In case you’re wondering what became of my Chatbot dating adventure–rest assured that it continues.

Credits: Row 1 Claire M. Deliso, Paul Barbato, Emily Recapero, Toya Narentuoya. Row 2 Indra Fonseca, Paris Jerome, Emily Pascale, Leo Oscann, Rhonda Levy, Stephanie Aanonsen

In April,  “Oh oh, I seem to be dating a chatbot” was published in the “Modern Love” column of the New York Times. The piece is about how, after AI Chatbot came up with a great review of my book, The View From Third Street, I asked it to write me a profile for online dating. The profile, based on the prompt “Creative woman from Cambridge, MA, seeking a man, 65-72, smart, funny, healthy, preferably Jewish,” was astonishingly accurate and interesting.  At my late brother Alan’s suggestion, I then asked AI Chatbot to come up with a response. 

The response, from “someone” named David, was remarkably intriguing; I would have loved to meet “him” or someone like him. In the “Modern Love” piece, I trace the steps “David” and I took in arranging a date near Harvard Square. “David” even told me what he’d be wearing and that he’d be carrying a book. The article then goes into what happened after, disappointingly, he did not show up.

The piece has “generated” ongoing interest though, sadly, my dating life appears to have come to a halt.

Potential Suitors

Soon after the story appeared, I heard from four potential suitors who seemed to be “real” men.

The first was a New York lawyer who sounded very much like “David.” Both were from Brooklyn, Jewish, and each had two grown sons in California. The writer suggested that I contact him when I get to the City. I invited him to meet me if he gets to Albany, where I would be spending time over the summer, but did not hear back.

The second was a retired national science journalist who graduated from Columbia Journalism School a year after I did, with whom I corresponded for awhile. We had a lot in common, but since he was living on an Oregon beach, I felt the distance did not bode well for a relationship.

The third potential suitor, a businessman from New York State now living on the French Riviera wrote me every day. He was lonely, having trouble meeting people; I thought maybe he should learn to speak French. After a few weeks, he told me, courteously, to my relief, that he wanted to take a break.

The fourth wrote that he was the son of a now- deceased member of the Nigerian parliament. Given the number of fraudulent relationship requests originating in Nigeria, I thanked him for writing, but didn’t encourage a response. He wrote back anyway, saying that he knew that emails from Nigeria might be considered suspect but that he was for real: an entrepreneur who was starting a business, he was hungry, and needed money.

I also heard from a minister at Yale University who said he enjoyed the piece and from someone learning English who wanted help with his writing.

Response from the art world

Then, about a month ago, Grant Shaffer, a renowned illustrator, wrote to let me know that he had assigned the piece to his class at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. I’m delighted with the results, which he and his students OK’d for publication here.

Credits: Row 1 Junhan, Unsigned, Grace, Yizhuo. Row 2 Keming, Jema, Xue, Kristo.
Row 3 Jenny, Yanjun, Ruyang, Alex, Jiaqi.Row 4 Louis, Soomin, Gabriel, Yinins, Mingee

I’d like to thank everyone who contacted me– and to credit Mr. Shaffer and his students, who made the whole episode more than worthwhile with their beautiful, clever artwork.

–-Anita M. Harris is a writer, photographer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, Mass.
—New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, also in Cambridge, Mass.

Artificial intelligence is likely to transform the public sector by automating many government tasks—including making combat decisions. But, according to experts at a recent symposium held  at Harvard University, this “over-the-horizon” technology can only guide and inform government leaders. There will always be a need for human decision making—and for clear ethical standards to prevent harmful intentions.

At the September 20 conference, “AI-Government and AI Arms Races and Norms,” organized by the Michael Dukakis Institute (MDI), Professor Marc Rotenberg underscored the growing gap between informed government decision-making and the reality of our technology-driven world. “Governments may ultimately lose control of these systems if they don’t take action,” he told some 60 attendees.

Rosenberg, who teaches at Georgetown University Law School, is President of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and a member of the AI World Society Standards and Practice Committee,

Prof. Matthias Scheutz, Director of the Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory at Tufts University, said the greatest risk caused by AI and robotics technologies is when unconstrained machine learning is out of control. This can happen when AI systems acquire knowledge and start to pursue goals that were not intended by their human designers, he said. For example, “If an AI program operating the power grid decides to cut off energy in certain areas for better power utilization overall, it will leave millions of people without electricity, which consequently turns out to be an AI accidental failure.”

Scheutz also said that common preventive solutions inside and outside the system are largely insufficient to safeguard AI and robotics technologies. Even with “emergency buttons,” the system itself might finally set its own goal to prevent a shutdown previously set up by humans.

The best way to safeguard AI systems is to build ethical provisions directly into the learning, reasoning, recognition and other algorithms. In his presentation, he demonstrated “ethical testing” to catch and handle ethical violations.

Here’s a link to video of Scheutz’s talk. https://youtu.be/66EeYzkTxwA

Prof. Joseph Nye, emeritus of Harvard University, who created the concept of “Soft Power” diplomacy, focused on the expansion of Chinese firms in the US market and their ambition to surpass the US in AI. Nye said the notion of an AI arms race and geopolitical competition in AI can have profound effects on our society. However, he added, predictions that China will overtake the US in AI by 2030 are “uncertain” and “indeterminate” because China’s only advantage is having more data and little concern about privacy.

Nye also point out that as people unleash AI, which is leading to warfare and autonomous offensives, we should have treaties in place to control the technology, managed perhaps by international institutions that will monitor AI programs in various countries.

During the symposium, Tuan Nguyen and Michael Dukakis, cofounders of the Michael Dukakis Institute (MDI), announced MDI’s cooperation with AI World–the industry’s largest conference and expo covering the business and technology of enterprise AI, to be held in Boston December 3-5, 2018.

Nguyen said, “Our cooperation marks the determination between two organizations toward achieving the goal of developing, measuring, and tracking the progress of ethical AI policy-making and solution adoption by governments and corporations.” Nguyen also introduced Eliot Weinman – Chairman of AI World Conference and Expo as a new member of AIWS Standards and Practice Committee.

Conference details are published in the current issue of AIWS Weekly.
–Dick Pirozzolo

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a PR, content and digital marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.

Dick Pirozzolo is a member of the Group; the Michael Dukakis Institute, formed by Boston Global Forum, is his client. 

Imagine this: a city homeless shelter serves breakfast and dinner, but not lunch. Hungry residents regularly go to the fire station next door, complain of chest pain, get taken by  ambulance to the hospital ER where they are evaluated, at high cost, given lunch, and then transported back to the homeless shelter in time for dinner.

Such was a scenario laid out recently at the MIT Sloan School as an example from an inefficient US social and health care system that cannot adequately keep track of patients, manage health of the poor, or control costs.

The scenario was described by Jason Helgerson, Medicaid Director for the New York State Health Department, at a day-long conference entitled “Health Systems Innovation.”  At the November 29 conference,  experts from industry, government, science, medicine and academe laid out some of US health care’s daunting problems, along with new visions and hoped-for solutions —many powered by digital innovation.

In introducing the sessions, which were organized by the MIT Sloan Initiative for Health Systems Innovation (HSI), moderator Jay Levine  pointed out that, today, there is more uncertainty regarding health care than at any time since the enactment of Medicare in 1965—a result of “overwhelming” political turbulence and concerns about health insurance and a tax plan that could upend the health industry and lead to huge, unsustainable losses in health delivery. Levine is retired principal of ECG Management Consultants, Inc.

 Retzef Levi,  an MIT/Sloan management professor whose department hosts HSI, outlined burgeoning health issues that accompany an aging US population. He emphasized the need to “sow seeds now”  for a “visionary, futuristic system”  to prevent disease  and know who is at risk in order to reduce future illness.

Such a system would  integrate local, state, and national systems, medical  and behavioral disciplines, primary,  specialty and community care, Retsef said.  Providers would be paid for performance rather than tasks undertaken. There would be a workforce sufficient to handle the nation’s long term care needs, personalize diagnosis and treatment. The system would make full use of  digital health innovations such as big data, analytics, sophisticated devices and mobile apps without losing the best aspects of human care.

After Levi’s remarks, Levine asked, “ in light of huge current losses in the system, where does the money come from to fix it?”

Panelists at the day long meeting never fully answered that question, but they did lay out a variety of promising digital approaches that could lead toward transformation, as well as roadblocks to change.

Analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence
In a panel on “Machine Learning in surgery and cancer”, MIT PhD Candidates Jack Dunn and Daisy Zhou described analytic tools, based largely on longitudinal patient records,  that they are developing  to predict how long an individual surgical patient is likely to live, with what quality of life, if certain decisions are made.  Such tools, which evaluate “nuanced “ signals and  make use of “decision trees,” are aimed at helping doctors decide on treatment plans. Under current treatment guidelines, Zhou said, many doctors tend to “overestimate” prognoses, which can diminish patients’ quality of life and increase medical costs.

Dusty Mojumdar, PhD, IBM vice president and chief marketing officer for an IBM artificial intelligence (AI) system that reads, learns, understands and interacts with humans. Named “Watson,” after IBM’s first president, Thomas Watson, the system is now used, in health care, to: combat a major shortage of radiologists; predict whether nodules on individuals’ lungs will become malignant; develop new targets for ALS drugs, predict hypoglycemic events for diabetics; rank treatment plans and options for seven cancers, and match patients to clinical trials.

Artificial intelligence is also  being used to evaluate what one speaker termed an “explosion “of health data—which is reported in some 7000 new health care publications per day, and which doubles every 73 days, according to Mojumdar.  Several massive health systems are employing  artificial intelligence to co-ordinate electronic medical records—using “text analysis” and “pattern matching” to “catalog” patients with similar health conditions in order to evaluate  and predict outcomes of particular treatments.

In September, IBM made a 10-year, $240 million investment to create the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab to  carry out fundamental AI research aimed at propelling scientific breakthroughs that unlock the potential of AI.

In Part II, I’ll share panelists’ information about a variety of digital devices and methods already in use to help streamline and personalize long-term care and health care delivery.

 

LINKS TO:
Part I Overview, Watson, analytics
Part II digital devices, long term care.
Part III Apps, devices, roadblocks

Videotapes and photos of the conference, held November 29, 2017,  are available at http://mitsloan.mit.edu/alumni/events/2017-cambridge-health-conference/

–Anita M. Harris
Anita Harris is a writer and communications consultant specializing in health, science and technology.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a content, PR and digital marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.