🚨 Your AI doc lies

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Hey there, it’s Monday, {{first_name | friend}}. Remember when talking to yourself in the kitchen was considered weird? Now it’s called using a smart speaker. Progress! Your Echo or Nest is great for timers, weather and settling deeply important debates like, “How old is Steven Spielberg?” 79, I asked after seeing the movie Disclosure Day which I don’t recommend. Here’s the wrinkle: It may keep recordings after you wake it up.

🔊 What can you say to make your smart speaker delete what it recorded? A) Nothing, those recordings are permanent, B) Ask it out loud, C) Unplug it, count to 10, plug it back in, D) “Sorry,” and hope it forgives you. Keep reading, the answer is patiently listening for your choice at the end.

🦴 A reader’s note: Her hips hurt every time she walked. Now? “I feel 20 years younger.” That’s one reason my son Ian and I created ImproveLife Joint Support. Five clinically studied ingredients support mobility and joint comfort. Get up to 33% off plus free shipping.**

💨 Real quick. Click three links in this newsletter. Gmail, Yahoo and the other inbox gatekeepers watch whether you engage. No clicks? They start wondering if you actually want this. Three clicks say yes. You can click this one right now. Only two left. It takes seconds, and it keeps your newsletter landing where it belongs. Not buried in spam. — Kim

⚡ TL;DR

Your next doctor might be a chatbot. The government is trying to make sure of it. Before you cancel your physical, you need to see what happened when 1,300 people tried this.

The Washington Post reports the administration is laying the groundwork for AI chatbots that can diagnose illness and prescribe medicine, including an FDA fast track for AI health tools. A pilot program in Utah already lets chatbots refill prescriptions instantly.

Oxford researchers ran the largest study of its kind, published in Nature Medicine. 

When chatbots read medical scenarios on their own, they nailed the condition 94.9% of the time. Straight-A med student. Then nearly 1,300 real people described those same scenarios to the chatbots. Success crashed to 34.5%. The control group that googled scored 47%. And chatbot users picked the right next step, like ER versus rest at home, less than half the time.

The scariest example: Two people described nearly identical symptoms of a brain bleed. One mentioned the headache came on suddenly and was told to get emergency care. The other left out that detail and was told to lie down in a dark room. 

Same emergency. Opposite advice. One missing scrap of information.

The failure runs both ways. People leave things out, and the bots rarely ask follow-up questions the way a real doctor would. They hand you a list of possibilities and let you guess. 

AI is a fantastic medical sidekick and a terrible doctor. My rules:

What do you call an AI and a real doctor working together? A pair-a-docs.

📩 Send this to someone who asks ChatGPT about every ache and pain. It might save them a misdiagnosis. Use the links below right now.

(Starts at 15:48) A Waymo age-verification check went viral on TikTok. It asked if the rider was over 18. She’s 30. Skip the age cream. All you need to feel younger is a driverless robotaxi.

Hit the link below, so you’re in the know. 👇

▶️ Waymo cards rider →

Or for audio only, click your favorite podcast player below:

😑 Heads up if you scroll TikTok: Scammers are posting videos that promise free Spotify Premium, Windows, Office, or Adobe. The catch is buried in the steps: they tell you to open PowerShell and paste a command from the video. Run it, and you've installed Vidar, malware that grabs your passwords, cookies, login sessions, and even crypto wallets. See that? Scroll on.

⚖️ Mind the fine print: The Chamber of Commerce dropped a guide on using AI to screen job applicants. Handy, but it skips the laws. Places like New York City and Colorado now require bias audits, candidate notices and consent when you use AI hiring tools. Ignore those and you could face fines bigger than any time you saved. Before you let a bot rank applicants, check your state's rules and tell candidates it's in use.

Power to the people: Microsoft's PowerToys turned 20 and got its biggest update yet. It's a bundle of free Windows extras most people never hear about: snap windows into tidy layouts, rename a hundred files at once, pick any color off your screen, and now a pop-up guide showing every keyboard shortcut for whatever app you're in. Faster, lighter, and it still costs nothing. Get it here.

Degrees Of Change: This is something you won’t hear anywhere else. Between 2021 and 2025, China’s universities axed 12,200 obsolete degrees and rolled out 10,200 new ones, mostly trading arts, languages, and management for AI and robotics tracks. That's over 30% of all majors. Why care here? US colleges are watching the same shift. If your kid's eyeing graphic design, translation, or general business, those are the fields AI is squeezing hardest.

🤰🏻Patch watches baby: Engineers built a soft, stick-on ultrasound patch that monitors a baby's health in the womb for hours at a time. No bulky machine, no tech holding a wand. Just a flexible patch streaming data on the fly. For high-risk pregnancies, that's the difference between a single snapshot and a steady watch. Wearable medicine keeps getting smaller, smarter, and a lot more human. Incredible, right?

Squinting at a restaurant menu under dim lights is an absolute mood killer. Luckily, there’s a free built-in magnifying glass on your phone that almost nobody knows exists. Plus, Microsoft Publisher is being phased out, and teachers like Mary are freaking out. She’s been using it for 33 years. I talk with her about the free replacement.

Listen on Komando.com →

Click your favorite podcast player below to listen now or later:

🎧 Or search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Fixing one typo in the middle of a text is maddening. Press and hold the space bar on your keyboard, then slide your finger. The whole keyboard turns into a tiny trackpad and the cursor glides right where you want it. No more poking at the screen like it owes you money.

Your Wi-Fi password keeps the neighbors out: It does nothing about your internet provider watching you. Comcast, Cox, Spectrum, Starlink and others can all see every site you visit, every search you run and everything you do on that connection. Legally. I use ExpressVPN to encrypt everything. One click, 14 devices covered. Boom. Done. Get 4 extra months on me.* 

🔥 Summer’s cooking your tech: Working outside? Fun idea, until your laptop starts sounding like a leaf blower. Keep it out of direct sunlight and off blankets or pillows. A cooling pad will help. If your phone gets hot, remove the case and don’t charge it until it cools down. Also unplug car chargers when parked. That’s how recall notices are born.

👀 Inbox previews, begone: Your inbox shows the first line or two of each email, which can get awkward when someone’s looking over your shoulder. Add a little privacy. In Gmail, go to Settings > General > Snippets > No snippets. In Apple Mail, head to Mail > Settings > Viewing > List Preview > None. Now they only see subject lines.

Hover like a wizard: Windows 11 can bring a window to the front if you hover your mouse over it. No clicking, just float and focus. Open Settings > Accessibility > Mouse and turn on Activate on hover. Use the slider to control the delay. You’ll either keep it forever or turn it off immediately. 

🎙️ Give your thumbs a break: Long texts take forever when you tap them out one letter at a time. On iPhone or Android, tap the mic icon on the keyboard and start talking. I use it for grocery lists and replies when my hands are full. iPhone folks, here’s Apple’s full punctuation and formatting command list. Unfortunately, Android commands vary. 

🧽 The viral microwave trick: A cleaning video is racking up millions of views right now, and the science checks out. Pour a cup of water and a few tablespoons of white vinegar into a microwave-safe bowl. Drop in a wooden toothpick so it doesn't boil over. Microwave on high for 5 minutes, then leave the door shut for 3 more. The steam loosens every crusty splatter inside. Grab a mitt, the bowl's screaming hot. Wipe it down with a cloth and the gunk surrenders. Toss in a lemon slice if you want it smelling fresh too. That's how you nuke the grime.

Visual effects artists used to spend weeks building flying shots. AI sees one red squiggle and begins the internship. 

This AI Quidditch POV starts with one giant Hogwarts-ish scene, then uses a single red line as the broom’s flight path, made with Seedance. 

The camera chases through the stadium, threads castle towers, skims Black Lake, dives under a bridge and returns for the Golden Snitch like a drone piloted by someone who dedicated their life to aerial photography.

🔜 Tomorrow: If your phone bill quietly grew and you have no idea why, I’ll name every junk fee and how to delete it.

The answer: B) Just ask it out loud. Say, “Alexa, delete everything I said today,” and everything recorded since midnight disappears. Want only your last command gone? “Alexa, delete what I just said.” On the Google side, “Hey Google, delete what I just said” does the trick. If yours ignores you, open the privacy settings and switch on voice deletion first, then try again. 

FYI, these gadgets save your clips to help the assistant understand you better. But some things are better left unsaid.

🏓 Stay active longer: One of my favorite reader notes came from someone who mentioned walking and pickleball. If your joints occasionally remind you they’re there, ImproveLife Joint Support is definitely worth a look. Get up to 33% off plus free shipping.**

Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily

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Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, Fullstar, @MrLarus via X

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