Is smartphone monitoring changing what it means to be human?

Or, if not, what it means to monitor ourselves:

Behavioral scientist Betsy Barbeau is one of these digital “neurosurgeons.” As the chief science officer at Healthrageous, the commercial arm that grew out of the Center for Connected Health, she’s designing artificial intelligence technology that will better understand us humans. People who sign up for Healthrageous are guided by a virtual coach that’s been programmed using a technique called motivational interviewing. The goal is to create an empathetic, almost therapeutic relationship between the patient and the technology. “There’s no wagging of the finger, there’s no, ‘You blew it this week,’” Barbeau explains. “It’s the idea that someone is watching you, checking in, and giving you an ‘atta girl’ if you met your goals.” That “someone” is actually a something, but who’s counting? I ask Barbeau what would happen if I lied to the coach about my calorie intake. She laughs. “Well, I could see it saying something like, ‘I see your activity level has been very high but your weight level hasn’t been changing.’ It would be an opener for further reflection.”

Knowingly cultivating an empathetic relationship with your smartphone is downright creepy. But the thing is, virtual coaches actually work. A study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, published in January and coauthored by Kvedar and Timothy Bickmore, a computer science professor at Northeastern University, found that having a virtual coach can steer people toward better health. 

This is fine, provided the users of such apps don't instruct their phones to send their exercise statistics to Facebook or Twitter. That really annoys me — and everyone else, for that matter, who isn't your mother.