“What kinds of new minds are being released into our world? The response to ChatGPT, and to the other chatbots that have followed in its wake, has often suggested that they are powerful, sophisticated, imaginative, and possibly even dangerous. But is that really true? If we treat these new artificial-intelligence tools as mysterious black boxes, it’s impossible to say. Only by taking the time to investigate how this technology actually works—from its high-level concepts down to its basic digital wiring—can we understand what we’re dealing with. We send messages into the electronic void, and receive surprising replies. But what, exactly, … Read More
“[Roge Karma, senior editor for the “Ezra Klein Show,” a podcast on the New York Times] From Patrick A: ‘[..] So what do you make of the most dire assessments of the risks posed by A.I.? And what level of alarm do you feel about its dangers, and why?’ [Ezra Klein] [..] He [Dan Hendrycks, an AI safety research] wrote a recent paper [..] called “Natural Selection Favors A.I.s Over Humans,” and the point of his paper is I think it offers a more intuitive idea of how we could get into some real trouble, whether or not you’re thinking … Read More
“The concept of cardiovascular health (CVH) was proposed by the American Heart Association (AHA) in 2010 and is composed of both lifestyle factors and biological metrics. The original algorithm for evaluating CVH was the Life’s Simple 7 (LS7) score. In 2022, the AHA published the new algorithm for evaluating CVH, the Life’s Essential 8 (LE8) score, on the basis of feedback on the LS7 score and new evidence. The LE8 score adopts a new scoring algorithm and incorporates sleep health into CVH.8 Intriguingly, previous studies have shown that having a higher CVH level was not only associated with a lower … Read More
“Two innovations — Ethyl and Freon, conjured by one man [Thomas Midgley Jr.] presiding over a single laboratory during a span of roughly 10 years. Combined, the two products generated billions of dollars in revenue for the companies that manufactured them and provided countless ordinary consumers with new technology that improved the quality of their lives. In the case of Freon, the gas enabled another technology (refrigeration) that offered meaningful improvements to consumers in the form of food safety. And yet each product, in the end, turned out to be dangerous on an almost unimaginable scale. The history of any major … Read More
The New England Journal of Medicine’s Lisa Rosenbaum speaks with University of Pennsylvania’s internal medicine physicians Paula Chatterjee (also a health services researcher) and Atheen Venkataramani (also a health economist and founder of Penn’s Opportunity for Health lab) about the role of values in health care, social determinants of health and what physicians can do to improve U.S. health care. An excerpt of the audio interview: [Rosenbaum] Atheen, I know that you also had a formative experience, I think when you were a resident at MGH. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that experience informed your … Read More
Excerpt – The U.S. approach to data sharing stands in stark contrast with standards now in place in other parts of the world, including Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). More importantly, it goes against what people say they want, which is to freely share their data for scientific or research purposes that help others, but also to share in the upside when their data are highly valuable, such as when they help lead to the discovery of a multibillion-dollar drug. [..] But unlike money, no global infrastructure exists to govern, manage, and watch data transactions, and no collective institutions exist to … Read More
“Roughly one in five American adults has a mental illness. An estimated one in twenty has what’s considered a serious mental illness—major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia—that profoundly impairs the ability to live, work, or relate to others. Decades-old drugs such as Prozac and Xanax, once billed as revolutionary antidotes to depression and anxiety, have proved less effective than many had hoped; care remains fragmented, belated, and inadequate; and the over-all burden of mental illness in the U.S., as measured by years lost to disability, seems to have increased. Suicide rates have fallen around the world since the nineteen-nineties, but in … Read More
“In 2021, I interviewed Ted Chiang, one of the great living sci-fi writers. Something he said to me then keeps coming to mind now. “I tend to think that most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism,” Chiang told me. “And I think that this is actually true of most fears of technology, too. Most of our fears or anxieties about technology are best understood as fears or anxiety about how capitalism will use technology against us. And technology and capitalism have been so closely intertwined that it’s hard to distinguish the two.” [..] We are talking so much … Read More
Lessons in longevity from Seventh-day Adventists Excerpt – “Seventh-day Adventists believe God made the body as a temple to hold the soul,” says Hans Diehl, a best-selling author on health and nutrition, and a lifelong Adventist. [..] “We believe that taking care of the body is proper. It’s honouring God,” he says. Devout followers eat mostly plants—vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes and whole grains. Some eat animal products, but most do so sparingly. [..] One Seventh-day Adventist community, Loma Linda, California, has been dubbed a “Blue Zone”—an area of the world with a large share of centenarians—by two researchers, Michel Poulain … Read More
“The PHQ-9 became a means for time-crunched primary care doctors, under pressure to see more and more patients in shorter appointments, to dole out prescriptions with barely a conversation. Despite its prevalence, data suggesting that PHQ-9 has actually improved outcomes is ambiguous at best. Meanwhile, mental health outcomes for patients are dismal and only getting worse, with depressive symptoms and suicide climbing ever higher. A combination of good intentions and straightforward business savvy lies behind the PHQ-9. Pfizer invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in its development [..]. The company naturally hoped its investment would pay off with increased Zoloft … Read More