House of the Rising Sunny

Shortly after Frank Poulsen was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, he began to self-isolate. That’s not uncommon: It’s difficult to engage socially when you have trouble remembering what you did that morning. Anger, he told me, was quick to follow. But the former wildland firefighter, a member of the elite hotshot crew, found a patient audience in Sunny, a new A.I. model that allows him to gather his thoughts before speaking. Their sessions have eased his anger and, according to his wife, Cheryl, made him noticeably happier.

“It sparks memory,” Frank told me.Sunny is an early offering from NewDays, a startup that hopes to leverage generative A.I. to treat millions of people with cognitive issues simultaneously.

Frank has been a beta tester from nearly the beginning. NewDays patients see a human clinician—a crucial component of their approach—about every two weeks, and in the interim, interact with Sunny on a near-daily basis, engaging in long-form conversational exercises intended to boost memory and assuage loneliness. The idea builds on Dr. Hiroko Dodge’s I-CONECT study, which found that regular telehealth calls with trained staff can reduce cognitive decline in patients over the age of 75. (Dodge, a professor of neurology at Harvard, also sits on the company’s advisory board.)

NewDays was founded by longtime technologists Babak Parviz and Daniel Kelly….

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