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Nate shares his misgivings on the potential for AI to diagnose depression through voice recognition.
 

One of the small pleasures I get from writing the summaries to the link list is oftentimes. I get put onto subjects that might slip through the finely layered mesh of trained algorithms that comprise my social feeds. In particular, today's #2 about AI being developed to detect depression through voice gave me pause.
 

Whatever the specific program being used (there are several in development), each tries to attach markers of a given mental condition as modeled by the people in their data sets (however homogenous or small they might be) to the speech patterns of the diver people being diagnosed.
 

While it's promising that technology could eventually help trained medical professionals in their diagnoses and expedite them, like the critics in the article, I'm concerned about how accurate such a technology could be and, more importantly, how it will be integrated outside of a clinical setting.
 

As AI researcher Mike Cook says in the article: “I think technology like this is risky for a couple of reasons. One is that it industrializes mental health in a way that it probably shouldn’t be — understanding and caring for humans is complex and difficult, and that’s why there are such deep issues of trust and care and training involved in becoming a mental health professional,” he told VentureBeat.  Proponents might suggest we just use this as a guide for therapists, an assistant of sorts, but in reality there are far more ways this could be used badly — from automating the diagnosis of mental health problems to allowing the technology to seep into classrooms, workplaces, courtrooms, and police stations. … Like all machine learning technology, [voice-analyzing tools] give us a veneer of technological authority, where in reality this is a delicate and complicated subject that machine learning is unlikely to understand the nuances of.”
 

We're no strangers to companies and administrators being guilty of greenwashing or wokewashing to operationalize their lip service to the public about "doing better" without really changing much. But as conversations around mental health become at least more frequent (though not necessarily more in-depth), the pressure for action on this front could open the gates at larger companies for a "carewash" play, allowing an expensive flashy high-tech solution to be implemented where a slower more human one has always been better.
 

Lest we find ourselves in a scenario where "well, you don't sound depressed" starts to carry more weight than it ever should.


- Nate
 
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The best links from across the Internet.
 
1. 💸 Your Guide To CreatorPlatform Fees

A short and sweet round up of major Creator Platforms separated by craft, App Stores, Game Stores and Digital Marketplaces.


2. 🤖 AI Startups Claim To Detect Depression From Speech

Some start-ups are leveraging research linking acoustic qualities and depression to develop tests aided by AI. If reliable, they can potentially help diagnose the illness, which normally requires extensive interviews and self-reports. However, Queen Mary University of London AI researcher Mike Cook believes attaining a high level of accuracy is unlikely:

“I think technology like this is risky for a couple of reasons. One is that it industrializes mental health in a way that it probably shouldn’t be — understanding and caring for humans is complex and difficult, and that’s why there are such deep issues of trust and care and training involved in becoming a mental health professional,” Cook told VentureBeat via email. “Proponents might suggest we just use this as a guide for therapists, an assistant of sorts, but in reality there are far more ways this could be used badly — from automating the diagnosis of mental health problems to allowing the technology to seep into classrooms, workplaces, courtrooms, and police stations. … Like all machine learning technology, [voice-analyzing tools] give us a veneer of technological authority, where in reality this is a delicate and complicated subject that machine learning is unlikely to understand the nuances of.”

3. 🍽️ Ghost Kitchens and Digital-Only Restaurants

Both the height of the pandemic and the continued uncertainty cities attempt to reopen have helped the virtual restaurant industry thrive. Whether they're ghost kitchens that supply other restaurants (even while serving their own customers) or digital-only restaurant brands capitalizing on increased take-out and delivery, a new food frontier is opening. As Carlos Basabe writes:

"These kinds of digital-only restaurants existed before the pandemic broke out, but they experienced exponential growth as people across the country were confined to their homes for more than a year, unable to safely eat inside a restaurant dining room filled with strangers. Some of them are run by independent operators looking for a cheap and easy way to try something new (and for extra revenue to keep the lights on as the industry continues to struggle); many more are run by a number of large companies making big bets on delivery being the future of the restaurant industry."

4. 🧙‍♂️ NFT Traders Dropping Millions For White Text On A Black Background

Started by Dom Hoffmann, the creator of Vine, the latest NFT craze is now a LOOT bag, a token that contains eight pieces of gear, the type you might get from playing an RPG: a weapon, helmet, body armor, belt, boots, gloves, a necklace and a ring. The listing of each of the 8,000 minted bags appears in plain text. Naturally, not all loot bags are created equal and some have even created communities based on what rare gear they own as this represents what could be the next wave of community and game building. 



5. 💽 Reggae Legend Lee 'Scratch' Perry Dies At 85

The Jamaican record producer earned his nickname from a 1965 song, "Chicken Scratch" and was known for his musical contributions as well as his eccentricities. As Christopher Johnson noted in one of his previous profiles of Perry:

"'He was experimenting with things that people still to this day are inspired by,' [Johnson] commented in that 2006 NPR piece. 'He was doing remixes before the term even really existed with these 12-inch dub plays, disco mixes that would splice together different songs, different rhythms and effects.'"

6. 🕸️ Where Web 3.0 Can Succeed

With the deluge of Pavlovian social activity and interactions that came with Web 2.0, the creation and control of reputation owned by individual users (as opposed to being beholden to the platforms they use) are likely to be deciding factors for success in Web 3.0. However, there's still uncertainty on whether it will play out this way and how 3.0 will evolve away from Web 2.0 — if for the better.

"To look at Twitter for example, for crypto, its ‘purpose’ is a portal to scarcity games, NFT drops, and FOMO. The function today is to spread narratives and create FOMO for markets in Web3. But what happens as the number of markets in Web3 exponentially increases? Web3 says it provides an escape, but it’s not certain whether the escape is scarcity financial games that shift attention or a new fairground with even playing rules. We were trained to play the game rather than play the game in a fair manner."


7. 🎮 Unity Acquires AI Chat Analysis To Target Toxicity

After acquiring AI-based audio chat analysis platform Oto, Unity released the results of a survey it conducted that revealed 7 in 10 players experienced toxic behavior. The hope is by implementing Oto, which detects tonal patterns, intonation, amplitude, and the expression of human emotions, human moderators can keep up with stamping out genuinely abusive behavior and prevent players from quitting a game altogether.



8. 📈 Are We On The Verge Of A Productivity Boom?

An issue of Mailchimp's fwd: Economy newsletter points to a potential upswing in productivity (for the US, at least) that hinges not only on the investment in and adoption of advanced technologies, but also what Stanford economist and techno-optimist Erik Brynjolfsson calls intangible capital: management practices, software customization, and skills training.

"Brynjolfsson has three reasons for his optimism these days: recent technological innovations including advances in AI but also in renewable energy and biotech; pent-up investments coming out of the pandemic; and aggressive monetary and fiscal policy by the US government. Together, he argues, these factors will kick-start the long-delayed productivity boom."

9. 💻 Framework: A Right-To-Repair Laptop that Will Certainly Grow With You

In addition to swappable ports and a litany of other replaceable parts packed into a slim chassis, Framework has also made specs and other technical information open source for both its community and repair shops. This allows the laptop to be later repaired even if the company were to cease production. Most tellingly, making the laptop this way actually isn't as hard some in the industry would suggest, as Alex Wawro writes:

"When I asked Framework founder Nirav Patel how much thinner and lighter the Framework laptop could have been if they hadn’t designed so many of the components to be replaceable, his answer surprised me: not very.

'It's amazing how little you lose,' Patel told me. 'Technically we could have shaved off like a fraction of a millimeter if we soldered down the RAM, or if we didn't build in our expansion card system...[but] it's that much more shameful that like, you actually don't have to trade off that much.'"


10. 💯 Malaysian Students Invent Seawater Desalination Pod For Sea Nomads

Sea nomads are communities who live on the coasts and islands in Southeast Asia that need to collect rainwater or barter for tap water due to lack of access. Three Malaysian sophomore students at Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation recently scored an entry into the James Dyson design awards with their invention, dubbed WaterPod. The self-cleaning solar desalination system wicks seawater into a dome that, after it evaporates, condenses into potable water that can be stored and pumped for use.

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