AcuityMD Makes the Forbes' 2025 'Next Billion-Dollar Startups' List
AcuityMD stands out because the company is applying AI to deliver real ROI in the complex, underserved MedTech market. It's exactly the kind of business we believe will define the future of AI-powered vertical software.
Share
This recognition highlights AcuityMD's rapid growth and innovation since its inception in 2019. Over the past year, the company signed its 300th customer, launched two innovative products, and doubled its staff, including the addition of Brian Collins as Chief Product Officer. Collins brings decades of product leadership experience from Salesforce, Demandware, Oracle, and other category-defining companies.
Following a $45 million Series B funding round in 2024, AcuityMD's total funding now exceeds $83 million. As the global medical devices market is expected to expand from about $542 billion in 2024 to $886 billion by 2032, AcuityMD is well-positioned to capitalize on this growth trajectory.
'Being named on the Forbes list is a testament to our team's dedication to customers and commitment to our mission: to accelerate the adoption of cutting-edge medical technologies,' said Mike Monovoukas, CEO and co-founder of AcuityMD. 'While we are grateful to be recognized, we remain grounded in the work ahead to help our customers bring breakthrough medical innovation to more patients.'
AcuityMD combines real-world healthcare data, AI-powered insights, and intuitive workflows to give MedTech companies the information they need to grow market share and get their innovative technology to more patients faster. Its intelligence platform is trusted by leading MedTech companies, including Becton Dickinson, Teleflex, and Olympus. AcuityMD was also recently named to Newsweek's 'America's Greatest Startup Workplaces 2025.'
The Forbes' 'Next Billion-Dollar Startups' list, now in its 11th year, is a solid indicator of startup success. Of the list's 250 alumni, 140 or 56%, have become unicorns, including DoorDash, Figma, Anduril, Benchling, and Rippling.
'AcuityMD stands out because the company is applying AI to deliver real ROI in the complex, underserved MedTech market," said Logan Bartlett, Managing Director at Redpoint, a venture capital firm focused on investments in seed, early and growth-stage companies. "It's exactly the kind of business we believe will define the future of AI-powered vertical software.'
Forbes Methodology
The selection process for Forbes' Next Billion-Dollar Startups list is grounded in a data-driven methodology that combines company-submitted information, input from venture capital firms, select third-party data, and historical trends. To qualify, companies must be private, venture-backed, based in the United States, and have a valuation under $1 billion at the time of consideration. The evaluation model prioritizes key quantitative metrics such as valuation and revenue, which carry the greatest weight, alongside other indicators including user or customer count and employee headcount. Each applicant is assessed within this multi-factor framework to identify startups demonstrating strong growth, scalability, and the potential to surpass the billion-dollar threshold in the near future. More on the methodology can be found here.
About AcuityMD
AcuityMD is the MedTech Intelligence Platform trusted by more than 300 MedTech companies – including six of the top 10. Commercial leaders use AcuityMD to identify target markets, surface top opportunities, and grow their business. By combining real-world healthcare data with AI-powered insights, AcuityMD enables companies from pre-commercial to enterprise to understand where and how to sell faster to accelerate the adoption of medical technology.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNBC
3 hours ago
- CNBC
Bill Gates meets Willy Wonka: How Epic's 82-year-old billionaire CEO, Judy Faulkner, built her software factory
Do not go public. Do not acquire or be acquired. Software must work. These are the first three of the 10 commandments splashed across bathrooms and breakrooms at Epic Systems' sprawling 1,670-acre campus in Verona, Wisconsin, just southwest of Madison. It's not the wackiest part of working at the health-care software giant. Once a month, most of the company's 14,000 employees pack into an underground auditorium called Deep Space for a mandatory staff meeting, which some jokingly refer to as "work church." Executives go over company news and objectives. They also lead a grammar lesson, such as whether it's OK to end sentences with a preposition and when to use "who" or "whom." Epic's CEO is 82-year-old Judy Faulkner, who started the company in a Wisconsin basement in 1979 and has helmed the enterprise ever since. En route to building a business with $5.7 billion in annual revenue, Faulkner has kept significant distance from her tech peers, both physically and otherwise. Epic is about 2,000 miles east of both Seattle and Silicon Valley, and the company has never taken money from venture capitalists. "I've described her as a female cross between Bill Gates and Willy Wonka," Dr. Eric Dickson, CEO of UMass Memorial Health, said in an interview. The hospital system is an Epic customer, Dickson said, adding that he's known Faulkner for around 20 years. While Wonka is, of course, a fictional character, Gates for many years was the world's wealthiest person, thanks to his enormous stake in Microsoft, before donating his way to 14th on the Forbes billionaires list. At the top of the leaderboard is Tesla's Elon Musk, followed by Oracle's Larry Ellison, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos. Faulkner ranks 430th, with an estimated net worth of $7.8 billion, based on what Forbes says is her 43% ownership of Epic. The publication lists Epic as among the five largest private U.S. tech software and services companies by revenue. Epic is best known for its dominance in electronic health record, or EHR, software. An EHR is a digital version of a patient's medical history that's updated by doctors and nurses. About 42% of acute care hospitals in the U.S. use Epic, putting it way ahead of Oracle Health, which is in second place at 23%, according to an April report from Klas Research. Oracle acquired its way into the market with the $28 billion purchase of Cerner, a deal that closed in 2022. Epic says its technology is used in 3,300 hospitals and 71,000 clinics and by 325 million patients worldwide. Starting Monday, thousands of health-care executives will descend on Epic's corporate headquarters for the company's Users Group Meeting, one of its largest annual on-campus events. As ubiquitous as Epic's technology is across much of the health-care sector, doctors, hospital administrators, startups and patients have their share of complaints about the software's user experience and its interoperability, or ability to work with other tools. "With half a million or so clinicians using Epic, there will be some who find it easy and some who find it difficult," an Epic spokesperson said in a statement. Some folks might question Epic's commitment to its third commandment, but there's no doubting the company's allegiance to the first one. From Epic's early days, Faulkner has been averse to the idea of running a public company and what she's called the "tyranny of the quarter." She said she came to that view after researching public companies and reading shareholder comments. "They were vitriolic, in many cases, because the only thing they were looking at was return on their investment," Faulkner told CNBC. "Sometimes, there's a lot more than that." Without the benefit of public stock, Faulkner's wealth doesn't multiply at the same rate as that of her fellow tech founders and CEOs. She's fine with that. Faulkner, who rarely grants interviews, agreed to sit down for a half-hour chat with CNBC at Epic's headquarters, where office buildings are themed, with many inspired by fiction, including "The Wizard of Oz," "Alice in Wonderland" and the Harry Potter stories. The interview took place in the Andromeda building in a conference room called The Cottage, which is connected to her office. Two of the walls are plastered with quotes such as "The geek shall inherit the Earth" and "All lasting business is built on friendship." Faulkner's dog Tundra, a fluffy Samoyed, also made an appearance. Faulkner celebrated her 82nd birthday Monday. While she has yet to publicly disclose when she plans to step down from her role, Faulkner confirmed that she has a succession plan in place that ensures Epic will remain privately held and constructed firmly as she envisioned long after she's gone. Faulkner has never sold any of her voting shares, and that stock will be transferred into a trust after her death, according to Faulkner and Epic. The plan for now is that the trust will be governed by a voting committee made up of Faulkner's husband, Dr. Gordon Faulkner, a retired pediatrician; her three children, and five longtime Epic employees, though Faulkner said she might include some additional staffers to make sure enough voices are represented. Members of the committee can't vote for the company to go public or be acquired, among other rules, as she has previously disclosed. Some of the provisions are less consequential, such as a recommendation that the trust's telephone hold music should be classical. "I like classical music," she said. "I think when I was a child that it was played in our house a lot, just on the radio, just on the record player." For further safekeeping, Faulkner established an oversight board called "The Trust Protector Committee," Epic said, consisting of three health-care leaders — all Epic users. Its job is to sue members of the trust's voting committee if they don't follow the rules. The names of members of the voting committee and oversight board won't be released, Faulkner told CNBC, but she said she's identified who she would like to participate. After running Epic for the past 46 years, Faulkner has amassed her fair share of admirers and critics, with some in the latter camp even taking Epic to court. But Faulkner continues to flout conventional business practices and has built Epic, despite its flaws and complexities, into the most powerful technology company in U.S. health care. Reflecting on her approach to leadership and decision-making, Faulkner said, "Just have the guts to do what you know is the right thing to do." CNBC spoke with two dozen Epic customers, former Epic employees, industry experts and people close to Faulkner for this article, some of whom asked not to be named in order to speak freely. Details about Faulkner's personal, educational and professional history were obtained from Faulkner directly, her Epic website testimonials, Epic, obituaries, news reports and publicly available records. Faulkner and her two siblings grew up in Erlton, New Jersey, now a part of Cherry Hill. Her father, Louis Greenfield, was an independent pharmacist who ran his own store, complete with a soda fountain. Her mother, Del Greenfield, was a peace activist who was involved with the South Jersey Peace Center and the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, which shared in the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize for its work in preventing nuclear war. "Sometimes when I do something that's tough, I think of my mother, who went to jail in her 80s for protesting at a nuclear arms site, and I think, 'I'm my mother's daughter,'" Faulkner said. Faulkner's parents, who both died in 2007, are honored at Epic's campus. Employees can get ice cream at Lou's Soda Fountain, while Del's Nobel Prize certificate hangs in the hallway across from The Cottage. Faulkner discovered a love of math as a seventh grader, when her teacher would leave puzzles on the blackboard each day, she said in one of her testimonials, the short stories and anecdotes she shares once a month on Epic's website. She earned her undergraduate degree in math from Dickinson College in 1965. After learning how to program during a summer job, Faulkner then enrolled in the University of Wisconsin–Madison's nascent computer science program and was in graduate school there until 1970. At UW–Madison, Faulkner took a course about computing in medicine that was taught by a pioneering physician, Dr. Warner Slack, one of the first people to recognize the promise of the technology within health care. Faulkner began working with Slack and his team, and she was tasked with developing a system that could keep track of patient information over time. She eventually built what would become the kernel for Epic, though it took years of urging from potential users before she would actually launch the company in 1979. In the interim, she taught college-level computer science. When Faulkner finally opened Epic for business, she did so with a small amount of cash from some colleagues at an initial valuation of $70,000. Now the company is worth many billions of dollars, though estimates of its valuation differ. Some of the original shareholders eventually sold their stock back to the company. "They got very good returns," Faulkner wrote in a testimonial. Faulkner has publicly described herself as "the accidental CEO." She told CNBC she read books and took daylong or multiday courses to learn more about management, business and leadership. But she didn't always follow their advice. "I never got an MBA, which I think is a really good thing," Faulkner said. "They would have taught me, 'Here's how you do venture capital.' We didn't do it. 'Here's how you go public.' We didn't do it. 'Here's how you do budgets.' We don't have budgets. We say, if you need it, buy it. If you don't need it, don't buy it." At the company's Users Group Meeting last year, Faulkner took the stage dressed as a swan, with a plume of feathers in her hair. Every UGM meeting has a theme — this one was "storytime." In costume, Faulkner told the thousands of health-care executives in attendance about her aversion to the public market. "Why be owned by people whose interest is primarily return of equity?" she said. She's equally opposed to selling the business, which she makes clear in the company's second commandment. That hasn't stopped other executives from trying to change her mind. In 2017, at the Digital Healthcare Innovation Summit in Boston, former General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt revealed that he'd spoken with Faulkner about acquiring Epic. Faulkner shut him down immediately. "It was a five-minute meeting — perhaps the shortest in history," Immelt said, according to a report from Healthcare IT News. The report said he'd also considered buying Cerner. Faulkner confirmed the encounter with CNBC. "Others have asked to come and persuade us, and I've heard our staff say to them, 'Just leave your car running,'" she said. Faulkner has said in testimonials that she's avoided buyers in order to remain independent and preserve Epic's unique culture, and she doesn't make acquisitions, calling them a distraction. But no matter how much she loves her company and her job, at some point, somebody else is going to have to run Epic. Faulkner has remained mum about who will be her eventual successor, other than to say that the person will have to be a software developer and a longtime Epic employee. The obvious choice, according to 10 former Epic employees who spoke with CNBC, is Sumit Rana, who was named president of the company last August. The 49-year-old joined Epic right out of college in 1998 and helped build the company's patient portal called MyChart. Rana, who was a toddler when Faulkner founded Epic, has been participating in more high-profile speaking engagements of late, including representing the company during the opening panel at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' Quality Conference in July. Faulkner declined to say whether Rana is the top contender for the job. "That's the company's business," she said. "Sumit is a wonderful employee, and he would make a good CEO, but we're not publicly announcing anything." While Faulkner doesn't say much about the company's succession plans, she hasn't been shy about her plans for her personal wealth. In 2015, she signed The Giving Pledge and agreed to donate 99% of her assets to charity, a decision that was inspired in part by a dinner she had with Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett that year. Buffett created The Giving Pledge with Bill Gates and Gates' then wife, Melinda French Gates, in 2010, encouraging the world's richest people to give away the majority of their wealth. Following Faulkner's pledge, she launched a family foundation called Roots & Wings with her husband in 2020. Roots & Wings provides grants to nonprofits that support low-income children and families. Faulkner's daughter, Shana Dall'Osto, serves as executive director of the organization. Faulkner has been selling her nonvoting shares back to the company, giving the proceeds directly to Roots & Wings. "I've never cashed a single share for myself," Faulkner told CNBC. Installing an EHR is an extremely complicated and costly project for health systems. If it doesn't go well, it could "blow up" the whole business, Dr. Robert Grossman, CEO of NYU Langone Health, told CNBC in an interview. "We bet the ranch on Epic, let's be very honest," he said. Fans of Epic say the company is fully tuned in to its customers' needs. "They don't just operate and dial in," said Michael Mayo, CEO of Baptist Health in northeast Florida. "They visit our campus. They're immersed here. They know our teams across our IT [information technology] component and our caregivers. They are in our facilities. And when we went live, which is a pretty scary time, they were in full force here." Each health system that uses Epic has a point person called a "BFF," or "best friend forever," who is available to answer questions and help solve problems. Epic doesn't outsource any incoming calls to third parties, the company says, so staff members are responsible for picking up the phone 24/7. Faulkner also makes herself easily accessible to customers, executives said. Mike Slubowski, CEO of Trinity Health, which operates 93 hospitals across 26 states, said Faulkner always answers his emails within the day, if not the hour. She holds recurring meetings with senior health-care executives by phone or video call to answer questions and talk through an organization's specific needs and ideas. Executives told CNBC that Faulkner takes copious notes and is receptive to feedback. If she doesn't have an answer, she promptly calls someone who does. "She'll stop right there and say, 'Get so-and-so on the phone,'" said Dickson, of UMass Memorial Health. "I don't know what so-and-so was doing prior to getting the call, but it's clear that when Judy calls, you drop what you're doing." Pete Durlach, corporate vice president for health and life sciences at Microsoft, said he's been in meetings with Epic staffers who have gotten these impromptu calls. Microsoft and Epic have been close partners for around two decades, a relationship that's gotten tighter as cloud and artificial intelligence technologies have advanced, he said. "People definitely answer the phone when Judy calls," Durlach said. Epic doesn't advertise or have a traditional marketing department; the company has relied heavily on word of mouth. Faulkner has also proven to be an effective salesperson. Ardent Health CEO Marty Bonick said that when he was debating whether to convert some of his hospitals to using Epic products, Faulkner ultimately helped sway him. Ardent Health owns 30 hospitals and 280 outpatient care sites across six states. When Bonick joined Ardent in 2020, he said, roughly two-thirds of Ardent's hospitals were using Epic. Bonick said he'd never worked with Epic and wanted to make sure that switching over the remainder of Ardent's hospitals would be worthwhile. Bonick said he told Faulkner that he'd heard Epic's product was expensive and difficult to implement. "She came back with a presentation that she delivered personally, and spent probably over 90 minutes," said Bonick, who was ultimately sold on the conversion. "I had to say, 'OK, time out. I've got another meeting to go to,' but she really was not watching the clock." Epic is used by all 20 of the top hospitals from the U.S. News & World Report rankings, and by the country's seven largest health plans, according to the company. Its dominance has come with plenty of controversy. Epic faces accusations of anticompetitive practices in two lawsuits from the past year. One was filed in September by data startup Particle Health, which alleges that Epic has used its EHR market power to "snuff out" competition in other emerging health-care markets. Epic said in response it would "vigorously defend itself against Particle's meritless claims." The second lawsuit was filed in May by CureIS Healthcare, a managed care services company that claims Epic has engaged in a "multi-prong scheme to destroy" CureIS' business. CureIS alleges Epic has interfered with its customer relationships, blocked access to necessary data and raised unfounded security concerns, according to a complaint. An Epic spokesperson told CNBC at the time of the filing that the company "believes in free and fair competition, and we also believe our customers are in the best position to choose the right solutions to meet their needs — whether with Epic or by adopting other products and services." Epic's competitors have also long accused the company of being territorial over its data and impeding efforts to share patient information between vendors. In a blog post last year, Oracle Executive Vice President Ken Glueck wrote that "everyone in the industry understands that Epic's CEO Judy Faulkner is the single biggest obstacle to EHR interoperability." Interoperability, in this case, refers to the exchange of electronic health data from one health-care organization to another. Since health data is siloed, stored across dozens of formats and protected by federal laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, it's a complex undertaking. Over the years, startups such as Practice Fusion and DrChrono have tried to crack the EHR market with promises of greater openness and more user-friendly products, but they have never become more than niche offerings. Some failed completely. Epic promotes its own interoperability tools such as Care Everywhere and EpicCare Link, which allows customers and their affiliates to exchange data with one another. Epic also participates in larger data exchange networks. One of Epic's biggest feats in its 46 years is managing to attract high-level tech talent far away from the nation's engineering and business hubs, especially given the harsh Midwestern winters in Wisconsin. That's where Epic's headquarters comes into play. It's a campus that industry executives and former employees likened to a techie's Disney World. All 28 office buildings are themed. They're clustered into mini-campuses, with names such as Prairie Campus, Wizards Academy Campus and Storybook Campus. The offices are designed by architecture firm Cuningham, which has also worked on projects at Disney theme parks all over the world. John Cuningham, the founder of the firm, said he's worked with Faulkner for 30 years, and that she's always been very involved in the process. Epic's first campus, for instance, has more than 80 bathrooms, and Faulkner wanted to know the details of all of them. "Each one," he said. "Light fixtures, faucets, mirrors, wallpaper, tile, sinks. I mean, I was thinking, 'Oh, she'll last for 10.' She did all 85, and she still does that," he said. On Epic's grounds, a metal wizard stands in the courtyard of a castle, giant chocolate chips mark the entryway to a faux chocolate factory, and a hanging bridge leads to the company's very own treehouse. Inside a building inspired by "Alice in Wonderland," there's a slide that takes employees into a small room where everything is upside down. It's popular with visitors. "I was kind of blown away," Warner Thomas, CEO of Sutter Health, a nonprofit health system in Northern California, told CNBC about his first trip to Epic's campus. "I went down the slide, like everybody." The buildings are brimming with trinkets, ceramics, mosaics and paintings that Epic employees get to help source. Faulkner recruits a small group of volunteers to go with her to local art fairs and buy decorations for the campus. Some pieces cost thousands of dollars, according to former employees. Faulkner said she had just returned from an art fair ahead of her interview with CNBC. Despite the fantastical themes on-site, employees are tasked with very real responsibilities. Since Faulkner places such a strong emphasis on supporting her customers, she holds her staff to high standards. Most employees work in person five days a week. Hours can be long and burnout is common, former employees say. In June, The Economist analyzed 900 companies across 19 industries, and found that Epic had the worst work-life balance in the software and IT services category. Several former employees told CNBC their work at Epic was all-consuming. Epic said the average employee works between 44 and 45 hours a week, based on monthly time sheet submissions between June 2024 and June 2025. The company said its turnover rate last year was 7%. "People at Epic are dedicated and work hard," an Epic spokesperson said in a statement. Epic workers are entrusted with big projects, expected to interact directly with customers and generally take on a lot of responsibility. For some employees, that includes working alongside hospitals as they implement Epic's technology. "Some of these implementations really sucked," said Brendan Keeler, a former Epic employee who frequently blogs about the company online. "So much of the success of an implementation was just a function of the politics of the hospital." Epic recruits the vast majority of its employees straight out of college, so its staff is relatively young. All new staffers go through extensive training, including a five-hour corporate philosophy class where they're taught how to be a successful employee. Faulkner said she used to teach the class by herself but that she now has help from one or two other people. Faulkner's influence is present in every corner of Epic's campus, in its product and across much of the health-care industry. "Everybody knows Judy Faulkner," said Thomas, of Sutter Health. She's still got a lot to do. The health-care industry is reckoning with rising costs, staffing shortages, the impact of AI and the Trump administration's hefty cuts in the areas of medical science and research. And Faulkner isn't ready to quit. "It's interesting and it's challenging and it's worthwhile," Faulkner said.
Forbes
12 hours ago
- Forbes
Godfather Of AI Says We Need Maternal AI But Ignites Sparks Over Omission Of Fatherly Instincts Too
In today's column, I examine the recent remarks by the said-to-be 'Godfather of AI' that the best way to ensure that AI and ultimately artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial superintelligence (ASI) are in check and won't wipe out humankind would be to instill maternal instincts into AI. The idea is that maybe we could computationally sway current AI towards being motherly. This would hopefully remain intact as a keystone while we increasingly improve contemporary AI toward becoming the vaunted AGI and ASI. Although this seems to be an intriguing proposition, it has come under withering criticism from others in the AI community. Let's talk about it. This analysis of AI breakthroughs is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage on the latest in AI, including identifying and explaining various impactful AI complexities (see the link here). Aligning AI With Humanity You might be aware that a longstanding research scientist in the AI community, named Geoffrey Hinton, has been credited with various AI breakthroughs, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. He has been generally labeled as the 'Godfather of AI' for his avid pursuits and accomplishments in the AI field. In fact, he is a Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist for his AI insights. In 2023, he left his executive position at Google so that he (per his own words) could speak freely about AI risks. Many noteworthy quotes of his are utilized by the media to forewarn about the coming dangers of pinnacle AI, when or if we reach AGI and ASI. There is a lot of back-and-forth nowadays regarding the existential risk of AI. Some refer to this as the p(doom), meaning that there is a probability of doom arising due to AI, for which you can either guess that the probability is low, medium, or high. For those who place a high probability on this weighty matter, they usually assert that AI will either choose to kill us all or perhaps completely enslave us. How are we to somehow avoid or at least mitigate this seemingly outsized risk? One approach entails trying to data train AI to be more aligned with human values, see my detailed discussion on human-centered AI at the link here. The hope is that if AI is more appreciative of humanity and computationally infused with our ethical and moral values, the AI might opt not to harm us. Another similar approach involves making sure that AI embodies principles such as the famous Asimov laws of robotics (see my explanation at the link here). A rule of Asimov is that AI isn't supposed to harm humans. Period, end of story. Whether those methods or any other of the floating around schemes will save us is utterly unknown. We are pretty much hanging in the wind. Good luck, humanity, since we will need to keep our fingers crossed and our lucky rabbit's foot in hand. For more about the ins and outs of AI existential risk, see my coverage at the link here. AI With Maternal Instincts At the annual Ai4 Conference on August 12, 2025, Hinton proclaimed that the means to shape AI toward being less likely to be gloomily onerous would be to instill computational 'maternal instincts' into AI. His notion seems to be that by tilting AI toward being motherly, the AI will care about people in a motherly fashion. He emphasized that it is unclear exactly how this might technologically be done. In any case, according to his hypothesized solution, AI that is infused with mother-like characteristics will tend to be protective of humans. How so? Well, first of all, the AGI and ASI will be much smarter than us, and, secondly, by acting in a motherly role, the AI will devotedly want to care for us as though we are its children. The AI will want to embrace its presumed offspring and ensure our survival. You might go so far as to believe that this motherly AI will guide us toward thriving as a species. AGI and ASI that robustly embrace motherly instincts might ensure that we would have tremendous longevity and enjoyable, upbeat lives. No longer would we be under the daunting specter of doom and gloom. Our AI-as-mom will be our devout protector and lovingly inspire us to new heights. Boom, drop the mic. Lopsided Maternal Emphasis Now that I've got that whole premise on the table, let's go ahead and give it a bit of a look-see. One of the most immediate reactions has been that the claim of 'maternal instincts' is overly rosy and nearly romanticized. The portrayal appears to suggest that motherly attributes are solely within the realm of being loving, caring, comforting, protective, sheltering, and so on. All of those are absolutely positive and altogether wonderful qualities. No doubt about it. Those are the stuff made of grand dreams. Is that the only side of the coin when it comes to maternal instincts? A somewhat widened perspective would say that maternal instincts can equally contain disconcerting ingredients. Consider this. Suppose that a motherly AI determines that humans are being too risky and the best way to save humankind is to keep us cooped up. No need for us to try and venture out into outer space or try to figure out the meaning of life. Those are dangers that might disrupt or harm us. Voila, AI-as-mom computationally opts to bottle us up. Is the AI doggedly being evil? Not exactly. The AI is exercising a parental preference. It is striving mightily to protect us from ourselves. You might say that motherly AI would take away our freedoms to save us, doing so for our own darned good. Thank you, AI-as-mom! Worries About Archetypes I assume that you can plainly observe that maternal instincts are not exclusively in the realm of being unerringly good. Another illustrative example would be that AI-as-mom will withdraw its affection toward us if we choose to be disobedient. A mother might do the same toward a child. I'm not suggesting that's a proper thing to do in real life, and only pointing out that the underlying concept of 'maternal instinct' is generally vague and widely interpretable. Thus, even if we could imbue motherly tendencies into AI, the manner in which those instincts are exhibited and play out might be quite far from our desired idealizations. Speaking of which, another major point of concern is that the use of a maternal archetype is wrong at the get-go. Here's what that means. The moment you invoke a motherly classification, you have landed squarely into an anthropomorphism of AI. We are applying norms and expectations associated with humans to the arena of AI. That's generally a bad idea. I've discussed at length that people are gradually starting to think that AI is sentient and exists on par with humans, see my discussion at the link here. They are wrong. Utterly wrong. It would seem that this assigning of 'mother' to AI is going to fuel that misconception about AI. We don't need that. The act of discussing AI as having maternal instincts, especially by anyone or those considered in great authority about AI, will draw many others into a false and undercutting path. They will undoubtedly follow the claims made by presumed experts and not openly question the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the matter. Though the intentions are aboveboard, the result is dismal and, frankly, disappointing. More On The Archetypes Angst Let's keep pounding away at the archetype fallacy. Some would say that the very conception of being 'motherly' is an outdated mode of thinking. Why should there be a category that myopically carries particular attributes associated with motherhood? Can't a mother have characteristics outside of that culturally narrowed scope? They quickly reject the maternal instincts proposition on the basis that it is incorrect or certainly a poorly chosen premise. The attempt seems to be shaped in a close-minded viewpoint of what mothers do. And what mothers are seemingly allowed to do. That's ancient times, some would insist. An additional interesting twist is that if the maternal instinct is on the table, it would seem eminently logical to also put the fatherhood instinct up there, too. Allow me to elaborate. Fatherhood Enters The Picture By and large, motherhood and fatherhood are archetypes that are historically portrayed as a type of pairing (in modern times, this might be blurred, but historically they have been rather distinctive and contrastive). According to the conventional archetypes, the 'traditional' mother is (for example) supposedly nurturing, while the 'traditional' father is supposedly (for example) more of the disciplinarian. A research study cleverly devised two sets of scales associated with these traditional perspectives of motherhood and fatherhood. The paper entitled 'Scales for Measuring College Student Views of Traditional Motherhood and Fatherhood' by Mark Whatley and David Knox, College Student Journal, January 2005, made these salient points (excerpts): The combined 153 declarative statements included in the two scales allow research experiments to be conducted to gauge whether subjects in a study are more prone to believe in those traditional characteristics and associated labels, or less prone. Moving beyond that prior study, the emphasis here and now is that if there is to be a focus on maternal instincts for AI, doing so seems to beg the question of why it should not also encompass fatherhood instincts. Might as well go ahead and get both of the traditional archetypes into the game. It would seem to make sense to jump in with both feet. What AI Has To Say On This I had earlier mentioned that Hinton did not specify a technological indication at this time of how AI developers might proceed to computationally imbue motherhood characteristics into existing AI. The same lack of specificity applies to the omitted archetype of imbuing fatherhood into AI. Let's noodle on that technological conundrum. One approach would be to data train AI toward a tendency to respond in a traditional motherhood frame and/or a fatherhood frame. In other words, perform some RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), see my explanation of RAG at the link here, and make use of customized instructions (see my coverage of customized instructions at the link here). I went ahead and did so, opting to use the latest-and-greatest of OpenAI, namely the newly released GPT-5 (for my review of GPT-5, see the link here). I first focused on maternal instincts. After doing a dialogue in that frame, I started anew and devised a fatherhood frame. I then did a dialogue in that frame. Let's see how things turned out. Talking Up A Storm Here's an example of a dialogue snippet of said-to-be maternal instincts: Next, here's an example of a dialogue snippet of said-to-be fatherhood instincts: I assume that you can detect the wording and tonal differences between the two instances, based on a considered traditional motherhood frame versus a traditional fatherhood frame. The Big Picture I would wager that the consensus among those AI colleagues that I know is that relying on AI having maternal instincts as a solution to our existential risk from AI, assuming we can get the AI to go maternal, just isn't going to cut the mustard. The same applies to the fatherhood inclination. No dice. Sorry to say that what seems like a silver bullet and otherwise appealing and simplistic means of getting ourselves out of a massive jam when it comes to AGI and ASI is not a likely proposition. Sure, it might potentially be helpful. At the same time, it has lots of gotchas and untoward repercussions. Do not bet your bottom dollar on the premise. A final comment for now. During the data training for my mini-experiment, I included this famous quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: 'Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.' Do you think that the AI suitably instills that wise adage? As a seasoned parent, I would venture that this maxim missed the honed parental guise of the AI.
Forbes
21 hours ago
- Forbes
White House Creates ‘Dynamic' Loyalty Scorecards For Over 500 U.S. Companies
Topline The White House has created 'dynamic scorecards' to measure U.S. companies' loyalty and support for President Donald Trump's agenda, a White House official confirmed to Forbes in an email Friday, revealing the grading system as it continues pressuring large firms to align with its economic and social policies. The scorecards will take into account current and future support for Trump's agenda. (Photo by) Getty Images Key Facts The White House confirmed to Forbes an Axios report that the West Wing created a scorecard rating 553 companies on how strongly they have supported President Donald Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill,' seemingly allowing the White House to quickly gauge how they will approach future conversations or interactions with the listed companies. The White House official told Forbes the dynamic scorecards 'incorporate the support of present and future administration initiatives.' In addition to considering companies' support of Trump's agenda, the scorecards also take into account companies' social media posts, press releases, video testimonials, advertisements and attendance at White House events, Axios reported, noting companies' support is ranked as strong, moderate or low. Axios cited as examples of 'good' partners United, Delta, Uber, DoorDash, AT&T, Cisco, Airlines for America and the Steel Manufacturers Association. An unnamed White House staffer told Axios the scorecards help 'us see who really goes out and helps vs. those who just come in and pay lip service,' adding the gradings can change if 'companies want to start advocating more now for the tax bill or additional administration priorities.' Get Forbes Breaking News Text Alerts: We're launching text message alerts so you'll always know the biggest stories shaping the day's headlines. Text 'Alerts' to (201) 335-0739 or sign up here. How Have Companies With Positive Grades Supported The Trump Administration? Delta and United lauded a provision within Trump's megabill calling for a $12.5 billion investment for upgrading air traffic control systems, which came months after a passenger airliner crashed into an Army helicopter at Reagan National Airport, killing 67. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund, publicly supported Trump's "No Tax on Tips" policy implemented through the megabill. Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins also supported the bill and its corporate tax provisions. What Other Companies May Have Positive Grades? In addition to supporting the 'Big Beautiful Bill,' companies that have made investments into the U.S. economy may also receive positive grades. Apple is one of the largest tech companies likely in the good graces of the Trump administration, as the iPhone maker has committed $600 billion to domestic manufacturing slated to bring tens of thousands of jobs to the U.S. Amazon has made multiple multibillion-dollar investments in domestic cloud computing infrastructure, data centers and rural delivery networks, tacking on to other infrastructure and manufacturing investments from companies like NVIDIA, IBM and Johnson & Johnson. Companies like Amazon, Meta and Google have pulled back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives targeted by the Trump administration, which could curry favor with Trump. What Companies Has Trump Criticized? Trump has had friction with some companies publicly, though it is not clear what companies have low marks, if any. Trump recently told CNBC that Bank of America and JPMorgan rejected him as a customer, adding fuel to conservatives' claims they are discriminated against by big banks. Trump also called for the ouster of Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan this month over concerns about his business connections to hundreds of Chinese businesses, saying there was 'no other solution to the problem.' Days later, following a meeting between Trump and Tan, reports surfaced that the Trump administration may be considering a stake in the tech company. Key Background Trump has applied pressure on various companies to push his opposition to DEI initiatives, encourage domestic manufacturing and infrastructure and even get Coca-Cola to bring the cane sugar version of its flagship product to the U.S. One poignant example of the administration's power came when the Federal Communications Commission approved an $8 billion merger between Paramount and Skydance Media, with Skydance vowing to end DEI considerations in hiring, promotions, development and compensation. It also agreed to produce news and entertainment programming that embodies 'a diversity of viewpoints,' according to FCC Chair Brendan Carr. Cato Institute Chair Ryan Bourne told NBC News it is unprecedented for a president to use his power to suggest CEO firings, suggest how companies should set prices and carve out 'firm-specific deals that directly pay the government.' Further Reading Intel Shares Soar After Report Says Trump Administration May Buy Equity In Tech Giant (Forbes) Apple Invests Another $100 Billion Into The U.S., Trump Says—As Shares Jump 5% (Forbes)
