LGBTQPIA+ youth are five times more likely to attempt suicide.

In 1998 The Trevor Project became the world’s first “national crisis intervention and suicide prevention lifeline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer & questioning youth.” In the time since, the foundation’s services have expanded beyond the telephone lifeline to include an online chat and a text-based counseling service – All of which are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

But it’s not enough. According to a press release from The Trevor Project:

It takes a lot of volunteer counselors to make a difference. And, according to the most recent data available , suicide rates continue to rise. That’s why The Trevor Project has committed to increasing the number of trained counselors in its arsenal by three-fold in 2021, and eventually expanding it to ten times its current number.

To accomplish this, the group’s AI division turned to the experts at Googlerg to help with funding and know-how. Their combined efforts produced a novel training system called the “Crisis Contact Simulator” and a machine learning-powered assessment tool that detects high-risk users and ensures they get immediate help.

According Amit Paley, CEO and Executive Director of The Trevor Project, the new tools will make the foundation’s planned expansion possible:

The simulator uses natural language processing AI to, essentially, create a troubled chatbot for counselors to talk to.

Dubbed “Riley,” it apes human behavior in the form of a fictional teen from North Carolina who “feels anxious and depressed.” This is so counselors can practice holding conversations while they’re still training – all of the counselors who work the helplines are fully-trained. Rather than tap fellow counselors for roleplay duties, the AI can provide a uniform experience for all trainees.

Dan Fichter, Head of AI and Engineering at The Trevor Project, said the group was excited to bring the new system online:

Googlerg, for its part, sent nearly 30 fellows to work alongside The Trevor Project and was involved in the dissemination of some $2.7 million in grant funding.

For more information about The Trevor Project, visit its site here .

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis you can contact a suicide helpline by finding the appropriate listing for your location here .

To reach The Trevor Project’s helplines check out the image below:

Credit: The Trevor Project

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Amazon Echo and Google Home could monitor your heartbeat without even touching you

Scientists have developed a new smart speaker system that could turn the Amazon Echo and Google Home into contactless heartbeat monitors.

The AI-powered system sends inaudible sounds from the speakers towards a person sitting nearby.

When they bounce back, algorithms analyze the sound waves to determine the heart rate.

Researchers from the University of Washington tested the device on healthy people and hospitalized cardiac patients. They found that the smart speaker detected their heartbeats almost as well as medical-grade ECG monitors.

The team says it’s the first time that both regular and irregular heartbeats can be monitored without physical contact.

The system harnesses two different algorithms. The first one analyzes signals from all the smart speaker’s microphones to find the heartbeat.

Study co-author Shyam Gollakota said this is similar to how Alexa identifies a user’s voice in a noisy room:

A second algorithm then segments the signal to determine the amount of time between two heartbeats.

The system is currently set up for spot checks by a person worried about their heart rhythm. But it could be adapted to continuously monitor patients for signs of sleep apnea or cardiac emergencies.

The likes of Amazon and Google could also integrate the software into their smart speakers. My only concern is that hackers could access the system to work out if I’m home before robbing the place.

Meet the AI-generated bipartisan president of the US

A Dutch artist has launched an AI project that explores how a divided USA could be reunited. He calls it “ the Bipartisan President .”

Jeroen van der Most (aka Most) used the GPT-3 language model to generate a series of politically-neutral slogans. He then fused them with a nightmarish morph of Donald Trump‘s and Joe Biden’s faces uttering peak-centrist platitudes.

Producing the slogans was a pretty laborious process. Most began it by feeding GPT-3 the following three prompts:

But the model struggled to understand the categories. For instance, when asked for a liberal tagline, it might respond with “Lower taxes, bigger military.”

That didn’t sound right to Most, so he selected only the taglines that he personally considered conservative, liberal, or bipartisan.

Most then validated his choices by running them through an existing algorithm that guesses whether a text extract was written by a conservative or a liberal. The slogans that were classified as a mix of the two ideologies were deemed bipartisan.

Next, Most returned to GPT3 with the prompt “Tagline ideas for a bipartisan campaign,” followed by some of the bipartisan taglines. Like the example below:

Most then again applied the existing algorithm to double-check that the outputs scored on both the liberal and conservative scales. Finally, he checked whether the outputs had already been used by lobby groups or political initiatives by running them through a Google Search API . If the taglines didn’t appear within the first results, they were added to the list.

He says the bipartisan slogans evaded concrete policy themes, such as the “climate crisis” or “strengthening the military.” Instead, they expressed broad and quasi-inspirational sentiments that contained little of substance.

Most says the next steps could be using AI to write new bipartisan policies or developing a tool that provides warnings when a politician is evading questions. But he admits that the slogans he’s created are “filled with hollow rhetoric.”

“It also gives you a feeling somewhere that a bipartisan narrative is an illusion, which would be very dangerous for the USA and the world,” he told TNW. “In this way, the art piece is also a sort of warning and hopefully an encouragement to put more effort and solid scientific research into finding the new common ground. “