Jeffrey Katzenberg—movie producer, former DreamWorks CEO, and founding associate of tech funding agency WndrCo—is, maybe most significantly, a dad and a grandfather.
That position prompted him to again Aura, a startup creating AI-driven instruments that go far past normal parental controls, in 2021. Aura’s platform tracks behavioral patterns reminiscent of sleep and focus, flags psychological well being dangers together with self-harm or suicidal ideation, and offers dad and mom visibility into youngsters’ social media, gaming, and AI chat exercise. The AI-powered instruments, which analyze language patterns, on-line tone, emotional expression and late-night exercise, have been developed in session with pediatric and psychological well being consultants, together with collaboration with Boston Kids’s Hospital.
Talking alongside Aura CEO Hari Ravichandran at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech in Park Metropolis, Utah on Monday, Katzenberg, who sits on Aura’s board, argued that folks can’t look ahead to lawmakers to catch up. “The concept that we’ll see aggressive laws [to combat online harms] on this nation quickly is unlikely,” he stated. He likened the state of affairs to seatbelts: their worth was apparent early on, he defined, but it surely nonetheless took 80 years for legal guidelines to mandate them. “This stuff don’t occur rapidly, sadly.”
In the meantime, the hazards to kids and households are mounting. Katzenberg cited an Aura survey of two,500 teenagers ages 13 to 18, which discovered practically half reported feeling depressed and a 3rd stated they wrestle with social withdrawal.
Simply as teenage drivers spend years getting ready for the dangers of the highway—with learner’s permits and driver’s ed—kids must also be ready for smartphones, social media, and AI, Katzenberg stated. “Most children really need steerage, they need assist alongside the way in which, [though] they don’t wish to be spied on,” he defined. “Aura is observational—it’s supplying you with as a guardian round knowledge and knowledge…principally that is about what does their digital well being seem like.”
