This is borderline satire. You don't need some crazy new idea to do a startup. You need to execute well on something people want, and if you're out looking for ideas, your best bet is probably to enter an existing market and cater to a subset of it better than others are doing.
EDIT: I would also be happy to do this startup if YC adds me to the next batch; already offered to do one for the “Social Network for Children”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15715865
The average person can understand way more than you are giving credit.
And anyway, if the average person can't understand some communication, than it's something completely out the league of current AIs. It's the one thing we are good at.
Beyond that, as defined by the spec for the startup, I have no reason to believe AI built for this would not be able to do the same for this task.
I beg to differ[1]. The average human isn't autistic, but there is still significant value in using AI to tell us what we are doing wrong (and wrap the product up so it doesn't make us fell like crap while we are doing it).
Behavior modification bots would be incredibly useful for helping people see their own shortcomings (cognitive science research shows us that we frequently see the flaws in others but are systematically blind to our own).
[1] http://autismglass.stanford.edu/
[2] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609142/andrew-ng-has-a-ch...
Is the market the average person though or the person willing to spend several hundred dollars on tech for their pet?
My guess is the latter would mostly consist of people who have spent decades in close contact with pets and are able to reliably read the body language of a dog with rather extreme accuracy and nuance.
If you've never owned a dog they're rather difficult to read. If you've been around them as long as you've been around people you can almost immediately discern a lot of information about them based on a glance.
It really is incredible what they are capable of at such a young age.
Other parents tell me all the time about how their kids are getting frustrated because the can't communicate verbally - I really don't know why signing for babies isn't more popular.
However, it's been the exact opposite, signing has only reduced frustration, taught the benefits of communication, and encouraged spoken language.