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When a viral Reddit post revealed that ChatGPT cured a five-year medical mystery in seconds, even LinkedIns Reid Hoffman took notice. Now, OpenAIs Sam Altman says GenZ and Millennials are treating AI chatbots as life advisors. The next step? Always-on AI agents tailored to your health, career, finances, and relationships, a future where personalized AI assistants could redefine how we seek information, leaving traditional search engines in the dust. A 60-Second Fix That Went Viral Five years of chronic jaw pain. Multiple doctors, MRIs, and specialistsand still no answers. That was the plight of one Reddit user suffering a persistent jaw clicking (likely from an old boxing injury). In desperation, he turned to an unlikely last resort: an AI chatbot. He typed his symptoms into ChatGPT and waited for the bots opinion. The response was shockingly on-point. ChatGPT suggested the users jaw disc was slightly displaced but movable, and walked him through a simple mouth exercise to reset it. I followed the instructions for maybe a minute max and suddenly no click, the user reported. After five years of just living with it, this AI gave me a fix in a minute. Unreal. The anecdote might sound like sci-fi wishful thinking, but it quickly went viral across social media. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman highlighted the story, marveling at how an AI delivered relief in seconds after human experts struggled for years. Replies poured in from others with similar jaw issues who finally found answers to their medical dilemmas. Hoffman triumphantly declared Superagency! on Twitterhis term for AIs almost superhuman problem-solving capacity. In other words, this was more than a one-off win for a clever chatbot; it felt like a glimpse into the future of personal healthcare and beyond. ChatGPT: From Search Engine to Life Coach The jaw episode underscores a broader shift in how young people are seeking information and advice. Its not just about troubleshooting medical quirks. Increasingly, people are posing all sorts of personal questions to AI, the kinds of questions they might once have typed into an incognito search or perhaps never voiced at all. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has a front-row view of this phenomenon. He notes stark generational differences in ChatGPT usage: Older people use [ChatGPT] as a Google replacement, Altman recently observed, whereas many in their 20s and 30s use it like a life advisor. In other words, younger users arent just asking AI for trivia or weather updates, theyre confiding in it, seeking guidance on college decisions, career moves, and personal dilemmas. Altman says some college students have ChatGPT so deeply integrated into their daily lives that they dont make life decisions without asking ChatGPT what they should do. It has the full context on every person in their life and what theyve talked about. The chatbot has effectively become a confidanta kind of always-available sounding board and advisor in one. Generational shift Statistics back up this generational sea change. In a recent Vox Media survey, 61% of GenZ and 53% of Millennials said they prefer AI tools like ChatGPT over traditional search engines like Google. Its a remarkable turning of the tide: the first internet generation, raised on Googling anything and everything, is now swapping keyword searches for conversations with AI. The reasons are understandable. Rather than wading through pages of blue links and ads, a chatbot gives a straightforward answer or solution, often in a single exchange. Instead of piecing together advice from scattered forum posts and WebMD entries, you get a tailored response in plain English (or whatever language you speak). Unlike a one-and-done search query, an AI conversation can go deeper, you can ask follow-ups, provide context, and get nuanced answers that evolve with the conversation. Doctors will hate ChatGPT [its] 1000% more useful than WebMD, one user quipped in response to the jaw-fixing story. That tongue-in-cheek comment captures a real sentiment: for a growing cohort of users, AI isnt just an information tool, but a trusted guide. It feels less like using software and more like consulting an ever-patient mentor or coach. Crucially, AI advisers can be brutally efficient. Theyre available 24/7, never get tired of questions, and can recall everything youve ever told themsomething even the friendliest physician or counselor cant match. A team of AI advisers Millions are now acclimated to a general-purpose bot like ChatGPT as their all-in-one guru, but an even more profound shift is on the horizon: curated AI agents tailored to specific domains and individual needs. AI agents serve as specialized successors to the chatbots we know today: smarter, more personal, and deeply knowledgeable about you and the topics you care about. Instead of one AI to rule them all, you might soon have a whole team of AI advisors at your side. This could have profound implications across a variety of use cases, from personalized health and wellness coaches who remember your medical history, track your symptoms, and provide advice accordingly, career mentors who can advise users on interview preparation and networking, to financial advisors who provide dedicated investment strategies that consider risk appetite and savings goals. AI agents can also serve as relationship coaches, mental wellness guides, and a catalog of other functions that are currently reserved for sophisticated human professionals. AI proxies These examples are no longer science fiction, with startups and large corporations already working to make domain-specific AI companions a reality. Expert-driven AI personas enable subject-matter experts, whether it’s a doctor, a professor, a financial guru, or a popular podcaster, to create an AI version of themselves that can interact with anyone. Experts upload their knowledge (via articles, videos, and recordings), and the platform trains a customized AI that educates itself based on a flywheel of knowledge from those sources. The result is a chatbot that doesnt just sound like an expert, but a specific, real person with a verified background. In essence, its a way to bottle up expertise and scale it infinitely: an expert can help thousands of people at once through their AI proxy, without diluting the personal touch. Expertise on demand AI Agents will reinvent how people learn, interact, and build community in an AI-enabled society, where knowledge isnt accessed by trawling search results, but by conversing with an intelligent agent that understands a users context and can tap into the worlds expertise on demand. These agents can act independently on a user’s behalf to perform web searches, interface with calendars or other services, curate flight options for travel, and carry out tasks without needing constant supervision. Crucially, these curated agents promise k trust anchored in expertise and personalization, something todays general chatbots lack. A user might hesitate to take medical action based on a random internet answer, but advice from an AI trained by a respected doctor or a therapist carries more weight. And because these agents retain long-term memory, they offer continuity. Your conversations pick up where they left off, and over time, the AI develops a richer understanding of a user’s needs and preferences. Its the difference between asking a stranger for advice versus conslting a personal coach whos been with you for years. A Vision of AI-First Knowledge The implications of this shift are enormous. Were looking at nothing less than a transformation in how humans find information, solve problems, and make decisions. In the past three decades, the phrase Google it emerged as a reflection of the revolutionary idea that any answer was just a web search away. We have already heard in the past few years, Ask your AI, just as often. That future may seem idealistic, but signs of it are already sprouting. The fact that a 22-year-old today might consult an AI life coach before calling their parents speaks volumes about the comfort level younger generations have with AI. They trust it not just to fetch facts, but to understand and advise. And as the technology improves, these AI agents will only become more capable companions. Theyll feel more natural, more alive, not in a sentient sense, but in their ability to hold extended, context-rich dialogues and proactively assist us. Instead of a one-size-fits-all oracle, well have a collection of personal AIs fine-tuned to different aspects of our lives.All of this raises the question: Do AI advisors spell the end of traditional search engines and conventional advice channels? Its a possibility that Googles leadership is surely pondering. The tech giant has noted the trend of users turning to TikTok or ChatGPT for queries and is racing to infuse its search with AI. Yet, even if search engines incorporate chat features, the paradigm is shifting from searching to consulting. The AI agent model flips the scriptyou dont find information, information finds you via an intelligent intermediary that knows what you need.We are on the cusp of a new era of AI-first knowledge seeking, one that is more conversational, contextual, and personalized than ever before. The transition wont happen overnight, and it wont be without challenges (accuracy, bias, and privacy among them). But as the Reddit jaw-fix story illustrates, people are already discovering that sometimes the best expert is an AI that reads everything and listens without judgment. The generations coming of age now are comfortable asking machines for guidance in a way no generation before was. In the coming years, curated AI agentsyour always-on career guru, health coach, financial planner, and confidantcould become as commonplace as smartphones. Instead of typing queries into a search bar, well chat with friendly AIs who know us and have a wealth of specialized knowledge to share. The digital knowledge ecosystem is being reshaped around these intelligent agents, moving from the chaotic open web toward more context-aware and continuous interactions. AI agents are poised to fundamentally reshape learning, interaction, and community. And if that vision holds, the way we get advice, from solving minor health annoyances to navigating lifes biggest decisions, will never be the same.
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On the second and third floors of New York Citys International Center of Photography (ICP), a collection of over 40 years worth of Edward Burtnyskys vision of industrial, human impact on the planet will be displayed throughout the summer. Its Burtnyskys first solo, NYC institutional exhibition show in over 20 years, and is more or lessan ode to his lifes work. [Photo: courtesy International Center of Photography] From some of his earliest work in the 80s as a student on the upper level, to his newer, larger scaled work on the lower, each piece represents the development of human industry through a concerned photography lens. [Photo: courtesy International Center of Photography] All the work kind of pokes around into those zones of globalism and as well as the need for materials, and looking at our population growth, Burtynysky says. I was born in 1955 when the world population was under 3 billion people and now we’re over 8 billion. I kind of knew then that we were talking about a human population explosion. Mines #13, Inco – Abandoned Mine Shaft, Crean Hill Mine, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, 1984 [Photo: Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York] While studying photography in 1981, Burtynsky was working in big industry to put himself through school. There, he said he decided to focus on big industries like oil and cobalt mining, and define them through photography. Regardless of place or subject, he says he wanted to focus on one continuous idea our impact on the world. Breezewood, Pennsylvania, USA, 2008 [Photo: Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York] The works range in location and anthropogenic effect. From large, aerial views of chain restaurants and gas companies on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to up-close portraits of recycling workers in China, Burtynskys work is meant to feel human and appear visually cinematic. [Photo: courtesy International Center of Photography] According to David Campany, ICPs creative director and curator of the show, these photos are not the kind meant to be viewed on a smartphone. I think when you go to the cinema, you’re part of a slightly more collective consciousness, and I think it’s the same when people stand and look at big images, Campany says. [Photo: courtesy Internatinal Center of Photography] The larger scale allows the viewer to get lost in the details within the bigger picture, like being able to look at dusty orange landscapes with sleek linesbut backing up and realizing its a commercial road in the middle of the desert. The show brings together around 70 images of Burtynskys work, and create a survey of the last 45 years of environmental impact. In turn, it makes people look closely at the negative human effect and how each image is interconnected to the larger idea. You might look at that picture of a mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo in Central Africa and think that’s got nothing to do with me, but 70% of the world’s cobalt currently comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Campany says. And when you put your hand in your pocket [and feel for your smartphone], you’ve suddenly got a very intimate connection with that image on the wall. Although theres no specific method or direction to view or engage with the work, each piece is generally meant to hold equal value when it comes to lighting and subject matter importance. Burtynsky refers to this as the democratic distribution of light and space. For him, it allows the viewer to fall into the surface of the image itself. [Photo: courtesy International Center of Photography] In 1981, which was my student work, I was looking at our relationship with nature containing nature, controlling nature, greenhouses,and large industrial farms, Burtynsky says. Even back then, I realized farming was our biggest impact in the planet, and it’s kind of makes sense to have a farming as a central image for the exhibition. Despite the works spanning decades of his travels and anthropogenic view, they are all embedded with what he says is a sense of aesthetic, wonder, and impact. Shipbreaking #49, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2001 [Photo: Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York] Shipbreaking work was some of the most incredible locations I’ve ever photographed and experienced, Burtynsky says. It still stands as one of the most crazy experiences of my life. The pictures that came out of that were sort of wild, and [the one you see when] you come out of the elevator where you see all the menit’s like being greeted by the other world that deals with our shit. In addition to Burtynskys show, ICP is also showing Panjereh, meaning window in Farsi, from Iranian-American artist Sheida Soleimani. The exhibition emphasizes her Ghostwriter series, where she explores her parents’ experiences of political exile and migration through layered, magically surreal pieces. Both exhibits can be viewed simultaneously at the ICP. from June 19 until September 28.
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Want to save pages on the web for later? You could always bookmark them in your browser of choice, of course. But thats a quick way to end up with a messy bookmarks toolbar. And organizing your browsers bookmarks isnt exactly a pleasant experience. Services like Pocket solved this problem in their own way, letting you save a collection of things you wanted to read laterand organize that collection. Mozilla bought Pocket back in 2017, and the company is now shutting the service down in the coming weeks. So what if your browsers bookmark manager wasnt just a list of web pages? What if it was a beautiful and powerful way to collect and organize the things you find online? Thats the vision behind Raindrop.io, an all-in-one bookmark manager with a swanky interface. Its just an all-around upgrade to the bookmark experience if you want to do anything more than save a few pages for later. Its a great replacement for Pocket, too, with the same basic concept in an even more focused and productive environment. Raindrop.io was even included in the Fast Company “26 Best New Apps of 2020” roundup. It’s actually been around even longer, but an update that year revamped the service substantially and brought it more into the form it maintains today. Psst: If you love these types of tools as much as I do, check out my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. You’ll be the first to find all sorts of simple tech treasures! Raindrop.io has a wide collection of apps, including: A browser extension to easily save pages in browsers like Google Chrome A powerful web interface Mobile apps for Android, iPhone, and iPad And desktop apps for Windows PCs, Macs, and Linux systems, too If youre using Raindrop.io on the web, you just need to sign up for a free account and install the browser extension. Then, with two clicks from your browsers toolbar, you can save anything on the web to Raindrop.io. Saving an article into Raindrop takes no more than a couple quick clicks (or taps, on a mobile device). The Raindrop.io interface is moderncomplete with thumbnails, web page descriptions, and optional tags, folder, and filters. You can go deep and set up all kinds of collections to organize web pages so your bookmarks arent a mess. Raindrop’s collections are an easy way to keep your saved stuff organized. While Raindrop.io is a slick bookmarks manager, its alsocriticallya convenient and effective way to read things that you’ve saved later down the road. With the Preview option, you can open a bookmarked page right in Raindrop.io without having to hop over to your browser. Previewing a page in Raindrop lets you read it right then and there, in a nicely optimized form and without ever having to exit the app. If all of this sounds interesting, whether you’re looking for a Pocket replacement or you’re just ready for a new way to hang onto interesting info for later reading, give it a try! All the basic features you need are completely free with unlimited bookmarks, collections, and devicesand not even any ads, either. There is a $3-per-month Pro plan that adds extra features like full-text search for your bookmarks, permanent archiving of the page content (so you can see them even if theyre taken off the web) along with daily backups, a broken link finder, and AI suggestions. It’s a nice upgrade, if you decide you like the experience and want those extras, but you definitely dont need that to enjoy Raindrop.io at its most basic level. Raindrop.io is available on the web and with apps and extensions for every big platform. Raindrop.io is free without advertising. A $3 per month Pro subscription adds a variety of bonus features. The developer says Raindrop.io does not sell any user data. Ready for more productivity-boosting goodness? Check out my free Cool Tools newsletter for an instant introduction to an incredible audio appand another off-the-beaten-path gem in your inbox every Wednesday!
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