Teen Founder Builds Berry, an AI Pal for Mental Health (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: I'm so excited to be here today. I'm 17 and I'm building a company called Berry. It's an AI stuffed animal designed to help teens take care of their mental health in a fun and supportive way. Berry, are you excited to be here today? Yes, I'm so excited to be here with you. Awesome. Well, let's get to it. A few years ago, I was just another student trying to balance school, friends, and my personal life. I went to a really intense magnet school and honestly, it took a toll on my mental health. I saw my friends struggling too, texting me super late at night, usually 2am, just to talk things out. I was the friend they would go to just to talk about their problems because they had nothing else. That's when I realized I wanted to build something that could help people before things got bad, so I started researching. I talked to hundreds of teens about what they needed, but a lot of these tools were not built with care. Some even gave extremely harmful advice. That's when I thought, we can build something better. That's how Berry was born. It's an AI that's not a therapist or a friend, but an accountability partner. It helps you reflect, build habits, and understand yourself better. It makes working on your mental health fun and exciting. AI has completely changed the way I work. I can ask it to scan through hundreds of research papers, summarize what's out there, and then help me talk through my own creative ideas based on that research. I also often use it to brainstorm what my product should be now and what features I should be building into it to create a better future. My goal is to build a truly generational product. But here is the big disclaimer, AI doesn't and will never replace my thinking. It helps me think better. It gives me time to focus on what I do best, creativity, problem solving, and connecting with people, the things only humans can do. Before AI, I would spend hours digging through articles or trying to find the right data. Now I can do that in minutes. And I spend the rest of my time building, testing, getting feedback, and improving my product. Knowing how to use AI is a superpower. And if AI didn't exist, honestly, I don't think I'd be doing what I'm doing today. AI is not here to replace us. I believe it's here to help us become more human. So my advice is don't be afraid of AI. Be curious, ask questions, and try things. You don't have to know exactly what you want to do yet. Just start exploring. The future isn't something that happens to you. It's something that you create. So to my fellow students, I cannot wait to see what you create. Enjoy the rest of the program and I will see y'all soon.