Prophetic AI
A non-invasive neural device to stabilize and induce lucid dreaming.
The Context
The mystery of consciousness has eluded humanity for as long as it has existed. Pyschedelics have tried to solve this problem by inducing altered state of consciousness.
All attempts made so far have not yielded tangible results because they are not backed by scientific data & research.
Dreams offer a window to the unconscious and is readily available to all but the access to the unconscious is lost by the cognitive conscious mind.
Lucid dreaming bridges the unconscious to the conscious mind & offers a way to understand the nature of consciousness itself.
Today’s company is a neuro-tech product that triggers lucid dreaming in individuals using AI & neuroscience to help them access & understand the nature of consciousness.
We consider lucid dreams to be particle accelerators for consciousness: a state that allows for the objective observation of the neural foundations of self-awareness, (meta)cognition, and sensory perception.
The TL;DR
Prophetic is a non-invasive neural device to stabilize and induce lucid dreaming in individuals. Lucid dreams are where the dreamer becomes aware they are asleep. They are purely phenomenological experiences with little or no external sensory input.
Experienced lucid dreamers can sometimes trigger this state through techniques learned over time. But its not readily accessible at scale. The layman cannot reliably induce conscious dreaming on demand. Prophetic solves this problem.
Their product Morpheus-1 takes desired brain states as input prompts & then outputs tailored ultrasonic signals for neurostimulation to achieve those states.
Focused Ultrasonic (FUS) neurostimulation is where a low-intensity ultrasound is delivered to the nervous system tissue in the form of an acoustic pressure wave, resulting in a modulation of neural activity. This allows the user to “select” a lucid dream theme ahead of time.
In lucid dreams, the conventional laws of physics do not apply. This makes exploring consciousness more possible.
Prophetic has a hardware component - the Halo. This wearable uses Morpheus for neurostimulation & replicates neural activation patterns typically present in lucid dreaming.
The headband induces lucid dreams when the user is in deep REM sleep. It does by using a combination of ultrasound and machine learning models. Prophetic has partnered with Card79, the company that designed & built the hardware for Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company, Neuralink.
Users can sync data & track their lucid dreams via the AI-powered Prophetic app. The user can simply upload their lucid dream data & the ML models (trained on EEG & fMRI of active lucid dream states) will learn on the data and improve the efficiency of the focused ultrasound neurostimulation.
The Bullet Points:
Industry : Neuro-tech
Headquarters : NYC
Business model - B2C
Year Founded: 2022
Investors : BoxGroup, OS Ventures, a16z, Spacecadet Ventures, ev3.xyz, Dragonfly, Portal Ventures, Praxis Nation.
Amount raised : $1.1 million
Employee Count : 7
Key Opportunities
Blue Ocean Market - The market has been around for centuries with religion, spirituality & psychedelics all trying to decode the nature of consciousness & reality. Prophetic is bringing a scientific approach to tackling the hard problem of consciousness.
Increased awareness & importance of mental health - Neurostimulation has massive implications to solve mental health related issues. This can augment traditional therapists & potentially replace pharmaceuticals which often have side effects.
Rise in hardware-tech : The increase in user adoption for hardware products at a market level is a great signal. More specifically, the interest in hardware-tech for AI powered products like Neuralink, Elemind, Humane is another great indicator for Prophetic’s success.
Potential Risks
Skepticism - This will be the biggest barrier to overcome imo. Traditionally, people are averse to experimenting with stuff that interferes with the brain. Educating users on the benefits and safety of the device needs to be priority numero uno for Prophetic. Distilling scientific research in an easily accessible way is key.
Regulatory Hurdles - The novelty of Prophetic's technology may invite regulatory scrutiny and ethical debates, particularly regarding the implications of manipulating dream states.
High user adoption friction - Since lucid dreaming is a nice to have and not a must-have, the widespread adoption of Prophetic's technology may require significant education and marketing efforts to overcome skepticism and encourage user adoption.
Data privacy - There will inevitably be questions raised on the very sensitive data being used to train the ML models. The founder says that Prophetic works hard to ensure user data is secure.
Founder Profile:
Eric Wollberg - He has previously worked at VC funds sourcing deals & more recently was employee number 1 at Praxis. Has also worked in the growth team at Gnowbe.
Wesley Berry - Has a background in neurotech prototyping — specifically, feeding electroencephalogram, or EEG, data into a transformer neural network, to explore what people may be seeing in their minds. He worked on other neurotech projects like the Neurosity crown used during the Ultra Music Festival performance by musician and AI enthusiast Grimes in March.
Final Thoughts
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