How AI and VR builds confidence in all areas of life from school and work to old age

Feat. RiVR’s work on tackling county lines drugs crimes, the Sona AI platform that helps you prepare for challenges at work, and Recallify’s memory support app.

In times that test us there’s nothing worse than making a wrong decision or crumbling under pressure, and while you can’t plan for challenges, you can prepare. Whether it’s to stop young people making regrettable choices, help you perform better at work, or support a cognitive slow-down into old age, new technologies are introducing fresh ways to feel self-assured.

We know it’s easy to talk about decisions or anticipate how you might react to a situation, but without real-world context it’s impossible to know. Headsets and immersive technologies put us directly into difficult situations where you can fail safely, learn deeply, and prepare to face challenges in real time. All with the kind of confidence you can struggle to muster elsewhere.

Prepare for a worst case scenario to avoid living it 

Being able to recognise a bad situation and find out in advance how you’d handle it takes the sting out of any potential danger. You can test your wits and responses, recognise your weaknesses and strengths, and highlight behaviours or situations you might not have predicted.

Whether it’s training firefighters or crime scene investigators, preparing people for complex challenges is something VR company RiVR (Reality in Virtual Reality) never shies away from. Today, they’re helping kids understand county lines exploitation.

Co-produced with Next Generation Youth Theatre, the team at RiVR has created a film for Bedfordshire Police to show in schools as part of their Lost Boys campaign.

“This powerful VR experience puts Year 8 pupils directly into the fictional story of 14-year-old Rhys,” says RiVR co- founder Alex Harvey on LinkedIn, “showing how easily vulnerable young people can be drawn into dangerous gangs.”

The Lost Boys film is “pioneering,” says Ben Sturge who was caught up in county lines gangs as a boy.

“The first time you get approached, you don’t recognise it as criminality,” he says. “You just think some cool kids want to hang around with you, and they’ve got nice things… then things start to progress. You find yourself in situations or around certain levels of violence that your own nightmares would be scared of.”

The VR experience immerses young children into a real-looking world to see first-hand how gang grooming starts and how quickly it can evolve.

Arming young people with knowledge of how the grooming system operates helps them recognise and escape it, saving them and their families immense sorrow and pain. Children say they feel “completely in the scenario,” when experiencing the Lost Boys film, and so are able to absorb more of what the experience aims to teach them.

“This level of realism means VR training is 4 times faster,” says Alex, with “3.75 times more emotional connection than traditional methods.”

RiVR will frequently give a demo of an experience upfront to get people comfortable with new technologies and prove their value. By sharing behind the scenes footage of the worlds they create and interviews with people who’ve been through the process, it consistently shows how VR prepares people for sensitive or dangerous situations they can’t possibly practice for in real life.

New training methods built on old gamification principles

AI proves to be another useful tool to mirror human experience for learning purposes, this time for adults navigating career growth and development.

When I sat down to try the Sona AI platform from Totem Learning, I had a choice of different work scenarios I could virtually prepare for, ones that typically make people anxious, especially if they haven’t experienced it before.

I chose an employee appraisal meeting where I was the manager and the employee had been underperforming; the hands-on demo opportunity helps me fall right into the role.

The super smooth platform design means the virtual office I sit in (with the AI) looks real, as does the employee. Headphones block out any distractions and the sound is crystal clear. Like I would do in real life, I can pick up on feelings from the voice of the employee, who appears tired and dejected. 

As the virtual manager, I have to hit a few milestones during the conversation, like explaining clearly to the employee what the objectives are for the meeting, and what it is exactly that makes their performance at work a concern.

Actively trying to achieve these goals forces me to focus on what’s important.

If I fail to hit one of my goals, the messy slip in conversation teaches me why it matters to include key information to keep on track if I want to smoothly reach the appropriate outcome.

The more you do something, the more confident you become

Helen Routledge, CEO of Totem Learning, says they built Sona AI because they “believe in the power of practice”. Fail to handle difficult situations well and it can quickly knock your confidence, but with this sophisticated learning tool, you can practice, prepare, and boost your confidence instead.

“Games provide a space to do, to try, to fail, to figure it out,” says Helen on LinkedIn. “They allow people to bring their own style to challenges and that’s what real learning looks like.”

If it doesn’t change behaviour, it’s “just content,” continues Helen. “We create context… safe spaces to try, tools that adapt to people, and games that give teams the actual skills they need ― before real-world pressure hits.”

Where traditional, formal training sessions can make people nervous or fail to stimulate deep learning, practicing out of the spotlight with AI means you can learn at your own pace, in your own way, and it’s this practice that builds confidence.

Keeping hold of your learning experiences with apps

Remembering everything you learn through life (and being able to apply it effectively) is challenging for everyone, but it’s especially difficult if you’re neurodivergent or have a cognitive impairment. This can affect your memory and also the ability to organise information in your mind, which can quickly become overwhelming.

For help with this, you can now download an app like Recallify to keep on top of everything.

You can use it to record voice notes that are then turned into reminders and added to your calendar, write down thoughts or feelings and get help to detangle them, or import documents for a quick summary that’s easy to absorb.

Although this is an entirely new way of operating and something people don’t yet have a habit for, it’s evident the technology will continue to mature. We now have a wealth of new tech and tools to see us through every stage of life, serving every generation.

Wearables give us more knowledge about ourselves across our whole lives

Leading technologist and designer, Robert Fabricant, who works with tech giants like Microsoft, says:

“I could be part of the first generation exiting middle age with the benefit of a continuous, longitudinal data set of our basic health biometrics generated by Oura rings and Apple Watches. What could this data tell us?”

The product designer knows first hand the support wellness tech can bring. Having looked after his elderly father living with dementia, he recognises there often comes a moment where our own brains let us down and not only how frustrating that is, but there’s a window of opportunity for tech to provide dignity and comfort to the sufferer and their family:

“What if tech could have helped my family understand my father’s changing cognitive abilities much earlier in his aging process? And not only sensed those changes, but gradually layered in additional supports and digital augmentations without disrupting his familiar habits. A smartphone that proactively offers to read out his emails rather than waiting for him to learn a new habit, such as selecting voice-to-text within an obscure app setting.”
― Robert Fabricant for Fast Company

Boosting our brains through practice not pressure

RiVR’s county lines prevention, Sona AI’s workplace training, and Recallify’s memory support app all show confidence is something you can build through practice.

Rather than learn only through mistakes, the 14-year-old can recognise gang grooming tactics, the new manager can successfully handle difficult conversations, and seniors can maintain their independence.

Whether you’re 14 or 74, the chance to practice facing up to challenges in a safe space, to learn your limits and hang onto your strengths, means you can approach life with the self-assurance that comes from knowing you’ve been there before and have everything you need to stay strong.