👩⚕️ 🐈 AI will coach your diet and translate your cat
"Meow if you want more GPT Tokens"
Will AI heal us or make us unable to tell reality from fiction?
Maybe both. Let's get into it.
The Good
AI-DRIVEN HEALTH COACH: A NEW ERA FOR PERSONALIZED HEALTHCARE?
Imagine swapping your afternoon coffee for water with lemon because you got a text to remind you of your health goals. No, we're not talking about your mom's passive-aggressive missives, but rather an AI-driven initiative that's transforming healthcare as we know it. According to Sam Altman and Ariana Huffington writing for TIME, the latest wave in AI technology might just make your Fitbit look like a fossil.
Huffington and Open AI’s new venture, Thrive AI Health looks to use AI health coaches to make really precise recommendations tailored to each individual. Whether it's suggesting you take a 10-minute walk after picking your kid up from school or swapping that calorie-heavy coffee for a green juice, these smart systems are being designed to know you better than your Netflix recommendations. They might even put your favorite diet influencer out of business.
While giving any company a huge amount of personal data as sensitive as your health info is a little scary, the upside is huge. In a world where AI continuously gets a bad rap for job-stealing and training on copyrighted data, it’s refreshing to see AI applied in a way to improve lives and maybe even mental health. A non-judgemental AI assistant might help people get over the shame hump of getting help from a real person.
The Bad
THE DIGITAL SLEIGHT OF HAND: AI'S REALITY DISTORTION FIELD
In the latest episode of "What Fresh Hell Is This?", Google's experts are sounding alarms about the potential for AI to distort reality to unfathomable extents. CNET reports that high-ranking officials within Google are warning that AI-generated content, from deepfakes to photorealistic fabrications, could fundamentally alter our perception of what's real.
The commentary from Google’s experts paints a rather grim picture: AI's ability to manipulate visuals and text is reaching a point where fact-checking could become impractical, gish-galloping us with misinformation on a global scale. When you can no longer trust your eyes, what do you rely on? Your gut feeling that the moon landing probably didn't involve Stanley Kubrick? Honestly the shots would have been framed better.
So, what's the game plan? Google's answer seems to be a combination of improving digital literacy (which can’t possibly move fast enough) and deploying more sophisticated AI to catch AI-generated lies (which I’m not currently optimistic about, given Google wasn’t even able to catch its own AIs recommending glue on pizza).
The AI
Almost half of people in a recent survey said they would use AI-powered air taxis—a Skynet-driven Tesla made by Boeing, what could go wrong?
The newest AI goldrush: prizes for AI breakthroughs like animal communication. Turns out your cat was just asking for the Wi-Fi password.
AI is now being used to identify new species at breakneck pace and scientists are worried about accuracy. Said the AI, “Trust me, bro.”
Phishing 2.0: When Nigerian princes upgrade to neural networks. AI scams are on the rise, this is actually a helpful article about how to not fall for them.
AI videos are producing alternate histories of memes. Maybe this time Distracted Boyfriend will keep his eyes where they belong.
The NSA has released guidelines for secure AI rollouts. Among their top recommendations: leave a backdoor open for us, pls.
Today’s newsletter was initially compiled and drafted by, you guessed it, AI, and edited by Kyle.