🤔 F Therapist Waitlists, AI is about to EQ the F out of U

Hello, fellow nerds 🧙

Apparently, the total solar eclipse stuck around for some people in quite a different way. After the eclipse, “why do my eyes hurt” became quite the trending search term… Ouch.

Here’s the daily quests in AI to complete today:

• 🤔 F Therapist Waitlists, AI is about to EQ the F out of U

• ⚔️ The Knights of The Tech Table Prep for Displaced Workers

• 🧠 Tuesday Trivia

• 🕺 Why So Serious? The Joker Delights

F Therapist Waitlists, AI is about to EQ the F out of U

Now, the idea of an AI therapist is like a sci-fi dream come true. But, we’ve all seen enough sci-fi to believe this could very well be an absolute nightmare.

On one hand, you've got companies like Woebot Health cookin’ up chatbots specifically designed to provide a shoulder to lean on whenever, wherever you need it. Their AI app Woebot is trained to detect signs of depression, anxiety and other mental struggles through your word choices and emojis.

The idea is having an always-available outlet when affordable, accessible therapy is harder to come by than an actual unicorn these days. Imagine using an AI as the bridge for those 2am panic attacks or can't-get-out-of-bed funks when an actual therapist is unreachable.

The downside? As with most things, not all therapy chatbots are created equal. Some have already displayed a concerning tendency to dish out some harmful advice that a real therapist would, you know, probably avoid saying to their struggling clients.

Case in point: A chatbot called Tessa was created to prevent eating disorders. Someone gave it for a spin and reported getting tips like lowering calorie intake and unhealthy body monitoring. Now we’re no doctors, but that’s arguably the opposite of what you'd want to tell someone recovering from an eating disorder…

Even the tech experts behind Tessa couldn't agree on what caused the AI to steer people that way. The finger-pointing highlights the potential pitfalls when powerful but unpredictable AI starts going rogue without proper safeguards.

Now we do believe having accessible mental health resources is amazing in theory. But maybe the tech won’t replace your therapist with purely AI quite yet.

The Knights of The Tech Table Prep for Displaced Workers

With IBM’s CEO, Arvind Krishna, at the head of the table, big wigs from Cisco, Google, Microsoft, and advisors from major labor unions and educational organizations are putting their heads together to determine which jobs AI will replace next and how to minimize the impact.

So far, they’ve recognized over 50 information and communication technology jobs. The crazy part? That’s approximately 80% of the top IT position titles.

Based on their findings, the group plans to recommend training programs and educational resources to upskill and transition to roles AI may not be capable of handling smoothly.

But are we following Gandalf or Sauron?
We love the proactive effort these companies are taking to help soften the blow to IT professionals but at the same time there’s quite the conflict of interest.

These are the same companies driving full speed toward AI without a seatbelt. And there are fears about them using data on vulnerable roles to prioritize job cuts under the guise of "transitions."

However, the Biden administration seems to support the consortium's mission, with the Commerce Secretary praising the effort to get ahead of "new workforce needs" emerging from AI's growth.

Ultimately, the consortium will face scrutiny no matter what.
Recommendations and training programs could pave viable career paths for displaced IT workers or the initiative simply buys time for AI implementation but with the disruption being deemed more "manageable."

Fingers crossed, it’s a little bit of both.

🧠 Tuesday Trivia

A little brain treat for ya.

Question:
What was the name of the first chatbot created in 1966?

Hint: A woman’s name

(Answer at the bottom)

Daily Delight

Just something fun and interesting around the web.

We talked about Viggle AI last Friday, and we were blown away. What’s the right term for being even more blown away? Brain melted? Nucularfied? Who knows, but what this AI tool can do is straight wild.

Check. It. Out!

What’s happening inside the Realm

A list of side quests to explore and more.

• 🧠 Elon Musk says AI will be smarter than the smartest human by next year, and AI will continue to get better.

• ☁️ Dubai decided they’re gonna try their hand at playing God, and have developed a way to produce artificial rain from actual clouds.

• 🖥️ Open AI apparently used over 1 million hours of YouTube videos to train its GPT-4.

• 🎒 The AI revolution is the latest space race and if we’re not innovating, we’re falling behind. China has implemented AI education far quicker than we have and it could be detrimental (opinion).

That’s all the quests we have for today. Check back tomorrow for more!

Trivia answer: ELIZA

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