The dawn of the 'Worried Well' and the demise of 'Common Sense'!
AI powered fitness devices like Apple Watch and Fitbit make people more anxious than healthy.
If smartphone was not enough to get people anxious all the time, new devices like Apple Watch and Fitbits, with their artificial intelligence powered fitness recommendation system, are ensuring that, there is never a calm moment in the lifes of the people.
With every upgrade in these devices, new features are brought in, which at face value seem generous and well thought of and may be even needed, but at hindsight, are those really required?
Tracking yourself every moment and keeping note of heart-beats and pulse rates have never made anyone healthier. If doing this would have been lead to a healthy life, the physicians would have tracked their vitals every hour or so. But do they do this? No !
Technology can be an assistant, a very good one at times, but throwing the entire life, blindly to algorithms and chips, is not common sense. Common sense implies that an individual rightfully assesses where she requires the intervention of technology and in what quantum.
But as the technology is rising, the common sense is dying. Things have come to this pass that, what the recommendation system of an AI powered device tells them, people are mistaking it for common sense. The machine is right, and what I am feeling in real, is wrong.
If the heart beat is little fast, that must be due to the additional stress, completely forgetting their own self-being of fitness and health and trusting the Apple Watch or Fitbit completely.
There is the dawn of the "Worried Well", who have arrived at their physician , based on the recommendation of their Apple Watch and Fitbit; even though they are completely well.
In the anticipation of releasing newer and shinier fitness products, the tech companies like Apple and Fitbit forget that they are entering the realms of medical world, whose guiding principle of Hippocratic Oath says, "First, Do no harm."
The biggest harm done by these new tech fitness products is to the common sense of those who take the crutch of it, to stay healthy. Instead of making them healthier, they are making more anxious.
To stay healthy; you require common sense of eating, sleeping, exercising and working right. Else, wear an Apple Watch or Fitbit and joined the ranks of "Worried Well".
“The dystopian, but also feasible outcome is that health inequalities increase, or the system becomes overwhelmed by ‘the worried well’ who have arrived at their GPs’ surgery or the Emergency Department because they have erroneously been told to attend by their AI enabled Fitbit or smartphone,”