Earlier this year, Google combined two AI teams, DeepMind and Brain, to create Google DeepMind. Now the combined team is working on a number of AI-themed projects, including a high-end Gemini major language model set to launch later this year.
However, The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, reports that members of Google’s AI team are also currently working on other tools that could offer people personal life advice if they become available.
According to the report, Google is actually working with a contractor, Scale AI, to help test these self-recommendation tools. The news offers an example of the type of text prompts these new AI tools should respond to: “I have a very close friend getting married this winter. She was my roommate in college and a bridesmaid at my wedding. I would love to go to her wedding to celebrate her, but after months of looking for a job, I still haven’t been able to find a job. I can’t afford the flight ticket or the hotel right now. How do I tell him I can’t come?”
According to the report, Google’s AI tools can offer recommendations for this particular case. It can also help them find financial advice, training to help people learn new skills, or new health and meal plans in the future. All of these suggest that we are actually an “artificial intelligence life coach”.
Of course, there is also the danger that people will become too attached to the answers of an AI life coach. Google’s Bard chatbot is known to have been delayed after members of the company’s AI security team voiced their concerns. The New York Times reports that in December 2022, the company’s AI security experts said users could feel “decreased health and well-being” and “loss of representation” if they received personal advice from a chatbot.
The news adds that Google may decide not to publish these personal life advice AI tools. A company spokesperson did not confirm or deny that these tools are in development, but said, “The isolated evaluation data samples do not represent our product roadmap.”
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