AI is everywhere. But this week, I learned of an application that takes AI creepiness to a whole new level!

Welcome to the 124^th edition of The Sunday Spark, a series with weekly thoughts and highlights, nuggets of learning, and a simple living challenge for the week. Along with the AI creepiness factor, this week’s edition looks at improving sleep with cognitive shuffling, reducing dementia risk by cycling, and simplifying life with mindfulness.

On my mind this week: Taking AI creepiness to a whole new level

It’s hard to avoid news about the countless ways individuals, businesses and governments are using AI. But I read a news article this week that takes AI creepiness to a whole new level! It reads like a disturbing dystopian novel.

Imagine a typical day in your life. Now think of all the conversations you have throughout the day. You may start your day with a private conversation with your spouse about his sister’s cheating partner. Then, you arrive at the office and have a brief discussion with your boss about an upcoming product launch, followed by a meeting with the project team to plan the details of the launch. At lunchtime, you might pop out for a medical appointment. Then after work you have a meeting with your financial advisor to discuss your savings and investments. 

Now, imagine an AI application that listens in on all those conversations and serves up a summary transcript at the end of the day. It sounds out there, but such an application exists.

Earlier this week, I saw an article about Amazon acquiring Bee. Bee is a wearable device that looks a lot like a Fitbit. The creepiness factor is that Bee listens in on all your conversations and summarizes then in a daily transcript.

When the risks outweigh the benefits

My first reaction was “Why would ANYONE want this?” But a quick look at Bee’s website shows sufficient demand that their product is backordered. And there’s enough interest that it got Amazon’s attention, although I don’t want to think about the ways Bezos might use this information.

As I struggled to see the real benefits of this product, my mind immediately went to all the potential pitfalls.

First, AI transcripts are far from perfect! When I was working, I had to review the transcript of an education webinar before we could publish it on our website. Some of its interpretations of the conversations were inaccurate to the point of being laughable.

But even if the technology can be perfected, consider the risk of an application that saves and stores details of…

• Confidential insider information you hear in the workplace. Not to mention private information about your customers.
• Your personal financial information. Details of your debts, savings, investments, bill payments…
• Your private health information. Conversations with your doctor, dentist, pharmacist…
• Comments you make about your boss, your neighbours, elected officials…

If you willingly share this information with a third party, that’s your choice. But what about the people around you who don’t consent and whose personal information you inadvertently share with the application throughout the course of your day-to-day interactions? Imagine a co-worker or family member sharing something with you in confidence. Or you overhear something you shouldn’t in a restaurant or other public place.

Why would anyone want this?

I might be missing something, but I keep coming back to the question WHY. Why would anyone need this? Or even want it? Even if it can be secured—and that’s a very big if—leaks and security breaches happen.

I don’t own a smart home device because of the creepiness factor. Despite any promises they may make, I simply don’t trust tech companies not to use my information for nefarious purposes. Needless to say, I will NOT be putting a Bee device on my Christmas list.

So I’ll ask you, would you want or need a daily transcript of your conversations? Drop me a comment below to let me know. And if you would want this, please let me know what benefit you think you’d get in exchange for your private information.

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Three highlights of the week

It’s important to celebrate big milestones and simple pleasures in life. Keeping the trend going, here are three highlights and simple pleasures of the week gone by:

• On Saturday, we had my Mum and my sister Angela over for dinner. I am so glad Angela got to see Colleen before going home to England on Monday.
• One of our local public libraries confirmed that they’d like to put my “Non-financial questions to answer before you retire” session on their winter event lineup.
• Colleen has been home this week and had the week off. It has been fun spending time with her. On Friday, we went out for lunch at a favourite local Italian restaurant.

Things I learned this week

Life is all about learning. Here are a couple of things I learned this week:

Cognitive shuffling

If you have trouble falling asleep or, like me, getting back to sleep after you wake up, you might want to try cognitive shuffling. The technique involves choosing a word at random and then focusing on each letter of that word to generate a series of unrelated words and images. It’s a bit like counting sheep…on steroids.

Learn more in Cristiana’s post on Wise & Shine.

Cycling lowers risk of dementia

Car-obsessed right wing politicians have a hatred for bike lines in our cities. In light of this week’s Ontario court ruling against Premier Ford’s plan to remove Toronto’s bike lanes, the government has vowed to appeal. In the interest of health, they might want to think again!

The benefits of exercise reducing the risk of dementia are well documented. But new research shows cycling could be a magic pill in reducing dementia risk. People who cycled regularly had a 19% lower risk of all-cause dementia and a 22% lower risk of Alzheimer’s.

(Source: Lloyd Alter on Substack)

This week’s simple living challenge – Practise mindfulness

Simplifying life is a big part of living more intentionally. With that in mind, I kicked off the year with 52 ways to simplify your life this year, including a downloadable checklist of weekly tasks.

This week’s challenge is to be more present and practise mindfulness. If meditation isn’t your thing, check out this post for alternatives.

I’d love to hear what you think about any of this week’s topics. Drop me a comment below and let me know your thoughts and ideas.