We're all mental thanks to AI
26th March 2024
Welcome to AI Collision 💥,
In today’s collision between AI and our world:
Musk tweets Frisby
Golf shoe gloves
Wild IKEA manuals
If that’s enough to get the AI psychoanalysing, read on…
AI Collision 💥
A couple of days ago, Elon Musk tweeted a music video from Dominic Frisby.
Now if Dominic’s name looks familiar to you then you might know he publishes one of our recommended Substacks, The Flying Frisby, which you should read and/or subscribe to. If you’ve not seen his work, I suggest you get onto his Substack here.
There’s a couple of reasons for pointing this out.
One, we know Dominic. In fact, when I first moved to the UK in late 2013 and began working with MoneyWeek magazine and Southbank Investment Research, I believe Dominic was also contributing to some editorial with the various businesses.
But I had heard that Dominic was soon publishing a book on bitcoin. That caught my attention, as in late 2013, bitcoin was still very much a fringe idea and not many people gave it the time of day.
While I had been involved in it since 2010 and been publishing content about bitcoin and crypto in the years since, it was comforting to know I wasn’t the only crazy person in the building.
So for Dominic to have written and published (I think the first publishing was in 2014) a book on bitcoin he is indeed an early mover in that space – and if you can still get your hands on a copy, it’s well worth the read.
Anyway, to cut a short story long, in Musk’s tweet of Frisby’s song, no doubt it has and will bring some attention to Dominic’s brilliantly unique take on everything.
It is funny, and worth the watch. And there in that video there is a section where humorously he says, “We’re all mental now.”
(Note: it makes much more sense when you’ve seen the video.)
And as funny as the aim of the video is... part of me thinks that maybe there’s a weirdly dystopian future where the video proves to be highly accurate (maybe that’s even now...?).
I say this because of something else I was made aware of this week around the use of AI to “measure and improve” your mental health.
And by the looks of it, this is targeted specifically at younger people.
Now, we’ve covered some similar things here at AI Collision before, considering the idea of how crazy/wild/not crazy an AI girlfriend might be – I think “sexified Disney” was the phrase I used.
And of course that perhaps those who head down that pathway perhaps wouldn’t have been ending up in human-to-human versions of that anyway.
And that maybe the use of AI in that sense is good practice for the real world.
Aaaaaaand then I saw this use of AI in the management of mental health which got me thinking more about the whole situation.
The worry is that like most things, it’s when we become over-reliant on certain technologies that we begin to properly disconnect from reality.
I’m all for the convergence of the digital and physical world. But not at the cost of humanity and our ability to still connect with the real world.
The idea that mental health can and may very well be “managed” with AI concerns me more than comforts me.
There’s no doubt that access to services like mental health treatment and counselling needs improvement and there are people that can’t get access to these services that need them. And if this provides a way to do that... that’s got to be helpful, right?
But also, it feels like doing so becomes that extra step of disconnection from humanity. Again, this comes down to trust. What if your kid starts getting depression treatment from an AI mental health bot? Would that comfort you or concern you?
Generations of kids who get their mental health treatment from AI bots? Maybe that idea of “we’re all mental now” isn’t too far from the pin.
Is this the beginning of a slippery, dangerous slope?
But then you see developments in AI within healthcare like nursing and you also start to think that maybe there’s a balance there too.
Like the announcement Nvidia made last week with Hippocratic AI, in developing nursing “agents” for use in healthcare for non-diagnostic tasks.
According to Fox News:
Hippocratic says its Constellation model outperformed real nurses 79% to 63% in identifying a medication's impact on lab values; 88% to 45% in identifying condition-specific disallowed over-the-counter medications; 96% to 93% in correctly comparing a lab value to a reference range; and 81% to 57% in detecting toxic dosages of over-the-counter drugs.
The other thing is it’s said the AI agents cost $9 an hour to run vs. $39 an hour which is the median pay for nurses as of 2022.
Maybe in certain tasks AI makes sense, in others... I think we run the risk of jumping the gun so to speak.
But what is very clear is this collision of AI into healthcare services is very real and present –we just need to make sure it doesn’t also fall into the dangerous category.
AI gone wild 🤪
I was originally going to include this incredible piece of AI technology put to wonderful use just in our links section below.
But…
Then I realised that this is something that:
Makes the heart feel good
Is something that British people could relate to
Was the literally definition of AI gone WILD – which is what this section is all about.
So, what exactly am I talking about here?
AI helping hedgehogs of course!
About four years ago I was innocuously driving along a two-lane country road in the West Midlands, when a small dot appeared ahead on the road. As I got closer and closer I realised that was no dot, that was a hedgehog.
I slowed the car right down so as to not run over the little fella and got out to help him off the road.
I then realised grabbing him with both hands wasn’t a great idea either. And that trying to shoo him across the road with a swift kick was also not the greatest idea.
Thankfully I had some golf shoes in my boot. So I slipped them over my hands like a pair of golf shoe gloves, cradled the button-cute little guy in between them and helped him into the field next to the road so he could go on to live a long, fruitful hedgehog life.
So when I recently saw the National Hedgehog Monitoring Programme was planning on using AI to understand what’s going on with Hedgehogs in the UK, I was well chuffed.
For a start, they want to figure out where the hedgehogs are, and why they are on the decline.
I think I can help with that second part – no doubt human intervention in their environment has a big deal to do with hedgehog population decline.
As per the report in The Guardian:
Dr Henrietta Pringle, the NHMP coordinator at PTES, said: “For the first time in the history of hedgehog conservation we’re using AI to open up new opportunities, which is extremely exciting. Previous studies have estimated hedgehog populations, but there has never been a rigorous nationwide survey of them – until now.”
This is AI in the wild, helping the wild, at its finest.
We may sink into a dystopian future where all humans are mentally disconnected from reality thanks to AI... but at least the hedgehogs will be ok!
Boomers & Busters 💰
AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).
Boom 📈
Veritone (NASDAQ:VERI) up 52%
Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) up 7%
Teradyne (NASDAQ:TER) up 6%
Bust 📉
iRobot (NASDAQ:IRBT) down 11%
Darktrace (LSE:DARK) down 11%
Appen Ltd (ASX:APX) down 25%
From the hive mind 🧠
The CEO of Stability AI has quit. He’s not a fan of how centralised AI is fast becoming. And I understand that. I can see AI fast heading the way of the internet as you know it: dominated and controlled by a powerful few. Decentralisation is key, but will we ever get there? At least Emad Mostaque is going to try.
Admittedly I don’t quite understand how this works yet, but the idea of light-powered AI chips is at least very cool.
There are some jobs AI will replace. Some it won’t. Some that it will create. But when it comes to accounting, well, let’s just say there’s a good chance AI is going to at the very least mean less people needed and much greater efficiency for those who still do it. And that’s also where a big chunk of change is flowing to develop AI accountants.
Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️: The results show
Our poll last week came at an interesting time.
I asked which “team” you were on, Apple or Microsoft. They’re both pressing on with moves into AI – Microsoft very much doing its own thing and Apple, for the time being, looking to bolt on something from Google.
Interesting times... and then Apple, Google and Meta all get bumped with an anti-competition investigation from the EU in the days following!
Funnily enough this also comes hot on the heels of our poll from the week prior asking about whether regulation was good or bad for a flourishing economy...
Oh my, oh my!
This will be an unfolding story over the coming weeks and months I’m sure.
Nonetheless, we did have a poll last week and you must be chomping at the bit to know the results.
So without further ado…
It looks like two thirds are team Microsoft, one third team Apple!
I wonder if that’s a legacy tech hangover or it is a conscious choice? Or I wonder if you’re a hybrid user (probably should have had that as an option right...)?
We’ll have another breathtaking poll you on Thursday.
Until then…
Weirdest AI image of the day
IKEA manuals of WTF?!? Variety – r/Weirddallee
ChatGPT’s random quote of the day
"The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do." – B.F. Skinner, psychologist and author.
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to leave comments and questions below,
Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief
AI Collision
Thanks for sharing that video, it actually made me laugh. Because it's so true.
Hilarious one Sam, love it! I think Dominic had his video taken down when he put it on his YT Channel as I saw it then. I must pop back and see if it's back on there. I've shared that X one - So hilarious! We need hilarity in this crazy world! I'm a Brit, living in England but I SO want to leave and... intend to.