SOFI AI's Sophia Sy has an answer to online buyers' most asked question

When I ask Sophia Sy, co-founder of SOFI AI, how she would like to be called, she shares that she is really Sophia, but that people have been calling her Sophie because of the company’s name and core product. The 25-year old has, with her collaborators, launched a chatbot service that seeks to empower businesses.

- By CARL JAVIER

At first glance, a customer-service chatbot isn’t a necessarily exciting use-case for AI. After all, these things have been around for a long time. And if you’re anything like me, almost every time you’ve chatted with you, you’ve probably wished you could talk to a human.

But what I discover in talking to Sophie is that she is well aware that she isn’t inventing something new. Instead she is taking already existing technologies and finding ways so that they can better serve her clients’ customers.

I note that she co-founded her company at 23, which is around the time most people are at their first jobs. Sophia shares that she hasn’t necessarily had a traditional background. While her father did have a business in e-commerce, she saw him work through debt and hard times.

She was home-schooled all the way through high school. And perhaps most interestingly, where most high school kids would be on social media or YouTube, Sophia was spending her time studying banking apps.