AI for personal growth

AI is rapidly transforming our lives with automated tools and innovations, such as AI girlfriends, assistants, travel guides, and even AI social networks.

Dot fits somewhere into these genres, but it’s a little different. Dot is not a therapist or a girlfriend — it’s more of a friend, a companion, and a confidant who strives to learn as much as possible about you. This allows it to give advice and complete tasks beyond the typical responses of other chatbots.

When you first boot up Dot, you’ll go through an onboarding process. Your new companion will ask “getting to know you” questions, like “What do you do for work?” “What’s your favorite hobby?” or “How do you like to wind down in the evening?”

Once you answer, the AI will ask deeper questions. I mentioned that I love cooking, leading Dot to ask, “What’s your earliest memory of home-cooked food?” You can tell Dot to move on, but the more questions you answer, the more you, Dot, becomes

“It’s meant to be a tool for self-introspection, accountability, personal growth — but not to replace human relationships,” co-founder Samantha Whitmore told TechCrunch. Miller previously headed engineering at the AI startup Kensho, and her cofounder, Jason Yuan, is a former Apple designer. Their new company, New Computer, is backed by the OpenAI Fund and other angel investors.

So what’s Dot good for? My immediate use case was as a journal. It’s good for externalizing thoughts and feelings, and since the AI gets to know you, it can sympathize better than other chatbots. Its follow-up questions genuinely lead to introspection.

If you want to try out an AI version of yourself, Dot is available on the iOS app store.

Anthropic launched its latest model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet. The launch follows a whopping $2.75 billion fundraise from Amazon earlier this year. Sonnet 3.5 matches and beats GPT-4o and Google’s Gemini across various tasks. Read more.

Intercom launched a new Copilot called FinAI. It can pull up answers to customer questions using your company’s knowledge base and previous history from your conversations with the customer, and references sources to its answers. Read more.

Figma’s Config conference came with several launches, including new AI features and an all-new product, Figma Slides. CEO Dylan Field says the goal isn’t to kill PowerPoint, but to offer a product for designers already using Figma — a pretty sizeable audience. Read more.

Notion launched Notion Sites, which adds more features for those who use Notion to externally publish their pages. Features include design customization (like favicons), custom domains, and SEO options. The launch steers clear of pivoting into a full-blown site builder. Read more.

Sherloq, a YC-backed startup, is a collaborative AI repository for SQL users. It gathers all your ad-hoc SQL queries into one place for easy retrieval. With the AI SQL repo plug-in, you can collaboratively manage, save, and share your SQL code, without leaving your IDE.

Below the fold but still in our hearts:

• Dinners is like Tinder for people who can’t answer “What’s for dinner?”
• Lifestack is a calendar app that uses health data from wearables and your phone to boost productivity.
• Intentional lets you set goals for browsing and blocks you from going to pages that don't match your goals.

For Makers:

• Flox helps devs deal with tool overload by creating declarative, reproducible, cross-platform environments without containers.
• ApyHub Fusion is a Notion-like workspace to build, test, and document APIs.
• GPUDeploy is a marketplace for renting low-cost, on-demand compute.

📸 Meta is testing user-created AI chatbots on Instagram.

🚀 Space X has landed a contract from NASA to deorbit the ISS.

🗣️ ChatGPT launched its Mac app, but the voice mode has been delayed.

☁️ Bluesky has launched a new feature that lets users better curate their feed.

🍎 Apple has launched the Vision Pro in a number of countries outside the US.

🇪🇺 Apple has delayed the launch of Apple Intelligence in the EU citing regulations.

🚗 Cybertrucks have been recalled again – this time due to a faulty wiper and trim.

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