Best Startup
Imagine being able to forecast, simulate & influence future human behaviours.
Gyral is a UK-based enterprise specialising in helping large organisations to achieve strategic advantage through neuroscientific approaches to cultural psychology.
Our focus in applying deep modern psychology to deep AI technology transforms organisational productivity.
TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF?
I was an advisor, speaker, consultant in such fields as entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, leadership and psycholinguistics. This included working with Business Schools in Europe and Africa as well as a great deal of work across the Middle East.
As I was writing a book on corporate psychology and language, I began consulting more with the multi-award winning Psychologist, Ian McLaren Wallace. Our mutual disregard for psychometric companies led to extensive research into the application of modern psychology in an AI environment.
This led to launching Gyral as we had invented the world’s first Large Psychology Models and early client conversations began to highlight a wide range of use cases.
IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME A YEAR OR TWO, WHAT PIECE OF ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE YOURSELF?
Trust your instincts – don’t get swayed by external parties who don’t understand what you are looking to achieve yet still seem to have an opinion on it.
WHAT PROBLEM DOES YOUR BUSINESS SOLVE?
Enterprises need big data, they need wide differentiation, they need deep insights.
Due to the flawed application of such technologies as Generative AI, organisations are rapidly becoming overwhelmed by the massive influx of generated data. While they want to to go beyond mere content creation into real value creation, ultimately they have little to differentiate themselves from their competitors.
So the question is this, “how do we capture meaningful, contextual data that goes beyond superficial engagements in chatbots and deeper into the psychology of everyone who engages with us?”
The follow-up question is, “how do we forecast, simulate, and influence future human behaviours?”
Large Language Models are predictors of word sequences, trained on large datasets to determine the probability of the next words in a sequence. They can’t provide the complex decision support needed by modern organisations.
WHAT IS THE INSPIRATION BEHIND YOUR BUSINESS?
We had already carried out extensive research in Generative Artificial Intelligence and could see the problems that hyped technologies were trying to ignore. Vague, bland, repetitive outputs from such technologies as GPT, not forgetting unconscious biases and hallucinations are completely inappropriate for organisations who need to operate in the real world rather than in than in the world of misapplied technology.
We knew from our work in Large Psychology Models that organisations were basing critical decisions on misleading technological data and paying no interest to individual and collective psychologies.
Our approach provides practical access to the massive amount of data to be found within an organisation’s own stakeholder community. This approach can not only forecast and simulate stakeholder behaviours but also identify how to positively influence those behaviours.
WHAT IS YOUR MAGIC SAUCE?
We have a wide range of differentiators built on our Gyral Platform, a cultural neuroscience platform that enables organisations to achieve the strategic advantage they yearn for. These include reverse prompting, a dedicated emotional data layer, a proprietary emotional insights engine, and a family of apps employing our Large Psychology Models.
WHAT IS THE PLAN FOR THE NEXT 5 YEARS? WHAT DO YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE?
While the first Large Psychology Model is now in production and powering the world’s first true AI Psychotherapist, we are already trialling the second Large Psychology Model, which is a one-to-many and many-to-one psychological model of complex human behaviours.
The third Large Psychology Model is a many-to-many psychological model of complex human behaviours, enabling influencing of future human behaviours. This is targeted for launch in Q3 2024.
We want to have our models underpinning critical decision support systems by powering enriched conversations in organisations around the world.
WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE YOU’VE FACED SO FAR?
We extensively researched the neuroscience supporting Gyral before launching in 2023. We have already sold our first licence and have advised a global organisation on their AI strategy. These activities have helped us to refine our thinking – and I believe that this will always be the case. We won’t change course, necessarily, but will be continually mindful of course correction.
Changes in AI legislation suit us as one of our starting points was to be excellent in ESG. This includes massively reducing the use of cloud hosting, high data sovereignty for every individual, and greater leadership skills and transparency.
The biggest issue for us has been resourcing our development work. We have proven the science supporting our Large Psychology Models but there is always a large gap between theory and implementation that needs to be navigated. This will call for astute and insightful software developers who are capable of going beyond the cookie-cutter approach that everyone else uses.
HOW DO PEOPLE GET INVOLVED/BUY INTO YOUR VISION?
Ideally, I would want to speak with Chief Officers seeking to give their organisation the competitive edge. They will be leading high-headcount organisations paralysed by the relentless influx of data across the enterprise and who need to forecast, simulate and influence human behaviour across their organisation and beyond.
