Earlier in February, I wrote on my WhatsApp status; “abi kin pe Florence,” which loosely translates to: should I call Florence?
Many of my contacts would think Florence is a “call girl” or some sort of service provider (whatever service you are thinking, just so you know that it is the essential one. Clear your mind or browser history, bruv. *smiles*)
But if you are versed in Afropop or tunes from the Marlian Nation Music (I do not even have an idea if this nation too has either redesigned her notes or been romping up for general elections), you will be familiar with my status update.
Who is Florence?
Florence or Florence 2.0 is World Health Organization’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Healthcare worker. She is the very first world digital frontliner with an ability to provide health-related advices and consultations to human. Florence is built by a New Zealand-based company, Soul Machines Limited, and she collects information to interact with human in the very best experience that is fun-filled and utterly engaging. The United Nation’s specialized outfit for health and humanitarian services revealed that information gotten from human while interacting with Florence is anonymized and won’t be shared with third parties.
Say, you are requesting for the appropriate time to get your second dose of Oxford AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, Florence has the information to guide you in ways that your privacy is very much protected and your data is not invasively infringed.
With just a check on the “ACCEPT WHO PRIVACY TERMS, ACCEPT SOUL MACHINES PRIVACY TERMS AND END USER AGREEMENT-EULA….,” you are ushered into the world of Florence, the “Digital Hero,” where you can be provided with factual health information and advice.
Can robots co-exist with humans?
To reduce the knowledge or information gap, human-machine interaction through Robotic and AI systems is highly encouraged. The cohabitation of man with machine via a controlled system of operation brings innovation and eases the overloaded responsibility on mankind. The deficiency of information in health, finance, and politics is remedied.
Like Florence, there are other medical technology platforms providing solutions to the deficiencies in health services; Clafiya and JEAY Healthcare apps are a few platforms innovatively providing healthcare services. From booking a consultation time with a medical doctor to conducting lab diagnosis from the comfort of your home to purchasing pharmaceutical products, these “health tech” platforms have constantly eased the challenges humans face when seeking premium healthcare services that are readily available at an optimal level.
Looking into the challenges that the cohabitation of human-machine could bring, one might be worried about job displacement and breach of privacy, but these concerns aren’t something too much to worry about, as there are technical limitations to how these machines can perform to the rightful ethical standards.
To end this piece, I would like to borrow a few pop culture words from Ed Finn, the founding director of Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the imagination to complement the essence of human co-existence with machines. He said: “Our anxieties about what it means to be intelligent, what it means to be a human, what it means to be a worker, what it means to be a master and a slave…. What it means to others. They are ways of creating an artificial face to confront our ideas about who we are: our ideas about personhood.”
