Another Two Months of Artificial Intelligence Accomplishments and Uses

For all the controversy and problems about AI, it’s building up its repertoire of ways of being useful.  Which have been in the news the past nine weeks?

According to “More Americans are turning to AI for health advice” (Kurt Knutsson, Fox News, July 31^st), 35% of US adults “report already relying on AI to understand and manage aspects of their well-being.  From planning meals to getting fitness advice, AI is quickly moving from a futuristic concept to a daily health tool.”  As “trust in AI is climbing fast,” from 20% to 31% are using it to “explore specific medical concerns,” provide “meal planning and recipes,” get them “new workout routines,” and give “emotional or therapeutic support.”  All of that is constructive, unless people treat it as equivalent to a professional’s service, and do not get that level of help when they need it.

On the business side, “Delta moves toward eliminating set prices in favor of AI that determines how much you personally will pay for a ticket” (Irina Ivanova, Fortune, July 16^th).  The airline used it for “3% of fares,” but they called its results “amazingly favorable.”  The article wasn’t clear about how Delta accomplished that, and reactions outside its industry will be negative, with one “surveillance pricing” tracker calling it “trying to see into people’s heads.”  Airline tickets have already been the strangest priced consumer product for many decades – what other can be priced higher if you buy less of it, necessitating rules against leaving multistep itineraries early?  I don’t know if this will work for the company, but they are vulnerable to people choosing their competitors instead, and good consumer relations are more than important.

Another frequently disturbing idea is in “Where Human Labor Meets ‘Digital Labor’” (Lora Kelley, The New York Times, August 1^st).  “A digital native is a person raised on the internet.  A digital nomad is a person who moves around doing their computer job.  And a digital laborer is not a person at all.”  Say what?  It’s sort of an electronic-only robot that works “independently with a bit of management,” which can “grow and mature with its own data.”  Such things “are not really in wide use yet,” but the borders between them and people will take a while to firm up.  At Salesforce, an early proponent, “customers unhappy with a digital agent can escalate to a human,” sort of like getting out of phone-mail jail, but if the devices are going to be on “mainstream org charts,” they may need at least to be untouted (un-outed?) as automata.

How about “21 Ways People Are Using A.I. at Work” (Larry Buchanan and Francesca Paris, The New York Times, August 11^th)?  “Almost one in five U.S. workers say they use it at least semi-regularly for work.”  They can get it to, among many other tasks, “select wines for restaurant menus,” “digitize a herbarium,” “make everything look better,” “create lesson plans that meet educational standards,” “make a bibliography,” “write up therapy plans,” act “as a ‘muse,’” “detect leaks in a water system,” “just write code,” “type up medical notes,” “run experiments to figure out how the brain encodes language,” “help get pets adopted,” “check legal documents in a D.A.’s office,” “get the busywork done,” “review medical literature,” “pick a needle and thread,” “(More politely) let band students know they didn’t make the cut,” “help humans answer more calls at a call center,” “help translate lyrics from the 17^th and 18^th centuries,” “explain my ‘legalese’ back to me,” and, fittingly, “detect if students are using A.I.”  The last one and many of the others are not new, but the list gives a good picture of how the technology is now being used in off-the-radar, pedestrian settings.

As of the turn of the century anyway, almost all credit reports had incorrect information, so it looks good to see that an “AI credit disputing tool launches for consumers nationwide to correct credit report errors” (Pilar Arias, Fox Business, August 20^th).  It has already “been used tens of thousands of times by consumers.”  AI Credit Dispute, “in the Kikoff app,” can assist users to “spot errors, send disputes and move forward.”  Worthwhile.

Is it any surprise that “Madison Avenue Is Starting to Love A.I.” (Emmett Lindner, The New York Times, August 18^th)?  It “can sharply lower production costs,” and can easily change any “number of different elements” in a commercial or print ad.  AI use can be anywhere between “easy to spot” and “difficult to discern,” and, although “generational divides inform how much A.I. will be tolerated,” “there is no doubt the technology is changing advertising.”

Finally, we got word that “Amazon backs AI startup that lets you make TV shows” (Kurt Knutsson, Fox News, September 12^th).  Fable’s “artificial intelligence platform,” Showrunner, intends to let people put together their “own episode of a hit show without a crew or cameras, only a prompt.”  Sort of like writing fanzines in the old days, which were authors’ independent looks at what characters in novels, comic books, or movies might do, this effort would, at least, make a splendid toy.  And not all such products would need to be G or PG-rated.  For now, Showrunner is “focused entirely on animated content,” but it’s certain it could eventually handle realistic looking humans, and its work could be easily edited. 

We have a lot of good things here.  The few detrimental ones may not be viably continued, as standards for AI use are in their childhood if not infancy.  Applications such as these are evidence of why artificial intelligence, even if it falls way short of its loftiest expectations, will still be valuable.  And there will be many, many more.