Web Secret 599: Can AI write a novel?

I recently read an article in the Atlantic "When an AI Goes Full Jack Kerouac."

It describes how graduate student Ross Goodwin set up a cobbled together AI apparatus, in a car, to produce the next American road-trip novel.

He narrates the beginning of the trip:

"The machine received its first jolt of inspiration just as soon as Goodwin and his traveling companions fired it up in Brooklyn. It wrote: 'It was nine seventeen in the morning, and the house was heavy.' For an opening sentence in a book about the road, it’s apropos, even poignant."

It was a beginning effort, producing beautiful, if not necessarily coherent prose: “A body of water came down from the side of the street. The painter laughed and then said, I like that and I don’t want to see it.”

By the way, the AI came up with the "painter" character which pops up periodically in the narrative.

It was a beginning effort...

Web Secret 578: New uses of AI in mental health

Here are examples of new uses of AI in mental health (courtesy of "The Incredible Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Now Used In Mental Health by Bernard Marr):

Researchers from the World Well-Being Project (WWBP) analyzed social media with an AI algorithm to pick out linguistic cues that might predict depression. It turns out that those suffering from depression express themselves on social media in ways that those dealing with other chronic conditions do not, such as mentions of loneliness and using words such as "feelings," "I" and "me." The team's findings were published in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

After analyzing half a million Facebook posts from people who consented to provide their Facebook status updates and medical records, they were able to identify depression-associated language markers. What the researchers found was that linguistic markers could predict depression up to three months before the person receives a formal diagnosis. Other researchers use technology to explore the way facial expressions, enunciation of words and tone and language could indicate suicide risk.

In addition to researchers, there are several companies using artificial intelligence to help tackle the mental health crisis. Quartet's platform flags possible mental conditions and can refer patients to a provider or a computerized cognitive behavioral therapy program. Ginger’s contribution is a chat application used by employers that provides direct counseling services to employees. Its algorithms analyze the words someone uses and then relies on its training from more than 2 billion behavioral data samples, 45 million chat messages and 2 million clinical assessments to provide a recommendation.

The CompanionMX system has an app that allows patients being treated with depression, bipolar disorders, and other conditions to create an audio log where they can talk about how they are feeling. The AI system analyzes the recording as well as looks for changes in behavior for proactive mental health monitoring. Bark, a parental control phone tracker app, monitors major messaging and social media platforms to look for signs of cyberbullying, depression, suicidal thoughts and sexting on a child’s phone.

I'm kind of terrified.

Web Secret 547: Do you know why robots are here?

One of my sons works for a startup accelerator.

Accelerators typically help startups find seed investments, connections, and mentorships, as well as teaching them how to pitch their companies, etc. to accelerate growth.

The other day he sent me this 2 minute video link with the rubric: "the fastest growing enterprise software company in history."

Because I am a remarkably unobservant person, I watched it the first time without understanding:



Did you get it?

Watch again: the executives at UiPath are explaining how robotic automation allows them to pursue other challenges. Meanwhile, in the background, their computers are completing tasks at warp speed without their input.

The robots are automating even complex tasks and use machine learning to accelerate these processes even more.

Oh.