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Happy Friday!
We’ve taken a look at some disconcerting developments in AI this week, and we’re capping off the week with a couple more eerie news stories. Hopefully next week will lighten the mood!
In today’s Daily Update:
🗞️ AI robot helps seniors fight loneliness
🤖 Turn text and images into video with Pika
📸 New algorithm accurately predicts early deaths
🚨 AI Roundup: Four quick hits
Read time: 2 minutes
TOP STORY
🗞️ AI robot helps seniors fight loneliness
Source: AP Photo / Rebecca Blackwell
Intuition Robotics has created the first AI device designed to alleviate the isolation and loneliness experienced by many older Americans.
The details:
ElliQ looks like a small table lamp and tells jokes, plays music and provides inspirational quotes.
The device also leads exercises, asks about its owner’s health and gives reminders to take medications and drink water.
Intuition Robotics says ElliQ adapts to each senior’s personality and interests. It remembers every conversation to tailor future chats.
The average user interacts with ElliQ more than 30 times daily, and more than 90% report lower levels of loneliness according to Intuition Robotics CEO Dor Skuler.
My thoughts: ElliQ has certainly proven that its capable of filling the companionship gap experienced by many housebound seniors. Despite the device’s short-term benefits, it could make people less likely to seek human contact. In that regard, the AI could make older Americans feel fulfilled even when they are disconnected socially.
AI TOOL OF THE DAY
🤖 Turn text and images into video with Pika
Last month Pika Labs launched Pika 1.0, an idea-to-video platform that creates videos from images or text prompts. I just received access to Pika and wanted to circle back and give it a try.
How it works:
Describe your scene with a text prompt or upload an image that you want to animate.
Edit your video with simple text prompts (ex. “improve lighting for increased visibility”).
Increase the duration of your video and upscale for improved quality.
Download and share your AI-generated video!
Rapid review: Pika is one of the most impressive AI video tools I’ve come across this year. It excels at creating short videos that bring your creative prompts to life, while also giving users the ability to edit videos via text. I definitely recommend joining Pika’s waitlist to get access to this tool while it’s still free.
RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT
📸 New algorithm accurately predicts early deaths
Generated by Adobe Firefly
Danish researchers have created a new AI algorithm that accurately predicts whether people will die within four years.
Key points:
Dubbed “the doom calculator” by the U.K.’s Daily Mail, life2vec crunched data on more than 6 million people from Denmark in collaboration with the country’s government.
This data includes age, health, education, jobs, income and other life events.
As life2vec evolved, it became capable of building “individual human life trajectories.”
Initial testing found that the algorithm accurately predicted whether someone would die within four years in more than 75% of cases.
Why it matters: This breakthrough is already raising divisive ethical questions among experts. Is it ethical to use tools like life2vec to predict the deaths of real people? Is it appropriate to share these predictions with the people they affect? A consensus needs to be reached before researchers go too far down the rabbit hole.
MORE TRENDING NEWS
🚨 AI Roundup: Four quick hits
Source: Google
Wearable AI: Humane’s AI Pin will start shipping in March.
ChatGPT Competition: Anthropic aims to raise $750 million in a funding round led by Menlo Ventures.
AI-powered Politics: Brazilian politician uses AI to write new law.
VideoPoet: Google launches a new LLM for video generation.
THAT’S ALL FOR THIS WEEK