GETTING ADVICE FROM AN AI TEAM
“What women’s club role should I choose?” I wondered. To help me answer this, I enlisted the help of an artificially-intelligent board of directors.
The result was stunning. In our fascinating back-and-forth discussion, a consensus emerged.
The same technique could be used to get advice for starting a new business, raising a child or moving to Timbuktu. PC World offers the exact steps. Here they are.
First, go to your favorite AI website or your favorite AI app, whether it’s ChatGPT or something else. (I prefer Claude AI over ChatGPT, though both are great.) Second, type in a question. Third, add the following statement, including everything that’s shown below between the quote marks.
“I want you to act as my personal board of advisors. The board has four members, each with a distinct lens:
– A pragmatic operator who cares about what’s actually doable this week
– A long-term strategist who thinks in years, not days
– A blunt skeptic whose only job is to poke holes in my thinking
– A wise mentor who asks about what really matters to me
Have each member weigh in one at a time, in their own voice, starting their reply with their name in brackets. They’re allowed to disagree with each other. After all four have spoken, give me a short board summary of where they agree, where they clash, and the one question I should answer before I decide.”
The blunt skeptic tried to talk me out of the women’s club committee I was leaning toward, but the wise mentor, pragmatic operator and long-term strategist understood the big picture. With more info, the skeptic came on board. I felt like a CEO.
According to my board, I was in danger of overcommitment if I chose the Social Committee over the Grants Committee. The Skeptic and the Mentor both noted my enthusiasm for the Grants Committee. In response, like a good CEO, I gave them more info. Finally, they all agreed that the Social Committee was best.
Pendant Tracks Sun Exposure
Growing up in sunny Southern California, I never took my car if I could row a boat, ride a bike or walk a mile. The penalty? Twenty-two skin cancers and counting.
Enter Dr. Richard Weller, a world-renowned dermatologist. He helped develop a necklace that tracks your exposure to ultraviolet rays. It’s called “The90 Gem.”
The Gem measures both UVA (the rays linked to aging) and UVB (the rays that cause burning) in real time. Taking into account your personal metrics, the necklace considers all the exposure you get in a day, even the small bits, like the sun streaming through your home windows, poking into your car, and shining on your errands. It’s called “The90” because 90 percent of visible aging is caused by UV exposure.
The90 Gem looks like a circular pendant surrounded by a frame of gold or silver. Besides the UV sensor, it has an accelerometer and a Bluetooth chip to communicate with a free phone app. It can handle everyday water exposure (splash, rain, shower, sweat) but not submersion. It’s $199 at The90.com.
Privacy Pitfalls
I’ve never been one to worry about nosy smart devices, but Mark Meckler, a technology attorney and former social media CEO, says we should be concerned, especially if there are young children at home.
Your smart TV, voice assistants, and connected toys constantly take note of what you watch, what you say, when your kids are home, and what your household routines are, in order to produce a digital dossier on each member. Without meaningful consent from you, or accountability, the data is used to train AI systems, Meckler said.
But I thought this data was “anonymized.” Not so. A landmark study by researchers at Imperial College London and UCLouvain in Belgium found that 81 percent of Americans could be re-identified from their zip code, gender and date of birth alone. With 12 more traits, 99.98 percent could be identified.
Here are Meckler’s three tips. First, disable the always-on voice assistant’s wake words on your smartphone or smart speakers when not actively needed, or turn your bedrooms into device-free zones. Tap to take Alexa offline, tap again to bring her back. It’s quick.
Second, go to your phone’s settings to turn off ad personalization, location tracking history, and activity tracking. If you don’t know how to do that, Google it.
Third, consider switching to a privacy-centric browser like Brave to block hidden background trackers. As the old saying goes, if a product is free, you’re the product.
Numbers Report
Companies that give AI expanded access to systems and data have experienced a 43 percent breach rate over the past year, compared to an 11 percent security problem among companies that didn’t allow expanded AI access. This info comes from cybersecurity firm Netwrix, which examined data from 2300 IT and security professionals.
New Use for Old Styrafoam
What if that old Styrofoam cup could be turned into a sponge that captures carbon dioxide? It would become useful again. Currently, only one percent of Styrofoam escapes the landfills.
A new study from Aarhus University shows that discarded polystyrene—the plastic used to make Styrofoam cups, plastic utensils, and CD cases—can be turned into a material that captures CO₂. The new material acts like a sponge to capture carbon from highly concentrated sources, like factory smokestacks, as well as from regular air.