This artificial intelligence-powered avatar was developed to offer a lifeline for people living with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
Liv is built on the real-life experiences and wisdom of hundreds of people living with the condition.
The goal is for Liv to offer up assurance and advice, and respond to questions with information drawn directly from first-hand experiences.
“I understand that living with dementia can sometimes feel confusing, but you don't have to navigate it alone.”
An estimated 55 million people worldwide are currently living with dementia.
That number is expected to reach 139 million by 2050, according to British dementia charity, Alzheimer's Society.
It affects cognitive function, impacting memory, thinking, behavior, and the ability to perform everyday tasks.
“The technology is not set out to be a companion or a therapist.”
Steve Milton is a director at Innovations in Dementia, one of the collaborators on the project alongside tech company Lenovo and Exeter University.
:: Steve Milton, Director of Innovations in Dementia CIC
“Liv will talk about, you know, the fact that dementia does bring huge challenges to people's lives, but that all of the evidence from the people who have contributed towards it showed that by making a few changes and adjustments to your life you can continue to live well, you can continue to live with a sense of agency."
Gail Gregory contributed to the project, dubbed 'Alzheimer’s Intelligence.'
When she was 54, she was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's.
She says she hopes the avatar can help.
:: Gail Gregory, Diagnosed with Alzheimer's
"...it's quite a lonely place to be in when you get a diagnosis." // "It's a little unnerving at first, but once you start speaking and get into a routine with it and asking the questions, you get the answers back, which is brilliant." // "We want to stay independent. So by the use of something like this, I'm hoping, fingers crossed, that the AI person will be able to also help us around the home.”
Milton says the avatar is currently a proof-of-concept.
Trials are underway in controlled environments.
The hope is that Liv could contribute to medical understanding and future innovations in dementia care.
Gregory says she hopes the avatar could help people navigate a challenging journey.
“There's very little support out there for people with dementia. So to develop something like an AI person that's going to be there 24-7. So when you have a query or a little worry, you could ask this AI person and you will get an answer. And I think that is quite invaluable really when you think about it.”
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a Louisiana law requiring that the Ten Commandments be displayed in all public school classrooms.
U.S. District Judge John deGravelles granted a preliminary injunction to a coalition of parents that sued the state, meaning Louisiana will not be allowed to require the Ten Commandments in classrooms while the case plays out in court.
The group of parents, who come from different religious backgrounds and are supported by multiple civil rights groups, argued in court that the law infringes on their First Amendment rights to dictate their child’s religious upbringing.
In his ruling, deGravelles said he believed the plaintiffs would be “irreparably harmed” by the law going into place due to it violating the First Amendment.
Louisiana became the first state in the nation earlier this year to require the religious text to go up in all K-12 public schools in “large, easily readable font.” The posters would also include three paragraphs explaining why the Ten Commandments is relevant to American history.
“This ruling should serve as a reality check for Louisiana lawmakers who want to use public schools to convert children to their preferred brand of Christianity,” said Heather L. Weaver, senior staff attorney for the Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief at the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups supporting the parents in their challenge. “Public schools are not Sunday schools, and today’s decision ensures that our clients’ classrooms will remain spaces where all students, regardless of their faith, feel welcomed.”
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) had said he expected the new law to cause a legal battle after he signed it in June.
“Look, when the Supreme Court meets, the doors of the Supreme Court on the backside have the Ten Commandments. Moses faces the U.S. Speaker of the House in the House chamber. He is the original giver of law,” Landry said. “Most of our laws in this country are founded on the Ten Commandments, what’s the big problem? And that’s the part I don’t understand.”
The state had sought to have posters of the Ten Commandments up by Jan. 1.
The law has been supported by Republicans, including President-elect Trump, who has previously said he wants prayer back in school.
“I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER PLACES, FOR THAT MATTER. READ IT — HOW CAN WE, AS A NATION, GO WRONG???” Trump said in a social media post after the law was passed.
“THIS MAY BE, IN FACT, THE FIRST MAJOR STEP IN THE REVIVAL OF RELIGION, WHICH IS DESPERATELY NEEDED, IN OUR COUNTRY,” he added.
Experts have speculated this case could go as far as the Supreme Court as a pattern emerges of lawsuits fighting GOP attempts to inject more Christianity into public classrooms.
Oklahoma officials are currently fighting to mandate a Bible in every classroom and lessons about how the Bible connects to different parts of American culture.
Others in the Sooner State are also looking for the Supreme Court to intervene after Oklahoma’s highest court struck down the nation’s first openly religious charter school as unconstitutional.
Retiring President Biden will meet one last time with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of this week’s APEC summit in Peru — as President-electDonald Trump threatens to slap new tariffs on Chinese goods and force the Asian nation to pay “reparations” for the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than 223,000 US residents died from fentanyl and related compounds during Biden’s first three years in office, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates, and Republican politicians slammed Biden early in his term for not doing more to halt the flow.
President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet for a final time in Lima, Peru, on Saturday.REUTERS
“We expect the president will use the opportunity to take stock of efforts to responsibly manage competition over the last four years and how the two countries have advanced areas of shared interest,” a US official said.
Skip Ad
“These steps are helping us combat the global fentanyl crisis at home and contributed to the decline in overdose deaths and disruption in the supply of illicit fentanyl that we’ve seen over the last year.”
Biden and Xi also are expected to discuss artificial intelligence and global warming — as Trump routinely scoffs at China’s lack of commitment to reducing its own fossil fuels use.
“On AI, the two sides have recognized the novel risks posed … and have begun to have difficult but productive conversations about AI safety and risk,” the US official added.
“On climate, our country’s envoys have also had deep and meaningful discussions over the past four years, leading to three far-ranging joint statements that have set the stage for climate commitments on greenhouse gas reductions, peak emissions and renewable energy.”
Trump has been deeply skeptical of international agreements that commit the US to reducing its use of fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. During his first term of office, the 45th president withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords, arguing that China wasn’t being held to the same standards.
Biden and Xi previously met in Bali in 2022 and near San Francisco in 2023.AFP via Getty Images
Biden ultimately kept in place Trump’s first-term tariffs on China and even added some new ones in May as he was seeking re-election, before ultimately dropping out of the campaign two months later.
Trump in 2018 imposed a 25% tariff on steel and 10% tariff on aluminum from most countries, including China. He later imposed tariffs between 7.5% and 25% on Chinese goods comprising $362 billion of annual imports, or more than half of the total.
In May, Biden announced tariffs on roughly $18 billion in annual Chinese imports — including metals such as steel and aluminum and green-energy technologies such as solar panels and electric vehicle, as well as other goods including certain semiconductors, construction cranes and medical products.
Over the next two years under those Biden tariffs, electric vehicles will face a 100% tariff, solar panel parts will be slapped with a 50% import levy and other goods with a 25% penalty.
When Trump retakes power in January, he is expected to take a more direct approach to pressuring China, though he also has spoken of the importance of maintaining a good personal relationship with Xi.
The meeting was announced as President-elect Donald Trump visited Biden at the White House.AP
Biden and Xi previously met in Bali, Indonesia, in 2022 and outside San Francisco last year.
Biden didn’t publicly press Xi at either of his previous meetings to curb fentanyl exports, but walked away from the second meeting with an agreement to do so — after Trump also claimed during his term that Xi had agreed to a crackdown, though one did not materialize after the Republican lost to Biden in the 2020 election and US deaths surged as the compound increasingly was cut into non-opioid drugs, killing unwitting Americans.
Biden also did not publicly press Xi to be transparent on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, which parts of the US government believe began with a lab leak in Wuhan, China, ultimately killing more than 1 million Americans and causing massive social, economic and educational upheaval.
Trump has threatened new tariffs and “reparations” for COVID-19.AP
Trump has floated forcing China to pay $50 trillion in “reparations” for the virus and called for a “global summit” on the topic last year.
The president-elect and his congressional allies have regularly accused Biden of being insufficiently tough on China due to the fact that state-owned companies paid millions to first son Hunter Biden and first brother James Biden during and immediately after Joe Biden’s vice presidency.
Joe Biden met with leaders of both major Chinese business ventures involving his relatives — and in an infamous 2017 email, one of Hunter’s associates outlined a 10% cut for the “big guy” in a proposed joint venture.
Trump claimed last year that Biden “was bribed and now he’s being blackmailed” by Beijing, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told The Post that Biden was “soft” on China and that “it probably has something to do with business relationships and may very well involve Hunter and James Biden and some of the deals they made over there.”
Biden’s looming meeting with Xi was announced as the outgoing president welcomed Trump to the White House for a conversation on the presidential transition, with the men swapping kind words during a brief press availability in the Oval Office.
