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Dr. Vivek Murthy, the United States Surgeon General, discusses the importance of social connection to our mental and physical well-being with actor Matthew McConaughey, a University of Texas professor.
Should social media apps be labeled dangerous for kids?
US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is demanding Congress require a safety label on social media apps like cigarettes and alcohol, citing that teens who use them for three hours a day double their risk of depression.
Murthy has a history of advocating for mental health: He issued a similar advisory last year categorizing loneliness as a health crisis comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.
So far, Congress hasn’t done much to curb children’s social media usage, apart from chastising a few tech CEOs and targeting TikTok as a national security threat. Murthy’s emergency declaration on Monday was a call for concrete action.
“A surgeon general’s warning label,” Murthy argued in a recent op-ed in the New York Times, “would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe.”
Would it work? Labels on tobacco did lead to a steady decline in adolescent cigarette smoking over the past several decades (that is, until vapes came along … but that’s another story). Murthy acknowledged, however, that a warning label alone wouldn’t fix that the average teen spends nearly five hours a day scrolling, and also suggested that schools, family dinners, and anyone in middle school or below, stay phone-free.
What do you think? Should social media apps be labeled as dangerous for children? Let us know here.Protesters carry signs during a march calling for the end of the Israeli attacks in Gaza in downtown Montreal.
Hard Numbers: Arms for Israel under scrutiny, Canadian kids in crisis, back to the future for housing, “Boy and Heron” flies high, “G7” fakes revealed
1.6 A new report warns that as many as 1.6 million Canadian youth and teens are struggling with mental health crises and that many of them are forced to wait months or even years for appropriate treatment. By our calculations, that’s one out of every five young people in Canada. Experts say the trends are worsening, in part because of the pandemic, but also because of fragmented and underfunded mental health services.
3.5: As Canada faces a housing shortage of at least 3.5 million units by the end of the decade, the government is going back to the future for a solution. Housing Minister Sean Fraser says that in January officials will begin discussions on reviving a 1950s strategy of using pre-approved housing designs to speed construction.
12.8: For the first time in his storied career, Japanese animated film legend Hayao Miyazaki has topped the North American box offices, as his latest movie “The Boy and the Heron” brought in $12.8 million in its theatrical debut. If you’ve never seen his films, they are magical journeys in which (usually) children protagonists negotiate big themes of nature vs. civilization, life and death, and tradition vs. modernity – start with his Oscar-winning classic “Spirited Away.”
10: For politics nerds, the Group of Seven, or G7, is a club of the world’s leading democracies, but for Canadian art buffs it’s a famous group of nature-oriented painters active in the 1920s. Why are we telling you this? Because it’s now been confirmed that 10 oil sketches previously attributed to one of the group’s founders, J.E.H. Macdonald, are fakes. Just in time for you to see them at an exhibition opening in Vancouver this weekend!
Emotional AI: More harm than good?
Generative AI mimics human-generated text, images, and video, and it's got huge implications for geopolitics, economics, and security. But that's not all - emotionally intelligent AI is on the rise.
And sometimes the results are ugly. Take the mental health nonprofit, KOKO, which used an AI chatbot to support counselors advising 4,000 people who were seeking counseling. The catch: The patients didn't know that a bot was generating the advice they were receiving. While users initially rated the bot-generated responses highly, the therapy lost its effectiveness once the patients were informed that they'd be talking to a fancy calculator.
The real question is: When does emotionally intelligent AI cross the line into emotionally manipulative territory?
This is not just a concern for virtual therapists -- politics could be impacted. And who knows, maybe even your favorite TV host will use generative AI to convince you to keep watching. Now there's an idea.
- The AI arms race begins: Scott Galloway’s optimism & warnings ›
- Ian Explains: The dark side of AI ›
- AI's search revolution: How ChatGPT will be your new search engine ›
- How robots will change the job market: Kai-Fu Lee predicts ›
- Is AI's "intelligence" an illusion? - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: Getting to know generative AI with Gary Marcus - GZERO Media ›
- New AI toys spark privacy concerns for kids - GZERO Media ›
- AI & human rights: Bridging a huge divide - GZERO Media ›
The AI addiction cycle
Ever wonder why everything seems to be a major crisis these days? For former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, it's because artificial intelligence has determined that's the only way to get your attention.
What's more, it's driving an addiction cycle among humans that will lead to enormous depression and dissatisfaction.
"Oh my God there's another message. Oh my God, there's another crisis. Oh my God, there's another outrage. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God," he says. "I don't think humans, at least in modern society where [we’ve] evolved to be in an 'Oh my God' situation all day."
Schmidt admits he failed to predict AI-enabled algorithms would lead to this addiction cycle. And the solution, he believes, is for people other than computer scientists to get involved in discussing the ethics of AI systems.
Watch his interview with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World:Be more worried about artificial intelligence
- Who'll rule the digital world in 2022? - GZERO Media ›
- Artificial intelligence from Ancient Greece to 2021 - GZERO Media ›
- Be more worried about artificial intelligence - GZERO Media ›
- Ian Bremmer explains: Should we worry about AI? - GZERO Media ›
- Beware AI's negative impact on our world, warns former Google CEO Eric Schmidt - GZERO Media ›
- Ian Bremmer: How AI may destroy democracy - GZERO Media ›
- Ian Bremmer: How AI may destroy democracy - GZERO Media ›
Podcast: We have to control AI before it controls us, warns former Google CEO Eric Schmidt
Listen: Tech companies set the rules for the digital world through algorithms powered by artificial intelligence. But does Big Tech really understand AI? Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt tells Ian Bremmer that we need to control AI before it controls us.
What's troubling about AI, he says, is that it’s still very new, and AI is learning by doing. Schmidt, co-author of “The Age of AI: And Our Human Future,” worries that AI exacerbates problems like anxiety, driving a human addiction cycle that leads to depression.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.- Kai-fu Lee: What's next for artificial intelligence? - GZERO Media ›
- Ian Bremmer explains: Should we worry about AI? - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: The future of artificial intelligence with tech CEO Kai-Fu ... ›
- Artificial intelligence from Ancient Greece to 2021 - GZERO Media ›
- Beware AI's negative impact on our world, warns former Google CEO Eric Schmidt - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: Why Scott Galloway is “cautiously optimistic” about AI - but not TikTok or Meta - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: How to get social media companies to protect users (instead of hurting them) - GZERO Media ›
10 must-reads for today
1Big Thai protest planned
America faces a “loneliness pandemic,” too, says former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy
Lockdowns, social distancing and isolation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic can take a toll on mental health, Dr. Vivek Murthy told Ian Bremmer on GZERO World. While maintaining distance and avoiding group gatherings is necessary at this time, we must also be mindful of having meaningful interactions with friends and family. Dr. Murthy discusses how this unprecedented moment could lead to either a "social recession" or "social revival" depending on what path we take as a nation.