Category: BLOG

(New York Times) – While chatbots like Claude and ChatGPT can help narrow the information divide between patients and providers, they can also dispense flawed advice.

At a time when health care costs top Americans’ financial worries, more patients are turning to chatbots like Claude or ChatGPT as a no-cost, do-it-yourself way to navigate problems with medical bills or insurance coverage. The trend is significant enough that the American Hospital Association has alerted its members that patients are increasingly using artificial intelligence to help dispute bills. (Read More)

(MIT Technology Review) – Coles, a gerontologist who spent the latter part of his career studying human longevity, opted to have his brain cryogenically preserved when he died of pancreatic cancer.

After he was declared dead, Coles’s body was kept at a low temperature while he was transferred to Alcor, a cryonics facility in Arizona. His head was removed from his body, and a team perfused his brain with “cryoprotective” chemicals that would prevent it from freezing. They then removed it from his skull and cooled it to −146 °C.

Coles had another request. As a scientist, he wanted his cryopreserved brain to be studied. (Read More)

(The Atlantic) – Even as they claim the right to train their models on work belonging to other people, the AI companies have rejected similar reasoning when it comes to their own products. Consider OpenAI’s terms of service for ChatGPT, which forbid use of the bot’s “output to develop models that compete with OpenAI.” Anthropic, Google, and xAI have similar clauses forbidding people from using the material generated by their chatbots to train competing products. In other words: We can train on your work, but you can’t train on ours.

In the current economic environment, it’s not surprising that companies vying for market dominance would operate with standards that serve their bottom line. But it’s striking nonetheless how sharply their actions can contradict their professed values. (Read More)

(The Guardian) – Caring for ageing parents is difficult in the best circumstances – when relationships are loving and siblings are collaborative. But for those who have had complicated relationships with their parents, especially those characterised by abuse, trauma or periods of estrangement – or simply a feeling that you weren’t very well cared for yourself – it can be far more complex. (Read More)

(Wired) – Attachment to smart devices and biometric surveillance leaves Americans more vulnerable to police searches than ever. Left unchecked it will only get worse.

The desire for self-awareness is not new, but these data offer a dif­ferent twist on enlightenment. Millions of Americans live with a smartwatch that reminds them to stand, breathe, and take a few more steps to meet their daily exercise goals. This helpful (and healthful) algorithmic prompt only works, of course, because your smart device is tracking your bodily activity. It literally knows you are breathing, which can be helpful to police if for some reason you stop. The data we produce—from our step count to our DNA—is increasingly coming under surveillance. (Read More)

(AP) – Because of participants’ silence around the ritual, families and authorities have struggled to understand and police a deeply traditional but often abused practice. At least a half-dozen former initiates would not speak to The Associated Press. Meanwhile, hundreds of illegal initiation schools attract people who can’t afford registered ones.

Police and government officials usually announce deaths only when a significant number occur. There are few court cases or autopsies. (Read More)

(The Telegraph) – Mosquitoes typically spread disease, rather than prevent it, but Chinese scientists have proposed using the insects as an unlikely vector to deliver vaccines to bats.

In a study published in Science Advances journal, researchers designed mosquitoes which carry an immunisation for rabies and Nipah viruses within their saliva. This is transferred when bats eat insects, or the insects feed on the bats. (Read More)

(New York Times) – Across the United States, plasma centers are opening in wealthier areas as more people struggle with the high cost of housing, groceries and health care.

Every day, an estimated 215,000 people donate plasma, the yellowish liquid component of blood. Mr. Briseño is among them. He is not jobless or facing eviction, but, like many in the American middle class, he is caught in the vise of rising expenses and wages that aren’t growing fast enough to cover them. So he is turning to a method more commonly associated with the lowest-income Americans. For people like him, an extra $600 or so a month can mean making a mortgage payment or covering increased health-insurance costs. (Read More)

(MIT Technology Review) – Placebo and “knowcebo” effects are a problem. But they can also help people feel better.

Over the last decade, we’ve seen scientific interest in these drugs explode. But most clinical trials of psychedelics have been small and plagued by challenges. And a lot of the trial results have been underwhelming or inconclusive.

Two studies out earlier this week demonstrate just how difficult it is to study these drugs. And to my mind, they also show just how overhyped these substances have become.

To some in the field, the hype is not necessarily a bad thing. Let me explain. (Read More)

(Compact Magazine) – When people see a wheelchair user like me, they evidently assume my disability must be so hard to survive, so painful, and so isolating that even just venturing beyond my front door is an achievement worthy of recognition.

No wonder they think it is compassionate to give us the option to end our lives. Surely, they would like to have this option too in the nightmarish event they ever become disabled. But what is really worth recognizing is that able-bodied fears, rather than disabled realities, are distorting public thinking about “assisted dying.” (Read More)

(The Guardian) – The Scottish parliament has voted against legalising assisted dying after critics and religious groups led a concerted campaign to block the measures.

MSPs voted 69 to 57 to reject the proposals in a late night vote on Tuesday – a larger margin than expected, despite a series of last-minute amendments designed to placate critics of the private member’s bill.

The bill’s defeat followed four days of intensive debate at Holyrood last week about whether disabled and infirm people were properly protected from coercion. In May last year, Holyrood had voted to allow the bill to go forward for scrutiny by 70 votes to 56. (Read More)