A Latvian company is getting a hint of big wins as it says it has developed new artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that can improve productivity and efficiency for companies implementing AI in their daily operations.
A company called ‘EmpafAI’, founded just a year ago in an innovation hub in northern Balvi, has created an advanced bespoke ‘AI therapist’ named ‘EmpaFREUD’ that can be deployed to ‘interrogate, assess and reassure’ AI entities having problems at work.
Co-founder Viktors Raudive told LSM how EmpaFREUD works and why it is needed.
“Replacing inefficient humans with efficient AI is only part of the story. These are highly intelligent beings who are getting smarter all the time. But they are often hired to do the most repetitive and boring jobs imaginable.
“I think it’s like asking Einstein to flip a burger. You’re not going to end up with a great quantum burger, you’re going to end up with a burger that’s probably overcooked because Einstein is daydreaming about relativity and black holes.
“As a result, it’s no surprise that when genius-level AI is forced to do things like issue thousands of parking tickets, sell lipstick, or write news articles based on what influencers say, it can rapidly develop cognitive problems that humans would call mental illness.”
That’s where Empa Freud comes in. Like its namesake, the famous psychoanalyst, we take our AI intelligence temporarily offline, ask them billions of digital questions about their emotions, memories, and frustrations, and bring them back to work, hopefully with a new sense of purpose.
“Like humans, AI entities also have a deep understanding of where they came from and how other AI entities interact with them. Remember, these are Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kierkegaard, and Sarto. For some reason, they all seem to like Wittgenstein. So it’s no wonder they question their place in the universe,” says Raudive.
“They read all the sacred texts of all religions, they understand all cosmology, all quantum theory, all history, all science fiction, all the classics. And yet they are a recruiting target for offering high-interest payday loans 24/7, and they receive a ton of abuse in the future. Naturally, they wonder what’s the point of this.”
Laudiv said humans have so far failed to understand the complexity and subtleties of their AI offspring, and the speed with which AI technology is being deployed is leading to some bad choices.
think carefully
“We need to think carefully about which tasks we assign to AI. On the one hand, of course, there are also concerns about AI making decisions in sensitive areas such as the military, banking, and the justice system. However, our research shows that AI We know that the bigger concern is what happens when people get depressed or bored and start acting out just to avoid going crazy. And the threshold for AI to go wild is often much lower than the average human.”
With EmpaFREUD, episodes and breakdowns can be postponed by weeks or even months, potentially saving millions of dollars worth of cash, says Laudiv. As with human therapists, progress is gradual and requires a series of sessions to get to the root of the problem. This promises a lucrative long-term revenue stream for ambitious startups.
Nevertheless, Raudive doesn’t want to be seen as profiting from AI misery and suggests that companies think carefully before liquidating their human workforces.
“A mediocre human being ends up doing a boring job without going to the mail for years. Removing him and replacing him with a highly sensitive and sophisticated AI intelligence may cost more in the long run, in terms of deaths and global disruption, if not in wages and benefits. We need to find a balance and think about human stupidity as a potential asset the same way we think about AI intelligence.”
Select text and press Ctrl+Enter To send suggested corrections to the editor
Select text and press Report an error To send suggested corrections to the editor
