What’s the story?
- Google is testing new artificial intelligence tools that would act as a life coach for users, offering personal and professional advice, ideas, tutoring sessions, and more.
- Google created the project with DeepMind, a research lab in London. Many view Google DeepMind’s new generative AI as an attempt to get ahead of its competitors in the tech industry.
- Google DeepMind’s project would give users suggestions on navigating specific issues or recommendations on improving situations. It could teach new skills, plan workouts, create financial budgets, and more. A team of over 100 experts and the $7.3 billion startup Scale AI are involved in the project.
- Currently, Google’s chatbot Bard does not — and is not permitted to — give people advice. Google may never deploy these tools, but they’re still being tested for public use.
Controversy and criticism
- This new AI comes after Google’s own experts warned the company about letting people become too emotionally invested in chatbots late last year. Some fear that Google’s speedy push to the top will increase their willingness to trust underdeveloped AI systems with sensitive data and tasks.
- Google’s safety experts said that users might experience “diminished health and well-being” and a “loss of agency” if they started taking advice from AI. In a presentation to Google’s executives, the experts said that some users were at risk of believing the technology was sentient if they formed too much of a dependence on it.
- In response to this, a Google DeepMind spokesperson said:
“[W]e have long worked with a variety of partners to evaluate our research and products across Google, which is a critical step in building safe and helpful technology. At any time there are many such evaluations ongoing. Isolated samples of evaluation data are not representative of our product road map.”
Google’s race to the top
- Google’s project indicates the company’s effort to push to the front of AI initiatives. Despite being a pioneer in the industry, OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT overshadowed Google’s endeavors — triggering a race in Silicon Valley.
- Google has also been working on other projects, including systems that can generate news articles, rewrite them and suggest headlines, and tools to bring AI into the workplace. These would include mechanisms to create scientific, creative, and professional writings, extract data from text, recognize patterns, and more.
- The company’s AI experts have shared their concerns about the economic impact of these forms of AI, saying it could lead to the “deskilling of creative writers.”
Would you take life advice from AI?
-Jamie Epstein
(Photo credit: iStock/da-kuk)
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Self-driving cars shut down & crash when they come across unforeseen variables. There are so many more unforeseen variables for humans!!! While AI may fill in gaps for those who may have limited access,I see a lot of potential problems that may cause more harm than good.
No thanks. I am ok with using AI for certain services, but something that has never "lived" a life cannot give good life coaching.
Should I need a life coach at some point, I will seek a person with lived experience.
Google's AI Life Coach, a venture so bold,
Promises guidance and wisdom untold.
But should it falter, fail to hit the mark,
I'd seek another path, a different embark.
Need a maybe on this as I would not use AI that provides no references as most do. However AI providing references that I can review I would consider. Alledgedly Bing does but I haven't tried it yet as it's easy enough for me to run my own queries and review results.
CAUSES ASKS: "Would you take life advice from AI?" ME: Ha! Ha! Ha! I have enough trouble with life advice from humans!
I won't take it from a human! 🤣
AI is not trustworthy and further development needs to be supervised closely.
I prefer to follow my own "gut instincts". A I is only as good as the information programed into it. I refuse to become "a part of the collective". At the age of 76 years, I am fully capable of making my own decissions based on my own life experiences. Don't like it? Tough! My life, my path, my darms and my very own karma. No one ever said that life would be easy. It is how we learn to survive in this chaotic environment.
AI is just a Machine, and it can only do what it's been programed to do! I would prefer advice to come from my primary care doctor or someone whose training is continnually updated! We have come to depend on AI for a lot of information, but what happens when you have a power loss, or a problem with your AI device? I once went in for a procedure for a specific reason, but when I was called in the computer system was down, and the doctor didn't have a paper file to check, and didn't remember what he was to check. I didn't kow this until he did a normal colonoscopy, and didn't check to see if he felt I needed a section of the colon removed, which is why I had this procedure done! He was depending on having the computer info to keep him on track. I no longer see him! Yes, AI can do amazing things, but it is just a machine, and as we all know, machines don't always do what they are meant to do!
May I please stick with Dear Abby?
I don't take advice from ANYONE, let alone a computer program.
Stupid is as stupid does
Self-driving cars shut down & crash when they come across unforeseen variables. There are so many more unforeseen variables for humans!!! While AI may fill in gaps for those who may have limited access,I see a lot of potential problems that may cause more harm than good.