Last week, two big names in artificial intelligence (AI) and the wellness industry announced a Cooperation to develop a “customized, hyper-personalized AI health coach that will likely be available as a mobile app” to “reverse the trend in chronic diseases.”
Sam Altman (head of OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT) and Arianna Huffington (a former media executive who runs a high-tech wellness company called Thrive Global) announced their latest company Thrive AI Health in a Time magazine Advertorial.
Health is a sexy direction for an AI industry that has promised Changing civilizationwhose enormous growth of recent years appears to be slowly stalling. Companies and investors have Billions incorporated into the technology, but it surely continues to be often an answer in the hunt for an issue.
Meanwhile, enterprise capitalists have Redwoodtree and the investment bank Goldman Sachs wonder aloud whether there’ll ever be enough sales and consumer demand to present this bubble more stability.
Here comes the subsequent big trend: AI, which can change our behavior for the higher.
Personalized suggestions and suggestions in real time
Altman and Huffington say Thrive AI Health will use the “best, peer-reviewed science” and users' “personal biometric, lab and other medical data” to “learn your preferences and patterns within the five behaviors” which are critical to improving health and managing chronic disease: sleep, nutrition, exercise, stress management and social connection.
Whether you're “a busy skilled with diabetes” or someone without “access to trainers, chefs, and life coaches” — the one two user profiles the pair mention — the Thrive AI Health Coach goals to make use of behavioral data to create “personalized cues and real-time recommendations” to enable you to change your day by day habits.
Soon, everyone may have access to the “life-saving advantages” of a mobile app that tells you – in a precisely targeted way – to sleep more, eat higher, exercise frequently, be less stressed, and exit on the grass with friends. These “superhuman” technologies, combined with the “superpowers” of incentives, will change the world by transforming our “small day by day actions.”
Despite claims that AI has enabled one other innovation, I felt a way of déjà vu once I read Altman and Huffington’s announcement.
Insurance that manages your life
Why did Thrive AI Health and the logic behind it seem so familiar to me? Because this manner of pondering is becoming an increasing number of common within the insurance industry.
In fact, in a Article In my article published last 12 months, I suggested that we would soon see a “comprehensive life insurance policy” bundled with a “personalized AI life coach” that might mix data from various sources of our day by day lives to present us targeted advice on tips on how to behave in healthier, less dangerous ways. Of course, it might take notes and report back to our insurers and doctors if we don't follow those recommendations.
In a Related articlemy colleagues Kelly Lewis and Zofia Bednarz and I took a better take a look at the theories of behavioral risk which may drive such products. An insurance model based on managing people's lives through digital technology is on the rise.
We investigated an organization called vitalitywhich develops behavior change platforms for health and life insurance firms. Vitality sees itself as an “lively life partner of (…) customers” and uses targeted interventions to enhance the well-being of consumers and its own business results.
Similar projects previously have had questionable results. A 2019 study by the World Health Organization report on digital health intervention said:
However, the passion for digital health has also led to a proliferation of short-lived implementations and an amazing number of digital tools, with limited understanding of their impact on health systems and folks's well-being.
Hyperpersonalization
Altman and Huffington say this time it’s going to be different due to AI-powered “hyperpersonalization.”
Are you right? I don't think so.
The first problem is that there is no such thing as a guarantee that the AI will work as promised. There isn’t any reason to assume that it’s going to not be suffering from the issues of bias, hallucinations, and errors that we see in cutting-edge AI models like ChatGPT.
But even when this succeeds, the goal won’t be achieved because the thought of hyperpersonalization is predicated on a flawed theory of the processes involved in change.
Eric Risberg / Greg Allen / AP
A personalised “AI health coach” is simply a technique to address widespread chronic health problems should you imagine a world where there is no such thing as a society – just individuals making decisions. Those decisions turn into habits. Those habits create problems over time. Those problems may be eliminated by higher decisions made by individuals. Those higher decisions come from an AI guardian nudging you in the proper direction.
And why do people on this vision make bad decisions? Maybe they, like middle-class professionals, are too busy. They have to be reminded to eat a salad and stretch within the sun during their 12-hour workday.
Or, again from the angle of the AI health coach, possibly they make poor decisions out of ignorance like disadvantaged people do. They have to be told that fast food is flawed and that they need to prepare a healthy meal at home as an alternative.
The social determinants of health apps
But individual lifestyle isn’t every thing. In fact, the “social determinants of health“ may be rather more vital. It is the social conditions that determine an individual's access to health care, quality food, leisure and all of the things vital for a great life.
Technologies like Thrive AI Health usually are not all in favour of fundamental social conditions. Their “personalization” is a short-sighted view that stops at the person.
The only place where society in Altman and Huffington vision is something that must contribute to the success of your product:
Policymakers must create a regulatory environment that encourages AI innovation (…). Healthcare providers must integrate AI into their practices (…). And individuals have to be fully empowered through AI coaching to raised manage their day by day health (…).
And if we fail to adapt society to AI models, it’s going to probably be our own fault.
