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Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are throw their weight behind a new venture , Thrive AI Health , that aims to build up AI - power helper technical school to raise level-headed lifestyles .
Backed by Huffington ’s genial wellness firm Thrive Global andthe OpenAI Startup Fund , the early - stage speculation investment trust nearly associated with OpenAI , Thrive AI Health will seek to build an “ AI health coach ” to give personalised advice on quietus , food , fitness , accent direction and “ connection , ” according to apress releaseissued Monday .
DeCarlos Love , who previously led physical fitness and health experiences atGoogle‘s Fitbit subsidiary , mainly on the technical school giant ’s Pixel Watch wearable , has been appointed chief operating officer . Thrive AI Health number Walmart cobalt - founder Helen Walton ’s Alice L. Walton Foundation among its strategic investor , and the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine is one of Thrive AI Health ’s initial wellness partners .
It was n’t like a shot clear how much capital Thrive AI Health ’s backers have invest . We ’ve reached out for elucidation and will update this post once we hear back .
allot to Huffington and Altman ( via a Timeop - ed ) , Thrive AI Health ’s end game is train an AI health “ autobus ” on scientific research and aesculapian datum , leverage a approaching health datum platform and collaborations with partners include Stanford Medicine . Huffington and Altman describe a kind of virtual assistant on a smartphone app and in Thrive ’s go-ahead products that learns from exploiter ’ behaviors and propose real - clip , health - related “ nudges ” and suggestions .
“ Most wellness recommendation at the minute , though important , are generic , ” Huffington and Altman write . “ The AI health coach will make possible very accurate recommendation cut to each somebody : trade your third good afternoon soda ash with water and maize ; go on a 10 - minute walk with your nipper after you pick them up from school day at 3:15 p.m. ; start your wind - down routine at 10 p.m. since you have to get up at 6 a.m. the next morning to make your flight . ”
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Thrive AI Health is the latest in a long string of technical school industry travail to create health - focused apps with AI - driven personalization . Many have run up against intractable occupation , technical , and regulative hurdle .
IBM ’s Watson Health division , launched in 2015 , was supposed to analyze reams of aesculapian data — far faster than any human doctor could — to generate insights that could improve health outcomes . The companyreportedlyspent $ 4 billion beefing up Watson Health with acquisitions , but the tech proved to be inefficient at right — andharmful at worst .
Elsewhere , Babylon Health , an NHS - partnered wellness chatbot startup that once promised that it could “ automatize away ” consultation with aesculapian professionals , collapsed after investigationsrevealedthat there was no evidence that the company ’s tech work easily than a doctor . Once valued at over $ 4.2 billion , Babylon file away for failure in 2023 — at long last selling off its assets for less than $ 1 million .
In some caseful , AI has been found to perpetuate negative stereotype within wellness research and the panoptic medical community . For example , a recentstudyshowed that OpenAI ’s AI - powered chatbot platform , ChatGPT , often respond questions relating to kidney function and skin thickness in a way that reinforce false beliefs about biological difference of opinion between pitch-dark and blank people .
Even trained clinicians can be fooled by one-sided AI model , anotherstudyfound — suggesting that the biases may be challenging to root out .
To stave in off critics , Huffington and Altman are lay Thrive AI Health as a more measured , heedful approach to wellness than those that have come before it — a means to “ democratize ” wellness coaching and “ computer address growing wellness unfairness ” in an ostensibly unattackable , privacy - sensitive elbow room . The ship’s company has name Gbenga Ogedegbe , director of NYU Langone ’s Institute for Excellence in Health Equity , as an adviser , and claims that the research data its products use will be “ peer reviewed ” — and that users will have the last say when it come to which info Thrive AI Health ’s merchandise tip to inform its recommendation .
But if story is any indicant , it could evidence exceedingly difficult for Thrive AI Health to come to a equalizer between “ democratizing ” its tech and keep patient role seclusion .
In 2016 , it wasrevealedthat Google ’s AI division , DeepMind , had been passed data point on more than a million patient as part of an app growth project by the Royal Free NHS Trust in London without the patients ’ knowledge or consent . Recent wide - scaledata breacheslike the UnitedHealth and 23andMescandalsshow the danger implicit in in entrusting sensitive wellness data to third party .
Perhaps Thrive AI Health will stave off the pitfalls of its rivals and primogenitor . It ’s likely to be an uphill climb no matter — and closely follow by skeptics .