Entrepreneurship can be brutal. All across the world, people put in countless hours turning ideas into business plans, presenting and revising those plans, searching for financing, and testing prototypes, all with less than one-in-a-hundred chance of making it to viability.

That is why contests for entrepreneurs are one of the best sources of information on what’s coming in the future. The television show, Shark Tank, hosted by billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, is the glitzy high-end of the startup pipeline. But every weekend in America, some business plan is getting an award at one of the hundreds of entrepreneurship contests held by colleges, universities, cities, states, innovation hubs, and co-working venues.

Near where I’m writing this, the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council hosts an annual CBIC Awards contest that showcases dozens of startups as well as established tech companies. There is no finer place to put your finger on the pulse of the startup community in Charlottesville than to attend the annual CBIC Awards and absorb capsule profiles of companies and their founders.

Probably thanks to the COVID pandemic, many of these contests are now streamed online. They make for a quick way to see what’s coming in many different fields. A recent example is the Singularity Global Impact Challenge on Digital Wellbeing, which held a final pitch event and winner presentation on November 7. There is a long video of the event, but there are only 10 pitches, five minutes each, so you can fast forward through most of it.

Singularity University is the organizer of the contest. Devoted to technology education, SU offers a wide variety of programs including executive education and onsite seminars on the future of AI, developing a culture of innovation, and other up-to-the-nanosecond training on harnessing technology.

SU’s partner in the Global Impact Challenge for Digital Wellbeing is Sync by Ithra. Sync is a “digital well-being initiative” and Ithra is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Center for World Culture, which might explain the hefty $250,000 cash prize bestowed on the winner, Chat License.

A “chat license” is similar to a driver’s license. It’s designed as training children must pass in order to gain access to features on their smartphones. The training teaches digital safety and offers wellness suggestions before allowing access to apps. The thresholds are set by parents or schools or other organizations or events, and can include such things as notifying a parent when an app is being used, or a block on certain apps at school.

The nine other finalists included:

Digital Wellness Institute: Creator of the Momentum Digital Wellness App that gangs applications from dozens of digital wellness creators into one product offered to corporations for $10/employee/month.

Bottled: A social kindness app. Combating loneliness in younger generations with one-to-one messaging across cultures. Monitored by AI, uses gamification to reward engagement and to discourage bullies. Helps users find “good friends.” The app has 40,000 daily users and earns revenue from in-app purchases.

EducomLab: Digital literacy training programs for students; training programs for parents; training programs for teachers; training programs for school administrators. Claims to allow school administrators and parents to set limits on smartphone use and get alerts about inappropriate use. $15/year per student. 

MangaChat: “Building mental resilience through art-driven emotional journaling.” AI turns kids’ ideas into comics. Delivers CBT through journaling. Based on studies with children having emotional disorders. Combined with counseling, it improved scores in self-awareness, self-management, and relationship skills. $25,000 per year per institution.

MuuD: A “school wellbeing” app. It enables schools to surveil students and possibly to require them to submit to a daily wellness check. It offers an AI assistant to help students that also alerts parents and/or teachers to “signs of anxiety or distress.” $20/year per student.

Enlaight: Works to identify misinformation for NGOs. Uses AI to identify hate speech, abuse of children, gender abuse, racism, threats of violence, and to surface appeals for help. Offers tiers of support (SaaS) and data collection and transmission (DaaS).

Emaww: Emotional awareness. Combats digital overload. Monitors users’ emotions with the phone and encourages emotional wellness. AI-based. Discourages over-sharing. Does not track voice or face. Freemium model. 

PassportGG: A “gamified technology layer.” Allows kids to play the games they like with “cyberprotection” and without cyberbullying. App for parents and “gamified interaction” between parents and children. School licenses.

Readocracy: Changes how we value time. Uses wearable technology, web browser, and phone app to monitor how you use your time and make recommendations. School licenses. Sells data to reward users for participating.

You can quickly see that the future of digital wellness involves some sort of voluntary surveillance, possibly so that you can earn money by letting the AI watch you part of the time. In order for the app to be effective at improving your life, it has to collect a significant amount of intimate information. Strong encryption or similar protections should be required unless you consent to share or sell your data.

For kids, the future of smartphones looks grim, with one lock after another, all of it watched by your school, your teachers, your parents, and the police. There are ways to use the technology in a responsible and life-enriching way. 

We’ll take a longer look at the MangaChat app in the near future. It uses artistic journaling to help kids feel better about themselves, similar to the way the BrainWeighve app uses positive reinforcement to help kids lose weight.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published November 13, 2024.

Sources:

“Singularity Global Impact Challenge Pitch Event,” Singularity University, November 7, 2024.

Image Copyright: hquality.