Interview Questions for Lior Hakim, the Chief Technology Officer of Hour One
In the ever-evolving world of technology, an Israeli company named Hour One is making waves by transforming the education sector and beyond with its innovative approach to personal interaction at scale.
Hour One is developing a system that brings text-based curriculums to life, turning them into video-based platforms. This is achieved through the use of synthetic characters, which are created by capturing images and sounds using cameras and microphones and giving them life with AI technology.
These synthetic characters are more than just digital avatars. They can affiliate themselves with types of content they relate to, enabling real-time and seamless interactions. The cost of these interactions is also set to dramatically decrease, making personalized digital communication more accessible.
Hour One's vast cloud infrastructure supports these synthetic characters, ensuring they can handle a multitude of tasks and interactions. Once a character is onboarded, it can take any text input in almost any language and bring it to life, creating a living being that looks and sounds like a normal person.
Safety is a top priority for Hour One. To ensure the safe use of synthetic characters, the company has established an AI ethics committee for regular discussions on the implications of their technology. They are also committed to transparency, marking every asset that leaves their digital doorstep as synthetic and promoting the "Altered Visuals" sign.
The company's fascination with virtual beings stems from an obsession with identity, aiming to extend a person's ability to be in two places at once, physically and digitally. Lior Hakim, the chief technology officer and co-founder of Hour One, has a background in machine intelligence, with experience in the Israeli intelligence agencies, the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Hour One collaborates with various partners and sectors to support its business activities. These partnerships span across education, training, customer service, and media, with concrete examples in corporate training, digital marketing, and automated customer interaction across industries such as e-learning, finance, and retail.
The virtual beings created by Hour One have the potential to significantly enhance the relationship between humans and machines, making digital communication more personal and human-like. As the technology evolves, interactions will become possible through various communication mediums, such as screens, AR/VR, or holograms.
Moreover, Hour One is excited about the possibilities for job creation, such as managing a character's presence with different personas representing the user in various contexts. The company is also collaborating with other industry leaders to establish standards for the use of synthetic media to keep the audience safe and informed.
Lior Hakim, who worked in the field of blockchain at its early stages and co-authored the Colored Coins white paper, sees the meeting point of digitizing quantifiable assets and synthetic characters as a significant area of focus for Hour One. The company is actively working on bridging this gap, promising exciting developments in the future.
