@maksimnagaevethicalai2Building ALMA AI: Beyond Chatbots Toward Long-Term Understanding
Hi, everyone! I'm Maksim, founder of ALMA AI, an independent AI research project.
I'm exploring a question that I believe deserves more attention:
What would it take for an AI to understand a person over time, rather than simply respond to individual messages?
Most conversational AI systems are designed to generate useful responses in the moment. ALMA takes a different approach: it is being developed around a persistent, evidence-based cognitive model of a person that evolves through dialogue.
The core architecture is implemented, and the research prototype is running.
The goal is not to make an AI that confidently labels people after a few conversations. Instead, ALMA aims to accumulate evidence, distinguish established beliefs from uncertain hypotheses, identify contradictions, and recognize when it needs more information before drawing conclusions.
My initial focus is long-term psychological understanding and relationship compatibility.
I'm currently working on the architecture, the dialogue experience, and how to make the system's conclusions more reliable over time.
I'd love to hear from other AI founders and builders:
What do you think is the hardest problem in building AI that maintains a coherent, evolving model of a person over months or years?
Is it memory, reasoning, uncertainty calibration, or something else entirely?
Looking forward to exchanging ideas with the community.
Comments5
From the business side, my answer to your question is something else entirely: getting people to keep talking to ALMA for months, because the long-term understanding never builds if they stop after the second week. At iContact, and later with the SaaS CEOs in SaasRise, I saw that keeping users coming back month after month was always harder than getting the first signup, so I'd give people a small, useful insight about their relationship early on so they have a reason to return.
That’s a really valuable perspective, Ryan. Thank you!
I agree that long-term understanding only works if people keep engaging with ALMA over time. I especially like your idea of giving users a small, useful insight about their relationship early on — something that creates immediate value and makes them curious to explore further.
The challenge is to make those early insights genuinely meaningful, while letting the deeper understanding develop naturally through continued conversations. That’s something I’ll be thinking carefully about as I develop ALMA.
Really appreciate you sharing your experience!
Great question Maksim. From my side building in Indonesia, long-term understanding is the hardest part — most users stop after week 2. I agree with Ryan, giving small useful insights early is key to make them return. Curious how you handle memory retention for ALMA. Following your journey!
Thanks, Mebi! Memory retention is a central part of ALMA. The idea is to build and gradually update a persistent cognitive model of a person, based on accumulated evidence rather than treating each conversation as an isolated interaction. It's still an evolving research project, but that's the foundation I'm working toward
📱 ALMA AI Android beta is now available!
Feedback from testers is welcome.
👉 Download APK: github.com/MaksimNagaevEthicalAI/ALMA_AI_android-beta/releases/download/v0.1.0-beta/ALMA-AI.apk
5 comments
From the business side, my answer to your question is something else entirely: getting people to keep talking to ALMA for months, because the long-term understanding never builds if they stop after the second week. At iContact, and later with the SaaS CEOs in SaasRise, I saw that keeping users coming back month after month was always harder than getting the first signup, so I'd give people a small, useful insight about their relationship early on so they have a reason to return.
That’s a really valuable perspective, Ryan. Thank you!
I agree that long-term understanding only works if people keep engaging with ALMA over time. I especially like your idea of giving users a small, useful insight about their relationship early on — something that creates immediate value and makes them curious to explore further.
The challenge is to make those early insights genuinely meaningful, while letting the deeper understanding develop naturally through continued conversations. That’s something I’ll be thinking carefully about as I develop ALMA.
Really appreciate you sharing your experience!
Great question Maksim. From my side building in Indonesia, long-term understanding is the hardest part — most users stop after week 2. I agree with Ryan, giving small useful insights early is key to make them return. Curious how you handle memory retention for ALMA. Following your journey!
Thanks, Mebi! Memory retention is a central part of ALMA. The idea is to build and gradually update a persistent cognitive model of a person, based on accumulated evidence rather than treating each conversation as an isolated interaction. It's still an evolving research project, but that's the foundation I'm working toward
📱 ALMA AI Android beta is now available!
Feedback from testers is welcome.
👉 Download APK: github.com/MaksimNagaevEthicalAI/ALMA_AI_android-beta/releases/download/v0.1.0-beta/ALMA-AI.apk