Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you learn something new in just a few minutes: Could Artificial Intelligence Experience Depression? Why You Should Leave Your Phone Out of the Bedroom You Don't Get Tetanus From Rust Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you learn something new in just a few minutes:
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/depression-in-artificial-intelligence-smartphones-in-the-bedroom-and-tetanus-mythbusting
CODY GOUGH: Hi. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. We've got three stories from curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes.
CODY GOUGH: Today, you learn about why artificial intelligence might get depressed, why you should leave your phone out of the bedroom-- [CLEARS THROAT] Ashley, and where you get tetanus. Spoiler alert, it's not from rust.
ASHLEY HAMER: Let's satisfy some curiosity. Cody, have you ever wondered if artificial intelligence actually feels feelings?
CODY GOUGH: You mean, do androids dream of electric sheep?
ASHLEY HAMER: Exactly. Well, Curiosity is a great place to follow the constantly evolving world of artificial intelligence. And today, we researched a really interesting concept. Some experts think that in order to really think like humans, AI systems will need the ability to experience depression.
CODY GOUGH: Depression?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Well, first, let's talk about how depression works in humans. This is a major oversimplification, but basically, the main suspect behind depression in humans is the neurotransmitter serotonin. You've probably heard of that.
CODY GOUGH: Right.
ASHLEY HAMER: A deficiency in serotonin is linked to symptoms of depression like lethargy, apathy, mood swings, and sadness. But serotonin isn't just a happy/sad hormone, it plays a role in lots of brain functions-- sleeping, eating, motor activity, even the learning process. And that's the key here.
Artificial intelligence is essentially a learning machine, right? Engineers feed AI systems a bunch of data and the AI learns by example. Like they might show pictures of dogs labeled with their breeds to teach an AI to identify an unknown dog's breed. Now, you might call serotonin a neural modulator, which is a special kind of neurotransmitter that quickly sends information to lots of parts of your brain.
Engineers see neuromodulators as kind of control knobs, similar to the ones that they use in AI. And one important knob is the learning rate. Sometimes you need to increase your learning rate like, say, if you're traveling abroad and your usual model of the world is out of date and you need to adapt to the new situation. AI will need to adapt like this, too.
So like we're not going to program AI with some sort of e-serotonin. The idea is whatever we do build to help AI learn might be similar to serotonin, and that might lead to side effects just like human serotonin.
CODY GOUGH: Got it. And if you want to get philosophical, there's one more component to this. A lecturer at College London in the UK said that if an AI system gets depressed, then by definition, that means the system is conscious. And if a conscious being can get a mental illness, that it's humane to treat them, right?
But if we just reprogram or switch out hardware, then we might fundamentally change the AI and machine, not to mention medical care requires informed consent. So would we even be able to program AI to fully understand the risks involved in a medical procedure? This is a really slippery slope.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Just thinking about AI and the robot apocalypse is enough to just make you stare off into the distance for a while. [LAUGHS]
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. So artificial intelligence could experience depression, and that leads everywhere.
ASHLEY HAMER: Everywhere, yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Well, you can read more about the specifics of this on curiosity.com. Great write-up. All right, Ashley, we need to talk about your phone habits at home.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh gosh, yeah, we've been talking about this a little bit outside of the podcast.
CODY GOUGH: We've alluded to this on the podcast.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, that's right.
CODY GOUGH: And you keep your phone in your bedroom, right?
ASHLEY HAMER: I do. I keep it right next to my bed, right next to my pillow. I read it until the very moment that I turn off the light to go to sleep.
CODY GOUGH: All right. Well, today, Curiosity wrote about a new study and we've got some really bad news if you're addicted to your phone.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh no.
CODY GOUGH: Participants in this study who kept their smartphones out of the bedroom for one week showed a marked improvement in their happiness and overall quality of life.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: I'm not done. They also showed fewer signs of smartphone addiction, plus many of the participants reported that they slept better, experienced less anxiety, and improved their relationships. More than 90% of the participants who did this said they might keep it up.
ASHLEY HAMER: I can't imagine being a person that would say they would keep it up because I can't imagine being a person that would even do that.
CODY GOUGH: OK. So I do have a suggestion for breaking the habit.
ASHLEY HAMER: OK.
CODY GOUGH: And I learned in college that when you change a habit, you have to replace it with something, right? So you can't just stop doing a thing without replacing it with something.
ASHLEY HAMER: Sure.
CODY GOUGH: Obviously, you can swap out your phone for a book. It turns out that when you sleep after you learn something new, you're able to remember it better later anyway. So if you're reading a nonfiction book or a philosophy book, then your brain is going to process that more, which is really cool.
Here's another life hack on a more personal level. My wife realizes that I'm really into gadgets so like, I like my Nintendo Switch and I like my gaming PCs, and I just like techie stuff. So she got me an e-reader, she got me a Kindle. Now, I've got a gadget I can bring to bed.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh.
CODY GOUGH: Right, but at the same time, I'm also reading a book. So it's kind of like cheating. So if you, at home, are sleeping with someone who is tech-obsessed like me, then get them an e-reader and it'll even let you read in the dark depending on the model like if it's got a backlight.
ASHLEY HAMER: Just don't use a tablet. Anything that emits blue light will actually disturb your sleep.
CODY GOUGH: Right. Well, there's a couple of suggestions. Do you have an e-reader?
ASHLEY HAMER: I don't. You know, I've been wanting to read more books and I use my phone too much. It seems like a simple fix.
CODY GOUGH: [LAUGHS]
ASHLEY HAMER: I'll do it. I'm saying it right now on the podcast. I'm going to leave my phone out of my room when I sleep for the next week.
CODY GOUGH: I will check back in a week or two.
ASHLEY HAMER: All right. Hey, Cody, are you up-to-date on your tetanus shot?
CODY GOUGH: Yes. I'm good. My last tetanus shot was seven years ago. The Center for Disease Control generally recommends one every 10 years for adults, though ask your doctor to make sure because there can be variations. And this podcast is not medical advice, so please check with your doctor. And we can't protect you from rusty nails.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, that's fine because rust doesn't actually cause tetanus.
CODY GOUGH: What?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, I was surprised, too. Tetanus is caused by a bacteria called Clostridium tetani, and you can find that in soil, dust, and feces. If you get cut by something that's been exposed to any of those things regardless of whether there's rust on it, you might get infected with tetanus.
Nails are a common way to get infected because, see, tetani thrives in an oxygen-deprived setting like the one far beneath your skin surface. But you might get tetanus from any injury that breaks the skin, from a dog bite to a safety pin.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, and tetanus can be severe or even fatal. So make sure you're up-to-date on your vaccines. C-tetani releases a powerful neurotoxin called tetanospasmin that can cause muscle stiffness and convulsive spasms that usually begin in the jaw. That's where the nickname "lockjaw" comes from.
CODY GOUGH: Gotcha. So go see your doctor.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, make sure that you're up on your vaccines.
CODY GOUGH: You can read more about this and all of the stories we talked about today, plus so much more on curiosity.com, and on the Curiosity app for Android or iOS.
ASHLEY HAMER: Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: Stay curious.
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