 1 is to accept the loss. Task 2 is to process the pain of the loss. And this was the one that I struggled with for so long because I just didn't want to. I, I found every reason to numb and cope and run. Um, Task 3 is to adjust to a world without your loved one, and that, you know, obviously in a physical sense. Because of what, you know, what we talked about before. The relationship still exists. And then Task 4, and this is really kind of where Guardian Angels differentiates itself, is really finding that enduring connection while moving forward. So how do we integrate grief into our life? How do we weave it into our life? Because we don't get to leave it behind, no matter how much we may want to. And so now we have something where someone logs on and they have a roadmap. They have something tangible that they can hold on to that, that gives them just that little bit of control back, knowing that they're making incremental progress, even in a time that feels utterly chaotic.

So just so I understand it, when you and I talked, it was like you were talking to your person. And we, and you never said this is your actual person. This was a representation. Um, because AI gets all kinds of— there's all kinds of misunderstandings. And frankly, there are some people— I interviewed a woman that says she uses AI to communicate with the spirit world. That's, that's a whole different thing. That's not what you've ever claimed to be doing. So, but now it's more of a, uh, as you said, an interactive journal, it sounds like. So you're not actually talking to your person anymore, is that true?

Well, okay, so we have the two traps, right? The one is the grief counselor who's going to help you dig into these things. The other one is we still use that persona that we created initially.

Okay.

And that becomes your grief guide.

Okay.

And it helps you interact with that, you know, that familiar presence can help people open up, but also those difficult feelings surrounding specifically their loss, you know. So the journal prompts for the counselor might be, what is something that made you think of your, you know, the person you lost that caught you off guard today? Versus, you know, if it's your persona, what is something you wish you could say to me right now that you can't?

Yeah.

Or what are some unresolved feelings? So there's that— you get— there's that kind of— you can latch on to the fact that I am dealing with specifically the loss of this person and forging that enduring connection in a way that wasn't previously possible.

Yeah. Yeah, I love the way you said that. You know, you know, I always say that love never dies, relationship never dies, and the relationship is still there. So again, spiritually, whether whatever people believe, you could still— that relationship still exists. You still love that person. You know, you still, you still want to have that, that, that closure, but that, that resolution. You know, as you say, we want to be able to resolve those feelings and be able to integrate those feelings. And again, sometimes it's very, very difficult if we have something that's like a burning thing that I want to say to this person, and you're not really being able to make that connection. I could see how this could definitely help with that. And you've added a lot to it since the last time we spoke with the, with the guided journaling, because I think that could be extremely helpful also, where people getting some sort of assistance.

And real quick, there's one other thing that, you know, that I think you brought up there that I want to touch on. Sure. And that is, I truly believe one of the biggest reasons that we are resistant to healing is rooted in the way that we talk about it. And this, I, you know, things like words like closure and things like moving on versus moving forward, right?

Yes, absolutely.

There's this feeling that we have to forget, whether implied explicitly or implicitly, that we're supposed to just leave them behind, and we don't want to do that. And so when we can reframe the conversation around healing as, no, no, you don't have to leave them behind, we're just finding a way to carry them with you in a healthy way, a way that doesn't inhibit you from living a fulfilled life, so that you can then, you know, because you talk about legacy, you talk about— there's so much beauty that I have found in carrying your loved ones forward as a result of this journey that is— that I just didn't know existed. And so that reframing of, you know, because it really is— how often do people say things like, you know, it's been 6 months or it's been a year, fill in the blank, you need to move on?

Yes.

And that's not how it works. You know, that is— that's— I don't— I think it's well-intended, but it comes from a place of ignorance for someone who has not been through a significant loss in their life yet. Yeah, let's be clear, they will.

Yeah, yeah, that is an excellent, excellent point. You know, when I was doing my, my grief, uh, guide— my grief certification, grief educator certification— we talked about these different models of, of grief processing. And the old model, you know, going back to Freud, was like, the person's gone, you know, what you have is an unhealthy attachment, so you need to break this attachment and break the attachment, and then, as you said, move on. And Okay, that's great if you lose a job or something, or, you know, but when you, when you lose a, a person that's been such an important part of your life, you don't, you don't want to, to move on. So then some people, okay, well, that means I don't, I don't want to heal. So they'll actually hold on to the pain and hold on to that dysfunctional relationship because they think that's all they can have. So there is a, you know, we are moving forward and we talk about what we call continuing bonds now. Is that the bond continues. And again, whether you believe it like I do, that it's actually a bond because that person's still here, or whether you just say the relationship still exists, I still love this person, I still need to find a way to integrate this in my life, you know, that's— this is something that's a much healthier way of looking at it. So in, in terms of, um, in terms of AI, I mean, we're People have all kinds of feelings about AI. It's just, it's crazy. It's such a polarizing thing now. Some people think it's the best thing ever. The AI is gonna, you know, it's gonna improve the world. Other people think it's gonna take all of our jobs and it's gonna take our souls. Tell me, to you, what is AI and what is AI not? What are the limitations of it?

I think of AI a lot like I think of money, right? Some people, you know, there's always a spectrum of what people look at it, but it's a tool. Ultimately, money is a tool that can help us do things. It doesn't define our lives. It doesn't necessarily make them better. It can remove some problems and it can add others.

Yeah.

And that's how I view AI, is, is it is something that we can use if we use it the right way that can alleviate some of the, the things that we run into in modern life. As with anything, especially a profound new technology, there's always a potential for negative consequences, especially when we don't use them responsibly, when we attach too much meaning to them, when we, um, you know, have them take an outsized place in our life. You know, I think that the, the best way we can live is balanced, and we're inherently bad at that. I'm patient zero for being unbalanced, but it's still something that, that's what we're looking for. Um, what AI is not is the answer. Hmm. The, the what, what we have been very careful to do with this specific implementation, as we, as we strive to do good with it, is ensure that we're not— that it's not giving people answers, and it's not trying to give people answers. What it does, a lot like in therapy, is it asks questions, because the answers are in here. They come from us. We're just trying to understand our experience more, understand what we're feeling, so that we can accurately diagnose what we're, what we're feeling, right? And so that is how we've approached this is if you're looking for the meaning of life and you're looking for this like magic pill, this, this quick fix, like this isn't for you. This is for people who are willing to do the hard work because that's what it is. Healing is not a passive activity. It is not something where you have just a profound breakthrough one day and you're done. It is an exercise in incremental progress over time, consistency in moving forward no matter how minimal though it might seem in the moment. You know, this is an Atomic Habit if you're familiar with James Clear, right? It's a 1% better every day. And the journey is not linear. There's days when we're gonna slide back. There's days when just getting out of bed is the way. Yeah. Um, so it's— we've tried to be very intentional about how we've built it, that we're not trying to replace therapy, we're trying to complement therapy, that we're trying to make this a tool, understanding that it isn't going to be the right tool for everyone. We don't want people to think this is the end-all be-all, that if I just use this, I'm going to magically be healed. Yeah, it's not how it works.

Yeah, John, I have to say you have a profound understanding of the subject. Is that based upon your 13 years? Is that because of since you've been working with these therapists, you know, on the, on the product for the last however long it's been?

Um, I think it's just— I, I think it's a little bit of A, a little bit of B, a little bit of something else, you know. And I've At this point, I consider myself lucky to have had the experiences that I've had. Hmm. You know, I'm a big believer in bless the broken road, and the things that have happened in my life led me here. Now I have the opportunity to have deep purpose aligned with what I want to do for a living, aligned with, you know, my family, and the lessons that grief teaches us about life a broader life and how, how can I impart those to my son? Everything is finally in alignment. So this is something that I have a deep passion for and purpose behind that has made it very easy to go down these rabbit holes and trying to understand what I've been experiencing, but also understanding that my experience is my own and that it doesn't necessarily translate in how someone else is going to experience this. And so You know, I really want to foot stomp to everyone that might be listening. This is not about me anymore. This is bigger than me. And this is— there's a lot of potential here, but that potential rests on other people giving candid feedback about how this might help them or, or how it's not helping them. Yeah, this is about tackling one of life's only truly universal experiences because it is. And in order to take, you know, to tackle big problems, you have to take big swings. So are we done? Absolutely not. Is there much room for improvement? There's a ton. And I just, I would plead with people to try it and tell me what they think.

Yeah. I, and I'm curious, John, uh, are— it's a lot of people, again, we're, we're scared, we think AI is going to take our jobs. And as you've worked with therapists, has anybody been hesitant to say, oh no, no, we can't use this because, you know, this is the only way we can do therapy, and, and you're trying to, you're trying to substitute this for, you know, traditional therapy?

No, because I've been very clear from the very beginning that I do not want to replace personal, you know, in-person therapy. I don't want to replace traditional therapy. It's— there is a place for it. There is a big place for it. It has worked wonders for me. I see this more as an extension of an ability, you know, a platform that can help therapists extend their reach. It can help them, you know, it helped them with limitations that they can't do anything about. You know, they don't have any more time, but they don't— they can't take phone calls at 3 AM. Right. So this is on demand. It allows people an outlet, a meaningful outlet to, to engage when they don't have other resources at their disposal. And that gives them the opportunity to organize their thoughts, to catalog their thoughts so that when they go to therapy, they can be more effective. They can have a starting place. They can say, this is exactly what I was feeling at that moment. Now let's dig into it. As opposed to, you know, I've certainly had the experience where the first 20 to 30 minutes of a session, we're just beating around the bush trying to figure out what to talk about, you know. And there, and then all of a sudden you only have half an hour, and then you have to wait at minimum a week, if not more, to get to the next session. So I look at it as a bridge to get people from session to session. Well, they can continue to make incremental progress in between. And I— that is, that's how I wanted to build it from the very beginning, because I know the value of therapy. And I want therapists to champion this. I want them to, again, same thing I said to the users, I want them to help me build something that is more relevant to them. Yeah, that is more relevant to their clients that can help them help more people.

Yeah. Yeah, I, and that's kind of the way I view AI. I was reading something the other day about, you know, AI, and it's like, it doesn't help you do things that you wouldn't be able to do otherwise. It helps you do things faster, more efficiently. It helps you to extend yourself as a resource. You know, like you said, I've got clients, they can't call me at 3 o'clock in the morning. They're not going to talk to me every day. And they have feelings and they want to express them. And being able to put it into something where we could both have access to it, maybe, or they could share access, would be extremely beneficial to say, This is what I was feeling at 3 o'clock in the morning, as you, as you said.

Yeah, you know, and I, I think some of the other fear that we have about AI is just rooted in misunderstanding about what it does and how it functions, right? But the concept of it is like, you know, we have this boogeyman, this idea that this thing is actually sentient, that it's actually thinking, and that it is going to take our jobs. And it's very possible that it is going to take some jobs. Right?

Sure.

Like, just like the tractor took a lot of jobs, just like, you know, the, the assembly line took a lot of jobs. It happens, right? But it typically, technology gives us the ability to introduce a whole host of more jobs, right? Potentially more meaningful jobs. I don't need to go, we don't need to go down there, but the point I wanted to make was that what AI is, is a very powerful statistical probability machine. It is not actually thinking. It is just putting together patterns that it can't, you know, the neural network, which is what it is built on, was, they came up with that and I believe the '40s, it's been around for 80 years. And the difference is we had computers then that could process tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of data points. Now we have the computing power to process trillions. And mean reversion theory says that it gets pretty good at predicting what's next. And really all that is, is what is the next word based on this word before it and the words in front of it that says the probability based on this context is this is the next word. It is not thinking. It is not saying, oh, I know what's happening. You know, that's just not how it works. Now, you know, yeah, maybe there's a world where we get to that point, but that's not how it works.

Yeah, I think that's an excellent point that I, I'm— and I don't pretend to understand it at a super deep level, but I do understand that it's not sentient even though it can do things like humans do. And people— it's really funny to me because I think about when I was in high school, I had a calculator, and my calculator could do math way better than I could. But nobody ever said my calculator was sentient because it could do math. No one ever said my calculator was intelligent. These language models are doing the same thing with language as my calculator did with math. It doesn't mean they're sentient, but they can approximate it. And then so we look at it as humans and say, well, if they can do this, it must be thinking. They're, they're not. And if you interact with them for any amount of time, you can find out, you know, they, they're brilliant in some ways and they're really, really stupid in other ways.

Yeah, well, they're, you know, that technology reflects back at us what we give it. Yeah, it's a reflection of us. That's why, you know, the algorithm on social media gives us exactly what we want, whether we want to admit it or not, what we consume is what it gives us.

Exactly.

Um, you know, it's a, it's a, if you, the outputs are only as good as the inputs, in other words. And so when we give it garbage, it gives us back garbage. It just, I mean, I, I don't know how to say it other than that.

There's, there's not, you know, yeah, I think that's, that's, that is the way to say it. And again, for people to understand, you know, even though you can use this and, and talk to it and it seemingly you know, has feelings. It doesn't, uh, it's, it's not the same as talking to a person. And again, we have to be careful and understand the limitations, but also the power that it has, because it does have a great deal of power. And that's why I love about what you're doing. You take this a very— it's a cautious approach. You're taking a well-measured approach. You're not saying this is the be-all and end-all. And I've— again, I've seen people say, well, my AI is, is talking to spirit. And I'm like, I don't really think that's happening. I, I really, I really don't. I'm not saying it's impossible, but let's look at it for, for what it is. Um, and it, and it could be a useful tool to help people that maybe can't afford to go to therapy as often, so as an adjunct to that, or people who may not feel comfortable saying certain things to another human being. That they might feel more comfortable putting in and into a computer. So there can be some benefits to it.

Well, that's a big one, and that's something that I've uncovered in this, and that's what helped me, right, is, is a lot of people aren't ready for therapy. A lot of people aren't ready to talk about their, their issues out loud. They're not ready to share. And what I've learned throughout this whole thing is that the— that's where the healing lives, is in the sharing.

Yes, yes.

And, and to, to to have an outlet where you can start flexing that muscle, where you can start sharing in, in this risk-free environment, because it's just a machine and you, and it's— this machine is a reflection of you, right? You start to realize that that sharing isn't going to kill you.

Yeah.

And then maybe you gain the confidence once your thoughts are organized and you're comfortable with this narrative and you understand a little bit more about what you're feeling, to go take that to a therapist or your close family members or close friends. And that snowball starts to get momentum. Yeah. And then maybe you take it into public and there's this beautiful, you know, this, this thing just happens over and over again. Is somehow grief has us believing that we— no one else can understand what we're going through, even though everyone's been through it, right? But the idea that once you share, that unlock for someone else happens where it says, oh, I'm not the only one that feels like that. Maybe I should start sharing too.

Yeah, that is such an excellent point. And, you know, I know that grief, grief needs to be witnessed. People that are in grief need to be heard. But I was just being interviewed the other day, and someone asked me about, you know, if you run across people that you haven't been able to help, or you don't, you know, and I'm like, typically, by the time someone comes to me, they're, they're desperate, they've done other work, you know, whatever. But there is that stage where people do like— and I've met people like this, and I've had people tell me, I really want this person to reach out to you, but they say they're not ready yet. And you do have to be ready for this, you know, you have to be, you have to be willing to be vulnerable in front of another person, to sit down and tell someone something that you might be ashamed of. And this could be a bridge into that, where you get, like you said, you get practice with getting this stuff out and getting it to move through you.

That's, that's a key phrase there, a bridge. We want this to not have people stuck in the tech silo that we arguably already in, right? But a bridge to human connection, a bridge to that understanding that I can do this, that, you know, and, you know, this idea of community, that's what this species is built on, that our, our whole is greater than the sum of our parts. We lean on each other because some of us are better at this than others. But what happens when you share too is maybe someone you know has been through something similar and they can give you a little bit of, you know, hey, this worked for me. Maybe it does work for you, maybe it doesn't, but that goes both ways too. You have different experiences than someone else, and when we stop living and existing in this just isolated chamber, right, when we branch out, we start to realize how we can cross-pollinate and help each other's experience. And that's why that bridge is so important in getting there. And, and this is just the, you know, one way to, to meet people where they are and help bring them along, get them to cross that bridge so that they can, they can then, you know, help themselves and help others.

Yeah. So, John, um, it's been a few months since we first spoke, and I know that, that the platform has developed. Um, have you had any experience with people saying, I'm using this, or I've used this and it's really helped me?

So, uh, not really. And the, you know, I, to be perfectly candid, the, the switch to the journal happened in mid-December.

Oh, okay.

And so I was— and I'm a one-man shop at this point, so development is pretty slow.

Okay.

Um, it's been mostly, you know, since the holidays were over, beginning of January, we've been doing a lot of this sort of thing that's, you know, for, for awareness. Mm-hmm. And we're starting to get some signups and I will have much more actionable and insightful data in the coming months, but I don't have anything yet to really say for or against.

Okay.

You know, I will be the first to tell you that I didn't— if you were to interview someone that says this is how you launch a business, I have probably done everything wrong. But, you know, but I, I live in the conviction knowing that what this did for me, that this— there's something here. And we may have to iterate a few more times before we get there, but, but we're going slow, like you pointed out, to make sure that we're safe. I have specifically not taken on investment, uh, I don't, you know, for the simple reason that I can't have someone else telling me what we need. I can't say, you know, we can't put the profit motive above the mission. You know, I've had, I've had those conversations with potential investors that just says, look, if you're, if you're trying for the, you know, if you're looking for a 5-year exit, this isn't for you. I'm going to make decisions that are counter to the bottom line. I'm going to make decisions that say we need to go slower instead of implementing the newest, funnest technology that's going to get people on there for that reason. That we need to let other people make the mistakes first and, and ensure that we can validate the safety, uh, with anything that we do. And so this isn't the, you know, to be perfectly candid with people, this isn't the most streamlined user experience, you know, well slick app. There's still a long way to go, um, but that is, you know, there's a reason for that, and that reason is that we're doing it as slowly and as safely and as guided by the user experience and what users need and want as we can.

Yeah. Well, I love what you just said. It's really interesting to me as you're talking, um, because this is more of a mission for you, I would say, than a business. This is not a matter of you trying to make money. This is a matter of you serving humanity. This is a matter of you sharing what, what you have been given through your experience and passing that along to other people. And sometimes those things are going to have, have tension between, like you said, you know, the, the desire to go fast and the biggest, slickest thing. And, you know, people, you know, asking like, well, how many users do you have? You know, uh, what's your social media reach? You know, all those types of things. Whereas, you know, building it slowly and building it safely, that's not the way we typically do things.

Right. Well, you know, yes, it is a mission. I also, to be, you know, to be honest, I believe there is a business here. I believe there's a business model that works. It's just not the one that you see in Silicon Valley.

Right, right.

And so, you know, money would help. It would help speed up some development. It would allow me to bring on some more experts to make sure that we do this, all this right. Right. I actually, so I, I, uh, You know, I heard that Warren Buffett's going to donate most of his, his fortune before he dies.

Yeah.

So I wrote him a letter, you know, I don't know if he's found it or if he's read it, but I just said, look, this is what I'm trying to do. Yeah. If you feel like doing something with, with some of that, that we could build a foundation or something that would help fund this so that I can, I can reach more people, that would be awesome, you know. So Warren, if you're listening, um, read the letter. Yeah. But, you know, so I— the, the point is that I, I really struggle with trying to put a dollar figure on this because I don't believe that your income should dictate if you deserve help or not. Yeah. Um, so there's, there's the— that is the tension for me.

Yeah, yeah. And, and I, and I hear you. And when I, when I say it's more of a mission than a business, I, I'm really saying it's not one or the other. There's, there's always kind of a balance when you're doing— I would consider what you're doing spiritual work, where you're, you're doing work to help humanity. You're not, you know, I don't know, making chemicals for lawns. I can't think of an example right now. Making vacuum cleaners. I mean, you're doing things that you want to change people's inner lives. And so I work with a lot of people in this space, and a lot of us struggle with, as you said, how do I put a monetary value on the service that I have? And no matter what you do, someone's going to criticize you. They're going to say you're charging way too much. Why are you charging that much? Or other people are going to say, well, you're not charging enough. You're never going to be able to make a living doing that. So there's trying to find that sweet spot when you're doing something like this is, is difficult. And I appreciate your candor. But, you know, as we're, as we're talking, as people are listening and someone might say, well, what can I do to help? Well, John, what do you feel like you need right now? Is it more users? Is this— what is it you feel like you need?

I need users. I need users and I need that feedback. So, anyone that is even curious, maybe you haven't lost someone to— what we know is grief is all around us, right? So, it's not just death. There's things that can actually— Absolutely. You know, we lose someone to addiction, they spiral into addiction and they're not the same person they were before. You know, I have a friend from high school whose brother had a mental break and they haven't seen him for 10 years now. Is he dead? I believe they have confirmation he's not, but obviously he's not the person that they knew. So there's, there's grief all around us. And I think that it's more applicable to most people's lives than they give it credit for, but it's, it's really users and feedback. And so we have, you know, if you get on there and you're curious, there's a 7-day free trial with any subscription that you sign up for. It's automatically applied. There's no promo code or no opt-in or anything. It just happens. And then for those that are actually, you know, that want to take this a little bit further because of the idea that this is all about incremental progress and my belief in that, if you're willing to do the work, meaning if you get on there and you do 80% of your journal prompts in the first 10 weeks, that's our flagship program is the 10-week fundamentals or foundations. Excuse me. I'm going to give you 90 days for free. So Again, it's just about building that muscle because at the end of those 90 days, you're going to see something. Is this going to magically cure you? I want to reiterate, the answer is no. But you're going to find something out about yourself. You're— it may make your therapy sessions much more effective. It may— you may have uncovered some stuff that you haven't been asking because what we know about journaling too, when we journal on our own, we can protect ourselves, right? We can— there are certain subjects that we may or may not go into, right, subconsciously or, or consciously, right? And this is designed to ask you questions that are going to help you address each of those 4 tasks that we talked about and get to the other side where you have it now, have better understanding of where you're at, what you're experiencing, and, and what your life looks like knowing that grief isn't something you can get rid of.

Yeah. And, and speaking of journaling, because again, a lot of times when I talk to people about that, they're like, what does that mean? How does that look? You know, I, I buy a journal and a pen. What do I do? What do I write? How do I, how do I get started? You know, and there are some online journals now. I know Apple's journal, you know, it can give you prompts and stuff. But to have something that's specialized around this experience, that's giving you prompts that are customized toward going through this experience, that, that would be, I would think, extremely valuable for people who don't have this experience of like just sitting down and writing out my thoughts. And I love what you also said about self-protection, right? There's certain things that we are either consciously or subconsciously maybe steer clear of. And sometimes those are the very things we need to talk about the most.

Right. Well, and you know, there's one more thing there, right? The beauty of this is the prompt— it's going to give you a prompt that maybe you thought of or you didn't. But because of the flexible nature of AI, if you don't know what to say, you can say that, and it'll ask the question in a different way. It'll help you ask clarifying questions so you can get there. So If you don't know where to start, you know, which I think is where a lot of people are with grief, is there's just this, I don't know what to do. You can sit down with it and it'll ask you the question and, and a perfectly reasonable answer is, I don't know, or all of it, or I have no idea, my head is spinning. Mm-hmm. And that is a, as long as you start and you put something down, it is going to guide you to a place where you get something out of it. Yeah. So there isn't this writer's— this idea of like writer's block or the mental block where you're, you know, just keep— you can say, I don't know, 12 times in a row, and then maybe on the 13th time it asks it in a way that says, oh, maybe now, okay. And, you know, and, and you can go back, and if you want to record all that, you're going to have— be able to look at that.

Yeah, yeah. And for people that haven't messed around with AI, I've been, I've been on using it for a year and a half or 2 years now, I guess, you know, with Cloud and ChatGPT and stuff, you know, uh, you may not understand that. It's like you can say— because sometimes I'll have it help me to write something, and I'm also like, I don't have any ideas today, give me some ideas. And based upon what it knows about me, it'll say, well, how about this? And then I'm like, that— it's kind of like when you say, I don't know which one I'm going to do, and you ask someone, they say, you know, this, and you say, no, I don't want to do that. Because then you get an idea. It's like, no, I don't want to talk about that, but let's talk about this. And it can, it can again, it's not a real human being, but can mimic that and kind of get you to be more creative and open up and to say things that, again, you might be ashamed to say in front of a stranger the first time you meet them. So people— let's talk about people go to the website. What will their experience be? What will they find?

So what you'll find, it's guardianangels.ai, as you alluded to at the beginning. Ai-ngls. On the landing page, you're going to find all sorts of information about Wordens for Tasks and our methodology. There is a function right there on the landing page to try a prompt. So it's not going to be personalized at this point, just because you haven't— there's— it has no data about you, but it's going to give you that starting point. You can respond to it and it'll— you'll start to see what the workflow looks like and what it feels like to have a starting place and to dig into it a little bit. Um, you know, all sorts of frequently asked questions, all sorts of information about that. Um, there's a— in the footer, there's all my socials that are linked. There's a press page where you can listen to other, other interviews, other podcasts that I've been on. Um, but basically anything Guardian Angels that you could possibly want to, to know is on there. My story, the, you know, story of the, the 3 friends that I lost, uh, you know Yeah, there's a contact form if, if you want to reach out to me, because I would love that. I really— I, I need help doing this because it's not about— if it was about me, I'd be done, right?

Yeah, right, right.

I, I've done what I need to do to get myself off and running on my own personal journey. Mm-hmm. But I want to hear what's relevant for other people. I want to hear how this helped them or how it didn't.

Yeah.

And so to your point earlier, users engaging with what we're doing in a meaningful way is, is gold for me. And that goes for if this didn't help you, that is fine, right? Like, I want to hear that too, right? It's, you know, there, there is a world where this is not, you know, the, the— this isn't the right thing.

Yeah.

I don't think that's the case. I think that there is so much to be squeezed from this, you know, from from this opportunity and what we're doing here. But I've been wrong before. I'm open to the fact that that's a possibility.

Well, you be— I think you're being very realistic there. It's not going to be for everyone. Um, it's just, it's interesting. My daughter is a mental health, mental health counselor, and she likes doing in-person sessions. She thinks that's really important to be in person with people. The work that I do, I've never been in the same room with any of my clients. I have clients all over the world. I I do it by Zoom. Some people will say, I don't want to, I don't want to type into a computer. But, you know, some people are going to embrace it because they do like the kind of the anonymity, and they don't want to maybe necessarily look in someone's eyes the first time that they're doing this. And they may be ashamed to cry. You know, as you said, these, these can bring up some really deep things, and people can really ugly cry sometimes. And this might be for those people, a way to practice that in a safe space. So it's not going to be for everyone, but I think it could be for, you know, for a lot of people. And, you know, it's again, you don't have to build anything for everyone. Nothing works for everyone.

Right. Well, you know, and there's one more thing there, right? You said, you know, people may not want to type. People may not want to write, right? Like that. I think a lot of people don't enjoy the idea of writing it. Yeah. Like a school.

Yeah.

Here's the beauty of technology. Do it on your phone and use the voice-to-text, and you never have to write anything. You just talk to it, send, talk to it, send. It all— it's still the same function. It's still the same thing that's happening. We're just trying to remove as much friction as possible because friction is ultimately what stops people from doing the work to heal.

Oh, so you— I was going to ask, you do have voice-to-text built into it then?

Not built into it, but into every, you know, into your phone, right? You have voice-to-text on your phone, so when you— if you, you know, we, I— we're not in the App Store yet, that's going to be a little while, but it's optimized for mobile. And when you, you know, if you click on the, the input field, you can just click voice to text and you talk to it and it'll write it out for you.

Okay, okay.

And then, you know, you've got sent. So, and you can do that on your computer as well. I, you know, most browsers have something like that integrated, and I believe every phone on the planet at this point that's still supported has something like that.

Yeah, it's, it's funny because we're again, we're talking about what's for everyone and what's not. There's a new app I've been playing around with called Whisper Flow or Whisper, and you can— on my computer, I could just push this button and I can talk to it in any app. So in my email or whatever, it does voice-to-text. And I'm like, I've been typing for 50 years, so I could type almost as fast as I could talk. I don't use it, um, but I know a lot of people do like the voice-to-text.

Well, you know, that is the other thing that AI is great at. It's optimized for how do people think. It's optimized for voice to text.

Yeah.

So where, you know, that's part of the whole rewiring our brain to use AI is we're still using it like it's Google, you know, and typing, trying to use keywords, whereas you can just talk to AI in stream of consciousness like it comes out of your head and it's going to understand what you're doing.

Yeah, yeah.

You can say, um, and you can say say, well, you know, today I was thinking about this and it led me to this and now I'm here and this is frustrating and I heard, you know, whatever, it's going to process that just as well as it would, uh, you know, an SEO-optimized query.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, it's great. I'm, I'm really excited for you. I, I, I love the, the passion that you've got and you've, you've shown to me a deep understanding and a deep um, concern for this area. So it's not like you're just like, oh, let me build this, this app and I can make a lot of money on this. It's more like you're coming at this like, how can I, how can I serve? How can I put this out there and help people? And it comes across very clearly in what you're doing.

Well, thank you, because I've certainly, you know, the internet's not necessarily a kind place, and I've gotten everything, you know, throw this back in Mordor, you're doing the devil's work, 'What a grifter,' you know, all the stuff. Hey, sweet, uh, you know, it's not for everyone at the end of the day, right? I, I don't know. I, I don't know what to say to those, those people other than smile and say okay.

But, um, yeah, well, I think you, you mentioned earlier, you know, taking big swings. Anytime you take big swings, there's always going to be the haters. They're always gonna— they're always gonna be the critics. I try to present to people, like, just present them the information, let people make their own decisions. Again, I mentioned AI even earlier. Some people are going to— they're going to see the title of this episode, they're going to be completely turned off. Other people are going to see it and they're going to say, this is— this is intriguing. What can I— what can I do with this? And those are the people you're trying to reach, people who are open-minded to taking a different approach. And again, I think you have a very, very reasonable approach. You're not saying this is going to replace therapists, or this is going to fix your problem in 10 weeks. And we've, we've all seen those people. Um, so you're, you're— I think you're doing great work. I, I really appreciate it.

Yeah, well, you know, I think that that's that one— the last thing that I want to touch on, right, is, is your point. For me, this is all about radical transparency. I will answer any question, difficult or otherwise, that anyone has, because for number one, how sensitive the space is, but how much of a lightning rod the way that we're going about it is. So the goal is not to trick people to get onto the platform. The goal is to give people all of the information so that they can make an informed decision about whether or not this is going to work for them, or whether or not they're even curious enough to see if it works for them, right? You know, if you make, if you make an informed decision whether that's to work with us or not then bravo, you know, I support that decision. Yeah, what I, you know, and I can't do anything about it, but I don't support people making uninformed decisions on either side, right? I don't want, you know, just jumping, you know, that's why we have the trial and the ability to kind of back out if you, you know, you want to try it, you know. But I want people to do what's best for them because the goal is healing. The goal isn't using my platform.

Yeah, love it. Thank you. That's so, so profound. So for people that are listening, and not— there will be a link in the show notes, but it's guardianangels.ai. Is that correct?

Correct. And I'll just say it on here, john@guardianangels.ai. If you have questions, reach out to me. You know, if there's something that works for you, reach out to me. If you just want to tell me you love this or you hate this, reach out to me. I, you know, I just want to engage with people. I just want to understand what, what's working for them and what's not.

Yeah, well, I appreciate that very much. Well, John, great to see you again. Um, everybody, you know, if you're at all curious, go, go check out the platform and let John know what you think.

I appreciate that.

All right, have a great day.

Likewise.

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