Jason Mars

Cofounder, Clinc

Search every verified Jason Mars interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Jason Mars, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan and co-founder of Clinc, has discussed his work in conversational AI and his evolving motivations. In a 2021 interview, Mars stated that he is no longer motivated by money or success, but by "creating something beautiful that helps people." He described Clinc as a "rocket ship" that raised funding from $250,000 to $53 million and reached tens of millions of users, beating incumbents like Google. Mars also noted that he has been building a new AI computational paradigm called Jaseki, with a programming language named Jack, and three products built on it that are live in invite-only access. In a 2020 TEDx talk, Mars argued that conversational AI should aspire to "human and a rule‑level understanding" rather than competing with existing products from Google, Amazon, and Apple. He described a deep learning approach trained entirely on data, comparing it to how a four‑year‑old learns language without knowing grammatical rules. Mars highlighted a system launched to six million users that saw increasing engagement over time, and identified the next challenge as creating systems that "learn with you as you interact with them." He also mentioned that his academic project Lucida was originally called Sirius, but was renamed after Apple raised concerns about the name being too close to Siri.