Latest / Biohacking Autism with Nadia Elkhatib. / 20-MIN ESSENTIALS: Autism Tech, AI, AAC & 600+ Companies with Dan Feshbach

Transcript

20-MIN ESSENTIALS: Autism Tech, AI, AAC & 600+ Companies with Dan Feshbach · Biohacking Autism with Nadia Elkhatib.

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He basically told his mother,
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I live in silence.
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I want a normal life.
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I have friends, I have a real job
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and I can speak normally.
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I'm building another company for non-speakers.
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That's a platform
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to digitize the letterboard.
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600 companies across fifteen categories.
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Digital support animals.
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Glasses or eyewear.
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A communication coach or practitioner
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in virtual space.
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You haven't heard of any of these three things, right?
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No.
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I think the potential of AI is only limited by imagination.
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It's literally filling my heart with hope and joy.
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Welcome back to Biohacking Autism,
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the show about real solutions for people with autism and the ones who love them.
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I'm Nadia Elkhatib and when I think about Jimmy's future,
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I keep coming back to a question that is much bigger than any one therapy,
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a school, or service. So, what's gonna happen when the amount of human support
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our children need is simply more?
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Then the system can provide, and our numbers are increasing every day.
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And could technology become part of the answer?
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So I haven't stopped thinking about that.
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And because I think there may be two enormous opportunities at the same time:
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one biomedical using AI to make sense of huge messy data sets,
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and perhaps help us find patterns,
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biological subgroups, and eventually,
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frankly, better answers. The other is much more immediate and human.
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Communication, connection, safety,
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social navigation, and independence.
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That is why I wanted today's guest here.
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Dan Feshbach and I are both in the Bay Area in Silicon Valley,
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and we have crossed paths so many times over the years through conversations around
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autism, technology, and research.
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And Dan is a social entrepreneur,
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and he is the founder and chairman of the board of ~ the nonprofit called Multiple.
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So today I want to start with Reed,
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then zoom all the way out to the future AI,
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assistive technology, hardware,
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brain-computer interfaces, adulthood independence,
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and what the next generation of autism companies could actually make possible.
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So Dan welcome to Biohacking Autism.
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and ~ it'll be I I'm looking forward to your questions
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So before we talk about companies or technologies,
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I'd love to start with Reed. So can you take me back to when he was diagnosed?
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What did the world look like for your family then and what was missing that
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you desperately wished at the time existed?
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Well that was let's see, that was roughly thirty-one years ago.
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So the in in those days, first,
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you get the diagnosis or the word.
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And you're devastated. I I can't imagine any parent not going kind of like wanted
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to crawl in a cave, right?
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And you're just, you don't know what it means,
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you don't know what's gonna happen.
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so you kind of pick yourself up,
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like all parents. we don't have a choice,
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but we often we all do. And ~ in those days,
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it was literally a desert.
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So with Reed, he was a very curious kid,
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loved to look at books, loved to he had some language that he lost
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or pointing that he lost, and the journey began ~ to try to,
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put something together. So,
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We had ideas early on, but they all centered around,
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okay, how's this kid gonna get an education?
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Right? and how are
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Yeah. Okay, education. focus.
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we gonna, you know, bring the best tools available to him?
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And ~ and we learned a lot from families,
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primarily families, but also some good therapists.
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and looking at it then compared to now,
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I mean we're in the beginning,
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if not a literal oasis compared to where we were before.
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and some of it's just by the sheer nature of autism and the number
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of people affected and the number of people who
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Basically have, you could say have no choice but to create and build.
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So I mean that's the beginning.
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~ and I would add one more thing.
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Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
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His biggest challenge
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has always been the ability to communicate.
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So that's been the theme in my life that holds everything I do around
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is kind of focused around that.
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So then you had this missing piece,
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was which was his education and communication.
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And then it became something that you build,
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but just not something that you wished.
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Well, maybe you wished somebody would build it,
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but it didn't happen. So you just built it yourself.
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So it helped you le it led you to co-found ~ Teachtown.
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So what problem were you trying to solve and what did building Teachtown teach
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you about the difference between a technology that looks impressive
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and a technology families and school will actually use?
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Well, that's probably several hours,
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but I'll try to bring it, you know,
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bring it in tight. first, we started with co-founding a school with four other
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families for Reed in Marin. And that school had no curriculum.
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We were making it up as we went.
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and ~ and out of that was two kind of two general problems.
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So one was
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that the rate of learning language for my son was way too
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way too s low
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The there's a lot of methodologies and approaches to to language learning that
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I looked into in s in a lot of depth.
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And so, we didn't have really access to that kind of expertise.
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So we started off, building Teachtown to try to really make up for that gap.
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One was my son loved Sesame Street.
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He loved Disney. He got access to these wonderful living books,
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and nothing looked like that.
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That you could build without mil probably millions then,
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but you know, and we ultimately did spend millions in building the
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in building this product and the company.
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But so, you know, we learned the hard way.
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And the hardest thing for me was that Reed ultimately rejected Teachtown,
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never wanted to use it, never was interested,
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and even when we brought in incredible animated characters.
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from a from the a man named Terry Thoren who who basically created
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the Rugrats after his own kid's image.
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And we had the top
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Mm-hmm. Wow.
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animation, you know, you couldn't get a better animation producer than Terry Thoren
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and and no, it we it you know it didn't resonate.
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The characters didn't resonate with him.
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how do you make sure the thing that you're building
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really resonates and can work for families right now.
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I think I mentioned earlier that we think about the speed of family.
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We don't think about what's going to happen in 15 years from now.
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Mm-hmm.
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Today you can build and test so fast with AI.
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there's so many different advantages that AI gives you,
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its ability to actually write code itself.
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I'm building another company for non-speakers.
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that's a platform that involves the ability to everything from digitize
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the letterboard all the way through
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being able to report and monitor sessions and get reports on actually what happened
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in a session. So all of these things can be done.
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I prototyped a lot of them myself and we have
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Mm-hmm.
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a small team, tiny team. That would have been,
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you know, like twenty people when I started
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Yeah.
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on my journey as an entrepreneur.
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Yeah.
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So then what's the problem we're solving,
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right? At Multiple?
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the funds that were emerging in the space were not the
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first mile of capital. So I'm a zero
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Okay.
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to one person, meaning I like to take things from z nothing and getting them
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Again. Mm-hmm.
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started and then bringing in a a team ~
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Okay.
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along the way.
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Our accelerator, someone comes in,
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they go through a boot camp. They don't
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Bootcamp, okay.
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just get pitch coaching, they get business model challenging.
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They get the experience of, our CEO,
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who is a founder is a builder and a veteran in startups,
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as well as a really amazing
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call it coach they get that's Keevin O'Rourke and then they get Cait Russell
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who runs all operations but is also you know it's also they're all
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in the trenches for 12 weeks and it's intense.
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So you have an autism tech database and it says that there's more than
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600 companies across fifteen categories.
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Can you see patterns that
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most pattern parents can't see?
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yeah, for sure. And it's actually quite a lot more than that.
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More.
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Because we're a bit
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bootstrapped, you know, we're a bit bootstrapped
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Okay.
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as an organization, we've we have cataloged privately more than we've
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put into the database, which we're in the middle of doing.
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So, you know, I would expect us to break a thousand.
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This is not about a shiny object going back to the beginning of our conversation.
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This is about this is about making something that really works.
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And no parent wants to go into a database and get 10 results and have
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to vet it themselves, right?
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there's so many apps out there.
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This, by the way, our tech doesn't speak to the many unvetted,
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unproven apps that have never been
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reviewed professionally or academically that are you can get,
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you know, in the App Store or on Google.
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there's there's many claims that get made.
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You just have to go on Instagram.
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So there's Vanessa Gill has a company called Social Cipher,
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and it's for she is autistic and was early in her life not a speaker,
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and she's now a gifted leader,
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and she's very public about what she uses for herself,
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by the way, to manage her own emotions in her own situation.
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And her product itself is for neurodivergent youth to build their
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own social skills and knowledge.
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And and she has amazing traction in school districts,
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much faster than we did at Teachtown.
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I'm very high on a company called Unique Minds.
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Has a cognitively challenged daughter,
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and he started to build out a product of think of them as digital support animals.
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So you have your favorite, you know,
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you might have your favorite bear that you hug,
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or your favorite thing
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Mm-hmm.
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you go to bed with, or or a character you like,
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and they have built this incredible capability.
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To build all sorts of things for families in real time with AI,
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like you know, whether it's transition to school,
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whether it's brushing your teeth,
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Yes.
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whether it's so instead of a parent trying to cobble that together,
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you go there and you it's instant on.
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it's an app on your phone. Yeah.
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~ okay.
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so there's a neurodivergent founder out of Ireland who has something called
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the Focus Collective. And he's built
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Some glasses or eyewear that that dim peripheral vision
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and filter out distractions and create a calmer work environment.
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There are solutions, they just need to be implemented.
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And I see several ways that it could happen.
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One, of course, is biomedical,
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where AI may finally help us make sense of enormous fragmented data sets
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and see patterns. Human researchers just can't hold all at once,
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or definitely not parents either.
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Another is, and we talked about it a little bit,
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I would like to go a bit deeper,
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is assistive technology where AI could help the person with autism interface with
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the world around them. And then there is
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Again, another thing we spoke about a little bit,
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but maybe from a different point of view,
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and it's companionship, something consistent that could support communication,
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social skills, connection, independence,
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and maybe a little bit loneliness.
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So let's take those one at a time and let's start with the biomedical side.
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So on the biomedical side, autism research generates ~ enormous amounts
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of data across
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immune function, metabolism, microbiome,
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environment development. You spoke about seizures,
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behaviors, and clinical history.
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So do you think AI can help us connect those data sets,
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identify meaningful biological subgroups?
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~ what do you think AI can realistically change in in that field?
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wow. Okay, so I think of that possibly I think of that in a number of ways.
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Firstly,
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I think the potential of AI is only limited by imagination.
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And because it basically it it can do things that no human can do.
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But to your, you know, to to to finding patterns where you have incredibly smart
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researchers, physicians, specialists in all those areas,
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whether it's microbiome, whether it's
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the brain. So I think there's a just a lot going on in major university centers
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around the country and there's a lot there and I I think that's gonna yield results
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faster possibly.
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We have a great partnership at the University of Calgary with
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a professor named Diwakar Krishnamurthy
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who is building AR/VR solutions
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There's a communication coach or practitioner there is an avatar and a board
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Mm-hmm.
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in in virtual space. eventually,
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you can do letterboarding and not just letterboarding,
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but also things that regulate the body,
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regulate the adult or child through his work.
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And it it's also he is de he's come up with his own methodology based on research.
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So there's a committee of non-speaking autistic adults who
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it who are paid and advise and give feedback on the work.
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And he's a specialist now. he is a specialist now in understanding
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how to engage people that do not have speech or have limited speech and so
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on in the process.
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And it can work
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that's
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and that work can also work if somebody's not comfortable with the concept
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of a spelling and a letterboard.
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It can work with, any kind of device that requires pointing.
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Pointing and body movement,
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Okay.
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you know, so it could work with a traditional AAC device or anything.
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Yeah.
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there's a company that's building a mindfulness ~ sensory app that has no interface.
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It's just these sticks
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that young kids hold and helps them in emotional activity
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and regulation and and even
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with no screen. Yeah,
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Do they vibrate maybe? Is is that yeah.
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they do. They vibrate. They have different
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Yeah.
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haptics and different things. ~
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Love that.
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what does the future hold? Well I you know,
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firstly, I want my son to have
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Yes.
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friends. I've I've actually w one of his most most emotional sessions with
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the letterboard was how he described what a normal life was to have.
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So pardon me if I get a little
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teary about it, but he basically told his mother,
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you know, you know, I live in silence.
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I'm so sorry. This is so hard.
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And but but but the
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So
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other thing he said which was so great,
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he said I want a normal life.
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My normal life is I have I I go independently between mom and dad's.
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I have friends, I have a real job and and
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I can speak normally.
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the fact is it can be done. So tech supports those goals.
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it's not a life in and of itself.
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Like I don't want my kids' life mediated by technology.
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I want my I want Reed to be able to
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you know, improve his ability to communicate and hopefully speak.
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That's what he wants, right? And I think it's can be done,
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Yes. Yes. Yeah.
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right? And w whether that's
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Well
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biomedical, whether however that happens,
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what's the combination?
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Yes. Yeah.
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and, you know, we there's just so much that tech can help him.
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there's the AI software, but there's also the hardware and
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the connection between the hardware and the nervous system,
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right? So the thought of the thinking is neurotechnology and BCI,
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brain-computer interfaces.
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for autism, because there's been a lot of work done for strokes and
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for ~ traumatic brain injuries and and things like this.
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But there's a lot of work being done there.
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So what are your thoughts on that for our kids?
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Well, you know, you you have to pursue every every option,
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right? And it's shown, you know,
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it's clearly shown for stroke patients they can get they can communicate that way.
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And they can the you know, their words get displayed and get shared
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and get get heard. So we want that.
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Like I think, you know, how invasive do you want this to be?
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You know, we don't we we'd like it to be minimally invasive,
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of course.
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I'm hoping that it's not going to be fifteen years before before insight,
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No. Not acceptable.
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right? And before solutions. Right.
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No, we can't. Come on.
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Yeah.
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That's way too long. Unacceptable.
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Dan, this was such a great, great conversation.
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Thank
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Thank you.
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you so much. it moves the conversation beyond just technology,
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just for technology's sake. It's for families like yours and mine,
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So there's an opportunity, but in inside this very real need.
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So families are solving problems manually every single day and they're still waiting
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for someone to build a better tool.
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And that's what Dan is doing. So Dan,
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thank you so much for the work you've done for Reed,
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but also for the companies you're helping build and for the wider autism community.
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Thank you. It's I wanna just add one thing.
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It's not it's not a heroic effort.
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You know, I I do it with helping hands.
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I know you are. I know you are.
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And thank you for everything that you're doing.
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So hopefully
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Thank you.
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in a few years we'll be able to have a totally different conversation,
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you and I. So we'll be celebrating.
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Sure. Thank you.
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So
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and to everybody listening, if this conversation helped you imagine
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a different future for someone that you love,
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please share it with someone else.
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And don't forget to follow us wherever you listen or watch.
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I'm Nadia Elkhatib This is Biohacking Autism.
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Take care of yourselves and each other,
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and I'll see you on the next one.