AI and machine learning

February – that’s when the 2023 AI hysterical hype cycle went into full gear. You know a topic is important when leading media sites like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal become irrational and contribute to the general cacophony – even offering up worries from, wait for it, Henry Kissinger and Eric Schmidt – Kissinger is 98, but apparently still trying out new software tools.  Eric Schmidt was former CEO of Google – he should be worried.  But the article ChatGPT Heralds an Intellectual Revolution was the whipped cream on top of the icing on the cake. Its subtitle: "Generative artificial intelligence presents a philosophical and practical challenge on a scale not experienced since the start of the Enlightenment."  

These two letters, AI, have risen to top of tech talk and media minds.  A quick search reveals near hysteria in the media and near panic among leading tech firms.  And even the Federal Trade Commission is wary of the current hype and AI-powered marketing claims.  Experts warn about the need for ‘guardrails’ against tools giving inappropriate answers, and they worry about ethics to underpin the answers of tools like ChatGPT. So as a result, tech firms want you to know that they are working on appropriate fixes.  As is typical of hype cycles, initial innovation is viewed as astounding, followed by efforts to break or downplay it.  Which means it will become very useful.

Can tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E be helpful to older adults? Of course, in the ways it can be helpful to any adult. The simple examples – retrieval of information and generated images seem very different from traditional (ad-driven) search tools. Given the early user base of ChatGPT (optimizing language models for dialogue), 100 million within the first few months, clearly developers, investors, and consumers agree. And multiple other companies are jumping into the market, perhaps playing catchup with early entrants. DALL-E (creating images from text captions) and other generative AI have become, uh, visible, and perhaps really useful in film-making and video game development. But how will this category be applied in the older adult marketplace, either for them directly or for those who serve them? 

2023 begins with so many announcements, so little time.  The first big event, CES 2023, brought multiple startups and stalwarts to Las Vegas. Ironically, it was not the big tech news of the month – eclipsed by an OpenAI introduction that had appeared in November, but was suddenly noticed – first in December in the media. But then with a possible $29 billion valuation, Microsoft apparently offered up another $10 billion and Google’s ad business was suddenly and first the first time actually challenged.  A few simple test questions ‘(how do families fund nursing homes?’ and ‘what is the definition of dementia?’) and it is clear that the result is more complete than Google’s list of links.  As January’s end, the excitement continues.  Can AI be useful in the older adult markets of home care, senior living and beyond?  Stay tuned.