How a tech entrepreneur from Newfoundland keeps an ethical view amidst AI chaos

He may be a high-tech entrepreneur now, but Mike Rizkalla’s roots as a hard-core rocker definitely show when it comes to being adamant about the philosophy behind his current work.

Now, the former Newfoundland and Labrador resident is getting a chance to bring his message of approaching the use of artificial intelligence (AI) ethically to a high-profile academic stage.

In his younger years, Rizkalla was a member of Bucket Truck, a St. John’s, NL-based heavy metal band that made a name for itself throughout Atlantic Canada in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

During those days, and since then, he has enjoyed a successful career as an engineer in the tech industry, working in the artificial intelligence field long before it became the ubiquitous technology it is today.

He worked in animation at Telepix Imaging Inc. — under the late Karl Kenny, who would go on to found subsea robotics giant Kraken Robotics Inc. — and Collideascope Digital Productions Inc. in Halifax before founding his own tech agency called Brave New World.

In 2014, Rizkalla started the BNW AI & Robotics Lab, which would set the stage for the work that has led to his latest endeavour with Snorble Inc.

Snorble is a screen-free AI companion for children ages two to seven.

Inspired by Rizkalla’s young son Max’s struggles to sleep and stay asleep, the smart toy uses play-based learning, yoga, meditation and healthy habit-building practices like brushing teeth and bedtime routines to engage children.

It runs on a proprietary platform with no generative AI, no camera and no engagement optimization loop.

Having had a front-row seat to the evolution of AI in the past 16 years, especially the incredible leaps and bounds in more recent years, Rizkalla felt it was crucial to develop a product that helped families by inspiring learning, nurturing development and growing with the child.

“From a generative AI perspective, we knew it wasn’t safe, so we didn’t put that into our product,” Rizkalla said in an interview with Postmedia from his current home near Princeton, N.J. “We have a deterministic library of content and our product will never say anything wrong to a child.”

The initial test batch of Snorble toys in 2021 was well-received, even amidst the pandemic-related shipping crisis, with the company selling $200,000 worth of them within three weeks.

The company said families have reported noticeable improvements in bedtime routines, engagement with learning and other family connections forged in ways other devices and digital screens simply do not accomplish.

“It’s designed on purpose,” Rizkalla explained. “There are no cameras installed, but we use sensors. What we did was way harder than using some off-the-shelf thing, but we did it because we knew it was the right thing to do for families and kids.”

When a larger shipment of Snorbles hit the market in 2024, the company checked in with families on how the toy was performing.

“What we saw was families fell in love with the product,” he said. “Over 80 per cent were actually using the product a year later for over 30 minutes a day.”

He said that the families involved in the testing of Snorble came from all walks of life, including different cultures, lifestyles and home environments. Whether the child is an orphan, needs to learn the language of a new country, celebrates different holidays than others in their communities or simply has trouble going to bed on time, he said Snorble is designed to help them find stability in the chaos.

“We’re trying to make a world-class educational program where the act of and the ability to have progress for a youngster and for their families is available at a fee that people can actually afford,” he said. “That’s fundamentally the ethos of what Snorble is trying to do.”

The long-term use of a Snorble toy, noted Rizkalla, goes against the marketing schemes of toymakers who hope the novelty of their toy quickly wears off and children soon ask their family to buy the latest version of it or whatever next big thing the company has lined up to sell.

“We’ve had meetings at the highest level with a lot of the major players and their model is exactly that,” he said.

“They actually don’t care if the kid plays with it for longer than an hour and then puts it away. Their goal is to make it for as little money as they can, sell it for these certain trigger price points and then whatever happens happens. Next year, they do it all over again. They’ve got to recreate themselves every year.

“They’re all watching us because we break all their financial models.”

Snorble has raised $8 million in funding to date. Rizkalla’s company is now in the midst of another funding round for inventory and marketing aimed at launching a new campaign to sell 25,000 more units next year.

Rizkalla said the plan is to eventually expand Snorble products that are also effective for children under the age of two and as old as nine. They are also looking into ways to develop a Snorble for elderly citizens.

“We’re a family tech company,” he said. “We’re trying to make things that have friction be removed in between how we interact together as people. The goal is to increase joy, love and laughter in the home between us together, not necessarily just with the device.”

Rizkalla said the company is constantly bombarded with questions about why it is so resistant to incorporating open AI into Snorble.

He said it’s because the company never loses sight of the fact that there are human beings on the other side of their devices.

He likened the evolution of artificial intelligence to a Wild West frontier or the Industrial Revolution, where a lack of regulation leads to a sort of pandemonium where people are doing things with no rhyme or reason.

For Rizkalla, the social stakes are too high. He wants to be sure he and his company are on the side of those who are taking advantage of technology for the right reasons.

“We have stayed true to our ethics,” he said. “We’ve stayed true to what we believe is important. That’s the stubbornness, that’s the punk rocker in me. I’m not going to break from what I believe in because someone’s trying to throw a shekel in front of me.”

A graduate of Memorial University in St. John’s, Rizkalla has been invited to expound on his work in a panel discussion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the world’s most prestigious engineering schools.

The event, titled Artificial Companions: What AI Toys Mean for the Future of Childhood, is part of MIT’s Arthur Miller Lecture on Science and Ethics and takes place on Monday. Oct. 26.

The panel also features Professor Mimi Ito, director of the Connected Learning Lab at the University of California, and Professor Sherry Turkle, founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self.

“Chatbots draw us into a game of pretend — and for some, pretend empathy becomes empathy enough,” states the description of the panel discussion on MIT’s website. “While the seductions of pretend empathy are dangerous for all of us, children have no defense; they are first-time learners.”

The series is usually reserved for academics and policy experts. Past speakers include Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, a British-Canadian computer scientist, cognitive scientist and cognitive psychologist known as the Godfather of AI.

The honour of being included on the MIT panel, not to mention being specifically invited by Turkle herself, is not lost on Rizkalla.

“I feel like God has given me gifts that I’ve been able to have the opportunity to share my perspective on the world,” he said. “I’m just another guy, but getting to talk on that stage is pretty incredible, especially considering the journey we’ve had. It has not been an easy journey. There’s been a lot of challenges getting to this point.”

While maybe not quite as illustrious, Rizkalla was also set to be a panelist at another event in the days leading up to his appearance at MIT, namely at an investor summit in Texas on Oct. 22-23.

The goal may have been attracting funding for Snorble, but Rizkalla said the ethical perspective of his company doesn’t change when it comes to the financial aspects of the business.

“That’s not as sexy a conversation (as the MIT lecture), but it’s an important one,” he said. “We’re looking for investors who believe (in our) philosophy. I’m making what I make, but they have to believe in that because it is a more challenging road to take.”