A Digital Revolution: How AI is Helping Improve the Health, Privacy and Safety of the World

Thursday - October 12 2023, 20:20 UTC - 1 year ago

AI is being used to improve health, privacy and safety in many different ways. AI-powered fitness assistants, content labeling, propaganda control and digital privacy tools can all help in this regard. However, it is important to remember the importance of labels on AI-generated content, and to not take AI-generated content at face value.

I hate going to the gym. Last year I hired a personal trainer for six months in the hope she would brainwash me into adopting healthy exercise habits longer-term. It was great, but personal trainers are prohibitively expensive, and I haven’t set foot in a gym once since those six months came to an end.

Lumin Fitness is a gym in Texas staffed pretty much entirely by virtual AI coaches designed to guide gym goers through workouts (there’s one human employee on hand—to switch everything off and on, perhaps).Patrons can complete a solo workout program with the help of a virtual coach in their own designated station, or participate in a high-intensity functional training class with others. Sensors in both the equipment and the floor-to-ceiling LED screens that line the walls of the gym track users’ movements, and Lumin uses machine learning to tailor advice.Even the White House wants us to use AI to help with our health. In a readout from a meeting between Biden administration officials and AI and health-care experts last week, Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, called on the health sector to "seize the powerful tools of AI to improve health outcomes for more Americans" in clinical settings, drug development, and public health challenges.

This makes sense. Neural networks are excellent at analyzing data and recognizing patterns. They could help speed up diagnoses, spot things humans might have missed, or help us come up with new ideas. And AI personal trainers that gamify exercise can help people feel good about their achievements and encourage us to do more exercise, Andy Lane, a professor of sport psychology at the University of Wolverhampton, told Rhiannon.

And most important, it’s crucial to remember these systems have no knowledge of what exercise feels like, what food tastes like, or what we mean by "high quality." AI workout programs might come up with dull, robotic exercises. AI recipe makers tend to suggest combinations that taste horrible, or are even poisonous. Mushroom foraging books are likely riddled with incorrect information about which varieties are toxic and which are not, which could have catastrophic consequences.

Humans also have a tendency to place too much trust in computers. It’s only a matter of time before "death by GPS" is replaced by "death by AI-generated mushroom foraging book." Including labels on AI-generated content is a good place to start. In this new age of AI-powered products, it will be more important than ever for the wider population to understand how these powerful systems work and don’t work. And to take what they say with a pinch of salt.

Deeper Learning .

Governments and political actors around the world are using AI to create propaganda and censor online content. In a new report released by Freedom House, a human rights advocacy group, researchers documented the use of generative AI in 16 countries "to sow doubt, smear opponents, or influence public debate." .

Bits and Bytes .

Finally, AI has been used to create new digital privacy tools that have the potential to improve our security in the long run. ‘Privacy-enhancing technologies’ (PETs) are a recent concept in computer science and privacy research. By using encryption, PETs' underlying principles promise to provide users with privacy-friendly ways to access more secure online services.