#13: 🤖 Let's talk about ChatGPT

Released last week, the new AI-chatbot crosses 1 million users.

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💬 In this note:

• 🤖 Let’s talk about ChatGPT

• 🧘🏽‍♀️ Potential Link Found Between Breathing And Brain Activity

• 🇺🇸 How The USA Is Embracing The Psychedelic Revolution

• 📚 We Should All Be Millionaires

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Photo by Aideal Hwa on Unsplash

🤖 Let’s talk about ChatGPT

What is it?

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chat bot released by OpenAI on November 30th. You can type in questions and the chatbot answers in conversational language. The chatbot remembers the conversation and can use previous questions and answers to inform its next responses.

Why do we care?

The chatbot’s answers are so human-like it is nearly impossible to tell it is a robot. The answers are creative and mostly accurate. ChatGPT appears to gather consensus from a vast amount of information to answer questions instantaneously. It is going to change the way we learn, study and research. Over 1 million users have tried the tool in the last week.

What can I do with it?

You can ask ChatGPT anything. You can ask for a summary of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 5 bullet points, ask for birthday party ideas, ask it to debug your code, and even ask it to write a song. Then, you can ask for it to make that song more exciting.

Woah.

ChatGPT’s release follows OpenAI’s two other notable recent releases, GPT-3, which generates text that can sound like a human wrote it, and DALL-E 2, which creates “generative art” based on text prompts.

Right now ChatGPT is free, however it is possible it will follow a monetization model like what was used for DALL-E 2, where OpenAI starts to charge after you exceed a basic free level of usage. 

What’s next?

Some are predicting that Google only has a year or two left before “total disruption,” as ChatGPT defeats the need for a search results page.

ChatGPT may truly unlock the speed at which discoveries are made across many disciplines, as it cuts down hours of researching or debugging code.

However, there is still room for improvement on searching current events. ChatGPT couldn’t write this article for me.

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🧘🏽‍♀️ Potential Link Found Between Breathing And Brain Activity

When we are in an anxious state, our breathing speeds up. In response, we take a deep breath. Or when we are focusing, we tend to hold our breath. However, until recently scientists did not have a complete picture of how brain regions are impacted by breathing.

It was previously believed that breathing is a physiological artifact, like a heartbeat or body movement, and it is something to be ignored or removed from medical scans, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Researchers at Penn State proved this wrong, when they revealed a network of brain regions involved in breathing and that it affects the fMRI signal.

They used fMRI and electrophysiology to look at brain activity in the cingulate cortex - a brain region associated with emotional response and regulation. As the rodents in their study breathed, they measured how their brain activity fluctuated with their breathing rhythm. These fluctuations in activity are signs that breathing can impact our brain function.

Now, with the insights that breathing has a neural activity that could be seen on fMRI, further studies in humans could provide insights into how breathing is controlled in meditation or yoga practices may help reduce stress and anxiety.

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🇺🇸 Changes In Legislation Demonstrate How The USA Is Embracing The Psychedelic Revolution

Between 1950 and 1965, approximately 40,000 patients were prescribed a form of LSD therapy, as a treatment for neurosis, schizophrenia and psychopathy. It was even prescribed to children with Autism.

However, in the summer of 1967, LSD became viewed as a drug of abuse. It also became closely associated with student riots and anti-war demonstrations and was outlawed by the US federal government in 1968. 

A result of the 1968 ruling was a Drug Scheduling system which classifies drugs, substances and chemicals into 5 distinct categories.

For example, psilocybin, the active chemical in magic mushrooms, is illegal in the US under its scheduling. The drug is currently classified as Schedule I by the Department of Justice. Other Schedule I drugs include heroin, marijuana (cannabis), LSD and MDMA (ecstasy). These substances are classified as “a high potential for abuse and serve no legitimate medical purpose in the United States.”

Currently, the only way a substance is downgraded from Schedule I classification is through FDA approval for medical use. In order to clearly demonstrate that the substance has a legitimate medical purpose, researchers must complete full Phase III clinical trials for a medical condition. This is a barrier so costly, that it inhibits the research required to be completed.

In mid-November, U.S Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J) and U.S Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced the Breakthrough Therapies Act which would enable the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to transfer breakthrough therapies involving Schedule I substances, such as MDMA and psilocybin from Schedule I to Schedule II. 

Changing the scheduling status will facilitate research and development, and a roll-out of these therapies through FDA-approved Expanded Access pilot programs. Three psychedelic projects from MAPS, Compass Pathways and Usona have been awarded Breakthrough Therapy Status.

President Biden has made progress on decriminalizing marijuana and offering clemency for marijuana possession. Additionally, Biden ordered a review of cannabis as a Schedule I drug. 

Rescheduling cannabis would require the DEA and the FDA to reinterpret the drug Scheduling categories, and this interpretation could then also be applied to the psychedelics in these categories. Perhaps the rescheduling of cannabis could be the gateway drug, which opens the access to these potentially life saving therapies. 

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📚 Book of the Week

We Should All Be Millionaires by Rachel Rodgers.

Lesson learned: outsource everything that is taking your time away from your talents.

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⚡️ Check this Out

Powerpoint is letting users create vertical, portrait-mode slides in its mobile app. Watch out, my next business pitch will be on TikTok.