Artificial intelligence is already making its mark in health care—but new, bigger, models promise to improve how patients access services, help doctors spot diseases faster and transform how medical research is done. In the first of two episodes on the potential of AI in health care, we ask: how will patients benefit from the technology behind ChatGPT?

Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Natasha Loder, The Economist's health editor; Gerald Lip of NHS Grampian; Peter Kecskemethy of Kheiron Medical; Pranav Rajpurkar of Harvard Medical School; Hugh Harvey of Hardian Health.

Want to learn more about generative artificial intelligence? Listen to our series on the science that built the AI revolution.

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Ever since there have been smartphones and social media, there have been concerns about how they might be affecting children. Over the past decade, doctors have seen a decline in mental health in the young in much of the rich world. But whether that rise can be attributed to technology is still a matter of fierce debate. Nevertheless, demands are growing to proactively restrict teenagers’ access to phones and social media, just in case. How concerned should parents and teachers be? Or is this just another moral panic?

Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Tom Wainwright, The Economist's technology and media editor; Clare Fernyhough, co-founder of Smartphone Free Childhood; Carol Vidal of Johns Hopkins University; Pete Etchells, a psychologist at Bath Spa University and the author of “Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time”.

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What is intelligence? In the middle of the 20th century, the inner workings of the human brain inspired computer scientists to build the first “thinking machines”. But how does human intelligence actually relate to the artificial kind?

This is the first episode in a four-part series on the evolution of modern generative AI. What were the scientific and technological developments that took the very first, clunky artificial neurons and ended up with the astonishingly powerful large language models that power apps such as ChatGPT?

Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Ainslie Johnstone, The Economist’s data journalist and science correspondent; Dawood Dassu and Steve Garratt of UK Biobank; Daniel Glaser, a neuroscientist at London’s Institute of Philosophy; Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; Yoshua Bengio of the University of Montréal, who is known as one of the “godfathers” of modern AI.

On Thursday April 4th, we’re hosting a live event where we’ll answer as many of your questions on AI as possible, following this Babbage series. If you’re a subscriber, you can submit your question and find out more at economist.com/aievent.

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