The chatbot uses GPT-2 for its baseline conversational abilities. That model is trained on 45 million pages from the web, which teaches it the basic structure and grammar of the English language. The Trevor Project then trained it further on all the transcripts of previous Riley role-play conversations, which gave the bot the materials it needed to mimic the persona.
Throughout the development process, the team was surprised by how well the chatbot performed. There is no database storing details of Riley’s bio, yet the chatbot stayed consistent because every transcript reflects the same storyline.
But there are also trade-offs to using AI, especially in sensitive contexts with vulnerable communities. GPT-2, and other natural-language algorithms like it, are known to embed deeply racist, sexist, and homophobic ideas. More than one chatbot has been led disastrously astray this way, the most recent being a South Korean chatbot called Lee Luda that had the persona of a 20-year-old university student. After quickly gaining popularity and interacting with more and more users, it began using slurs to describe the queer and disabled communities.
The Trevor Project is aware of this and designed ways to limit the potential for trouble. While Lee Luda was meant to converse with users about anything, Riley is very narrowly focused. Volunteers won’t deviate too far from the conversations it has been trained on, which minimizes the chances of unpredictable behavior.
This also makes it easier to comprehensively test the chatbot, which the Trevor Project says it is doing. “These use cases that are highly specialized and well-defined, and designed inclusively, don’t pose a very high risk,” says Nenad Tomasev, a researcher at DeepMind.
Human to human
This isn’t the first time the mental health field has tried to tap into AI’s potential to provide inclusive, ethical assistance without hurting the people it’s designed to help. Researchers have developed promising ways of detecting depression from a combination of visual and auditory signals. Therapy “bots,” while not equivalent to a human professional, are being pitched as alternatives for those who can’t access a therapist or are uncomfortable confiding in a person.
Each of these developments, and others like it, require thinking about how much agency AI tools should have when it comes to treating vulnerable people. And the consensus seems to be that at this point the technology isn’t really suited to replacing human help.
Still, Joiner, the psychology professor, says this could change over time. While replacing human counselors with AI copies is currently a bad idea, “that doesn’t mean that it’s a constraint that’s permanent,” he says. People, “have artificial friendships and relationships” with AI services already. As long as people aren’t being tricked into thinking they are having a discussion with a human when they are talking to an AI, he says, it could be a possibility down the line.
In the meantime, Riley will never face the youths who actually text in to the Trevor Project: it will only ever serve as a training tool for volunteers. “The human-to-human connection between our counselors and the people who reach out to us is essential to everything that we do,” says Kendra Gaunt, the group’s data and AI product lead. “I think that makes us really unique, and something that I don’t think any of us want to replace or change.”
What are chemical pollutants doing to our bodies? It’s a timely question given that last week, people in Philadelphia cleared grocery shelves of bottled water after a toxic leak from a chemical plant spilled into a tributary of the Delaware River, a source of drinking water for 14 million people. And it was only last month that a train carrying a suite of other hazardous materials derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, unleashing an unknown quantity of toxic chemicals.
There’s no doubt that we are polluting the planet. In order to find out how these pollutants might be affecting our own bodies, we need to work out how we are exposed to them. Which chemicals are we inhaling, eating, and digesting? And how much? The field of exposomics, which seeks to study our exposure to pollutants, among other factors, could help to give us some much-needed answers.Read the full story.
—Jessica Hamzelou
This story is from The Checkup, Jessica’s weekly biotech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.
Read more:
+ The toxic chemicals all around us. Meet Nicolette Bugher, a researcher working to expose the poisons lurking in our environment and discover what they mean for human health. Read the full story.
+ Building a better chemical factory—out of microbes. Professor Kristala Jones Prather is helping to turn microbes into efficient producers of desired chemicals. Read the full story.
+ Microplastics are messing with the microbiomes of seabirds. The next step is to work out what this might mean for their health—and ours. Read the full story.
People are gathering in virtual spaces to relax, and even sleep, with their headsets on. VR sleep rooms are becoming popular among people who suffer from insomnia or loneliness, offering cozy enclaves where strangers can safely find relaxation and company—most of the time.
Each VR sleep room is created to induce calm. Some imitate beaches and campsites with bonfires, while others re-create hotel rooms or cabins. Soundtracks vary from relaxing beats to nature sounds to absolute silence, while lighting can range from neon disco balls to pitch-black darkness.
The opportunity to sleep in groups can be particularly appealing to isolated or lonely people who want to feel less alone, and safe enough to fall asleep. The trouble is, what if the experience doesn’t make you feel that way? Read the full story.
—Tanya Basu
Inside the conference where researchers are solving the clean-energy puzzle
There are plenty of tried-and-true solutions that can begin to address climate change right now: wind and solar power are being deployed at massive scales, electric vehicles are coming to the mainstream, and new technologies are helping companies make even fossil-fuel production less polluting.
But as we knock out the easy climate wins, we’ll also need to get creative to tackle harder-to-solve sectors and reach net-zero emissions.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) funds high-risk, high-reward energy research projects, and each year the agency hosts a summit where funding recipients and other researchers and companies in energy can gather to talk about what’s new in the field.
As I listened to presentations, met with researchers, and—especially—wandered around the showcase, I often had a vague feeling of whiplash. Standing at one booth trying to wrap my head around how we might measure carbon stored by plants, I would look over and see another group focused on making nuclear fusion a more practical way to power the world.
There are plenty of tried-and-true solutions that can begin to address climate change right now: wind and solar power are being deployed at massive scales, electric vehicles are coming to the mainstream, and new technologies are helping companies make even fossil-fuel production less polluting. But as we knock out the easy wins, we’ll also need to get creative to tackle harder-to-solve sectors and reach net-zero emissions. Here are a few intriguing projects from the ARPA-E showcase that caught my eye.
Vaporized rocks
“I heard you have rocks here!” I exclaimed as I approached the Quaise Energy station.
Quaise’s booth featured a screen flashing through some fast facts and demonstration videos. And sure enough, laid out on the table were two slabs of rock. They looked a bit worse for wear, each sporting a hole about the size of a quarter in the middle, singed around the edges.
These rocks earned their scorch marks in service of a big goal: making geothermal power possible anywhere. Today, the high temperatures needed to generate electricity using heat from the Earth are only accessible close to the surface in certain places on the planet, like Iceland or the western US.
Geothermal power could in theory be deployed anywhere, if we could drill deep enough. Getting there won’t be easy, though, and could require drilling 20 kilometers (12 miles) beneath the surface. That’s deeper than any oil and gas drilling done today.
Rather than grinding through layers of granite with conventional drilling technology, Quaise plans to get through the more obstinate parts of the Earth’s crust by using high-powered millimeter waves to vaporize rock. (It’s sort of like lasers, but not quite.)
