Self Aligned by Robert Ta

Introducing Epistemic Me: Open Source AI for Personalized Belief Systems In this episode, the founders of Epistemic Me discuss the inception and development of their project—a tool designed to deeply understand users' beliefs and optimize personalized recommendations. They delve into philosophical concepts like the self and interconnectedness, the role of an open-source approach, and their vision...

Introducing Epistemic Me: Open Source AI for Personalized Belief Systems In this episode, the founders of Epistemic Me discuss the inception and development of their project—a tool designed to deeply understand users' beliefs and optimize personalized recommendations. They delve into philosophical concepts like the self and interconnectedness, the role of an open-source approach, and their vision...

Introducing Epistemic Me: Open Source AI for Personalized Belief Systems In this episode, the founders of Epistemic Me discuss the inception and development of their project—a tool designed to deeply understand users' beliefs and optimize personalized recommendations. They delve into philosophical concepts like the self and interconnectedness, the role of an open-source approach, and their vision...

What if the biggest threat to your product isn’t what you haven’t built yet, but everything you already have? I sat down with Rich—early at Atlassian, who spent years in the trenches building products used by millions—and we went deep on something most founders don’t want to hear. Your users don’t want more features. They want clarity. They want tools that solve real problems without drowning them...

What if the biggest mistake in AI development isn’t what you’re building—but how you’re measuring it? In this episode of ABCs for Building the Future, host Robert sits down with Hamel Husain — machine learning engineer with 25+ years across GitHub, Airbnb, and his own consulting practice, and creator of the AI Evals course that’s trained nearly 50 OpenAI employees. Hamel shares his evolution from...

What if the most powerful lever for saving the planet isn’t a new technology — but a mindset shift at your current job? In this transformative episode of ABCs for Building the Future , host Robert sits down with Louisa Henry — executive coach, former product leader at Gusto and Airtable, and creator of the podcast Any Job Can Be a Climate Job . Louisa shares her personal evolution from Fortune 100...

Opening Hook: What if the key to high-impact leadership in the AI age isn’t in your credentials — but in your ability to listen to your body, trust your joy, and design your own definition of success? 🎧 Episode Context: In this episode of ABCs for Building the Future , host Robert Ta sits down with Dr. Serena Huang — former Data Scientist turned founder, global speaker, and passionate advocate fo...

Can an AI truly understand you if it doesn’t understand your beliefs? That’s the provocative question guiding Episode 23 of ABCs for Building the Future . In a sweeping conversation that blends cognitive science, product design, and philosophical rigor, hosts Robert and Jonathan introduce a bold new framing for personalizing AI: Epistemic Evals . This blog distills the episode’s most compelling in...

In this episode of the ABCs for Building the Future Podcast, we delve into the boundaries of consciousness and the Markov Blanket concept. We explore questions like where consciousness ends and the rest of the world begins, inspired by Patrick House's book '19 Ways of Looking at Consciousness.' The discussion covers the free energy principle, nested Russian Doll structures, and how these ideas inf...

Where Do You End? Is there a clear boundary between you and the rest of the world? Is it your skin? Your thoughts? The limits of your awareness? In our latest episode of Epistemic Me , we unravel one of the biggest philosophical and scientific questions of our time: Where does consciousness end, and where does the external world begin? And more importantly — what if the thing you call “you” is jus...

In this episode, Robert and Jonathan recap their recent whirlwind tour through Sidebar (a product leadership conference) and Vitalist Bay (a longevity and biotech forum), where they stress-tested Epistemic Me ’s product positioning, and made key partnerships. This is a big Build In Public update + talk on Consciousness. Key Takeaways: * Epistemic Me’s positioning—“cohorts by belief, not by click”—...

Juan Carlos isn’t just an SVP of Technology at a fast-scaling healthtech company. He’s also a filmmaker turned product builder, full-time dad, part-time philosopher, and creator of a deck of mental model cards designed to help leaders think clearly in the chaos. In this episode of The ABCs for Building the Future , we go deep into how Juan Carlos rebuilt his sense of self—from the inside out. It s...

Let’s get real. Every founder right now is asking the same question: “How do I build a hyper-personalized AI product… that actually works?” Not just a chatbot with nice vibes. But an AI that understands your user’s beliefs , learns from their choices, and adapts like a real coach would. An AI that gets your user to their target outcomes, step by step through every interaction. In this week’s ABCs...

What happens when AI can do almost everything better than you? If you’re not building your personal brand today, you may not even exist tomorrow. That’s the clear, hard-hitting message from Joe Shalaby — founder and CEO of EMortgage Capital — on this week’s episode of The ABCs for Building the Future . Joe built the largest non-depository mortgage bank in California, the #5 broker nationwide, and...

What if the key to unlocking AI alignment—and even building conscious machines—starts not with data, but with the deeply personal, evolving structure of human beliefs? In this mind-expanding episode of The ABCs for Building the Future , Robert Ta and Jonathan McCoy explore how belief systems shape behavior, health, and even consciousness itself. Fresh from user testing at the Don't Die Summit in M...

What if the root of mental illness — and the key to AI truly understanding us — lies hidden in the tangled web of our beliefs? In this thought-provoking episode of The ABCs for Building the Future , Robert Ta and Jonathan McCoy sit down with Dr. Bishoy Goubran, an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, to explore a groundbreaking frontier: how our belief systems shape mental health and how decoding th...

What if your health coach didn’t just know your data—but actually understood you? Like a real coach? In this week’s episode of the ABCs for Building the Future podcast, Robert and Jonathan dive deep into the practical journey of bringing an AI health coach to life. They debrief their latest build sprint, demo progress, and debate what it really means to personalize AI for health and longevity. Fro...

“If we’re not aligned on AI alignment, we’re pretty non-aligned.” – Robert Ta What if our survival depends not on smarter machines, but smarter belief systems? As we enter the era of superintelligence, one question looms large: What belief systems are equipped to guide us through the next chapter of human evolution? In this episode of ABCs for Building the Future , Robert Ta and Jonathan McCoy unp...

Most founders wait until they have the perfect product. David Stepania didn’t. He used a landing page, a few cold emails, and a clear vision—and convinced Rover , a billion-dollar company, to work with him. No code. No team. Just hustle, story, and a deep understanding of what people really need. In this episode of ABCs for Building the Future , host Robert Ta sits down with David Stepania , found...

What happens when your life crashes—literally—and you’re forced to pause? What do you learn about yourself when you're bedridden, staring at a white ceiling, unable to hold up your own head? For Rahul Chaudhari, that moment became the inflection point for a lifetime of introspection, innovation, and impact. This episode of ABCs for Building the Future dives deep into the human behind the product—h...

What if humans aren’t the smartest beings forever? What if we are just a stepping stone in the growth of something bigger—like artificial intelligence? In this episode of ABCs for Building the Future , hosts Robert Ta, and Jonathan McCoy, talk about how intelligence has changed over time, from fire to AI. They ask big questions like: * Who is really in charge—humans or machines? * How can we make...

What if humans aren’t the center of intelligence evolution—but just a transitional phase in the scaffolding of planetary computation? In this episode of ABCs for Building the Future , hosts Robert Ta, Jonathan McCoy, and Deen Aariff deconstruct a groundbreaking talk by Benjamin Bratton on planetary computation, AI alignment, and epistemic institutions. From the critique of modern knowledge systems...

What If AI Evolves Like We Did? What if artificial intelligence isn’t just a tool, but a product of evolution itself? Could AI follow the same trajectory as domesticated animals, mitochondria, or even humanity itself? In this episode of ABC’s for Building the Future , hosts Robert Ta and Jonathan McCoy , Co-Founders of Epistemic Me , dive deep into a mind-bending conversation about artificializati...

In this episode, hosts Robert and Jonathan take us through the latest developments in Epistemic Me’s AI health coach project. The team shares insights from recent user research, product roadmaps, and live coding updates—showcasing how AI can be used to mirror user beliefs, refine recommendations, and build trust in healthcare AI models. From discussions on how to map human beliefs to ensuring AI c...

How does supply meet demand? Valuable supply of something is created for demand of value for solving a problem: people need cleanliness, people sell soap. In a typical fashion, people create businesses to capitalize on this value. They do some form of “need-finding”—making sense of the world through the lens of some population of people, their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). And those ICPs, do the s...