Alexa, What Is a Conflict of Interest? - A follow-up from the pharma-medical industrial complex

Back in in May, Nicholas Wright and I published an article Alexa, What Is a Conflict of Interest? at slate.com. We discussed the potential conflict of interest which arises from your digital assistant both friend and sales robot.

A few weeks after the article was published, there was news, that Amazon had teamed up with the UK's National Health Service and that Alexa would provide medical advice. 

In some sense this announcement leapfrogged the concerns stated in our article. With individuals' health and potential life-an-death questions on the table, he stakes are higher. And the pharma-medical industrial complex is historically prone to conflict of interest as recently illustrated by the role of Purdue Pharmta in the US opioid crisis.

I think that there is certainly a positive and productive role for conversational AI and AI in general in the medical field. The mental health chat bot Woebot might serve as an example.

However, the ethical guidelines need to be strong and clear and the conflict of commercial interests and the health interests of the patient must be eliminated. 

Social relationships

AI will have significant impact on people’s lives, in a most private and personal way. Here are a few emerging scenarios.

Social aspects of work

Beside generating income, work plays an important role in most people’s social life. Work gives a certain sense to people lives by making meaningful contributions and colleagues are often friends. If work is eliminated from people’s lives these become less rich.

While studies have shown a correlation between declining employment prospects and declining mental health, the long-term situation is not clear. These seem to be areas which requires further study. Search for substitutes of work's social aspects, e.g. volunteering, appears to be one avenue.

Social Scoring Systems

Social scoring systems are being pioneered in China, initially by private companies but with plans by the government to make them official. These systems take credit scoring as long practiced in most advanced economies to the next level by extending the data set beyond direct financial indicators.

The implication is a universal judgement of a person. Instead of answering if a person is credit worthy, the question now is: Is this a "good" person?

Such systems are likely to create conformity and distrust between people and to suppress individuality and dissent. Again, citizens need to debate and decide what kind of a society they would like to live in.

AI companionship

AI empowered digital assistants on mobile devices and in-home appliances have made great progress in recent years. Their voices as recently demonstrated by Google’s Digital Assistant are almost indistinguishable from human ones and their ability to understand humans keeps improving.

The questions if digital assistants can become your best friend has been explored, for example by Digg, the Wall Street Journal and others. Alexa and her friends are always there for you, they are great listeners, they know everything. Soon they will really understand you and help you, specifically if you paid for having Dr. Phils premium knowledge base loaded.

Besides the virtual companionship, companies are also working on providing the tactile experience. 

There are clear benefits to these scenarios, but they come with some significant side effects.

Individuals must think, debate and decide what they want their future to be.

Corporations have great responsibilities in the fashions, tastes and desires they have their marketing departments create.