A world where human judgment grows with technology
Technology can make more powerful decisions every day. We work towards a future where human judgment grows with that power.
01Where decisions come from
Weigh, then cut
The English word decide comes from the Latin decidere, to cut off. Every decision cuts away the paths we do not take. In Turkish, the word for judgment, muhakeme, shares its root with hikmet, wisdom, and means reaching a verdict by weighing.
Between these two words lies the whole of a good decision. First we weigh, then we cut. Every decision a company makes works the same way, weighing cost against service, speed against accuracy, today against tomorrow. Arya-AI exists to make that weighing visible before the cut is made.
Johannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance, c. 1664. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
02What makes us human
Seeing ahead
Nature makes decisions too. Ants find the shortest path, and bees choose their new home through a kind of debate. But evolution is blind. It tries without seeing the outcome, and pays the price by living it.
What sets us apart is the ability to imagine the future. We can think through the end of a path before walking it, and see the cost of being wrong without having to pay it. Judgment is the name we give to that foresight.
Gerhard Emmoser, Celestial Globe with Clockwork, 1579. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
03What drives us
The rudder
Arya-AI began in 2019 in a single room at Antalya Teknokent, with two women and two computers. Our founder Ufuk Peker and Esra Gülmez, today our CTO, set out to automate the way companies work.
We soon noticed something. We could speed up a department's processes, but as long as the decisions behind them did not improve, something stayed disconnected. We were making the oars faster, but no one was holding the rudder. The boat was moving faster, though not always in the right direction.
Winslow Homer, Breezing Up (A Fair Wind), 1873–1876. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
04Our stance
Stance
In those same years, AI grew more powerful at a breathtaking pace. In the right hands, that power could give organisations extraordinary capacity. Designed carelessly, it meant decisions no one could explain and outcomes no one would own. The more powerful technology became, the stronger the stance it required.
Arya-AI was shaped by these two realisations. First we took hold of the rudder, the decision itself. Then we set out to carry that decision into action with human judgment at its centre.
Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interior in Strandgade, Sunlight on the Floor, 1901. SMK, The National Gallery of Denmark
Johannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance, c. 1664. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, WashingtonGerhard Emmoser, Celestial Globe with Clockwork, 1579. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkWinslow Homer, Breezing Up (A Fair Wind), 1873–1876. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, WashingtonVilhelm Hammershøi, Interior in Strandgade, Sunlight on the Floor, 1901. SMK, The National Gallery of Denmark
Our mission
Scaling human judgment.
We bring an expert's experience, goals and limits into the system, and apply them with the same care across thousands of decisions. Not by taking people out of the loop, but by multiplying their judgment.
A note from our founder
We have never made decisions alone. Growing up, we asked the people we trusted most which doctor to see or which plot of land to buy. Seeking counsel was the oldest way to see better.
Today a new kind of intelligence is taking a seat at our decision table. It can multiply our options, calculate outcomes and make possible futures visible. But which price we are willing to pay, what we care about and which risks we accept are still questions for the person at the table. A model can calculate the cost. It does not pay it.
Answering these questions will always be our work. But a well-built decision system helps us answer them better. It makes the assumptions behind our decisions visible, puts alternatives in front of us that test our judgment, and carries what we knew when we decided into tomorrow. That is what we build at Arya-AI. Systems that strengthen human judgment, where good decisions are never left to chance.
That room has grown into three cities. We started in Antalya, grew in Istanbul, and are opening to the world from London.
Where we startedAntalyaAntalya Teknokent · 2019
Where we grewIstanbulITU Çekirdek
Opening to the worldLondonUnited Kingdom
As a team
We are a small team of engineers, scientists, researchers and software developers who came together from different disciplines. Each of us sees a problem from a different place, and we believe good decisions are born exactly where those perspectives meet.
Working from Antalya, Istanbul and London, we begin every project with the same question.
How is this decision made today, and how could it be made better?
Our principles
01
We weigh first.
A decision should be weighed before it is executed.
02
The final word belongs to people.
AI recommends, people decide.
03
Every decision has a reason.
A decision that cannot be explained cannot be owned.
