The AI Beat by Sharon Goldman —-  A medieval alchemist wearing a gray robe with a long white beard and glasses adjusts a machine made of beakers and vats A New York Times article this morning, titled “How to Tell if Your AI Is Conscious,” says that in a new report, “scientists offer a list of measurable qualities” based on a “brand-new” science of consciousness. The article immediately jumped out at me, as it was published just a few days after I had a long chat with Thomas Krendl Gilbert, a machine ethicist who, among other things, has long studied the intersection of science and politics. Gilbert recently launched a new podcast, called “The Retort,” along with Hugging Face researcher Nathan Lambert, with an inaugural episode that pushes back on the idea of today’s AI as a truly scientific endeavor. Gilbert maintains that much of today’s AI research cannot reasonably be called science at all. Instead, it can be viewed as a new form of alchemy — that is, the medieval forerunner of chemistry, that can also be defined as a “seemingly magical process of transformation.”

Like alchemy, AI is rooted in ‘magical’ metaphors Many critics of deep learning and of large language models, including those who built them, sometimes refer to AI as a form of alchemy, Gilbert told me on a video call. What they mean by that, he explained, is that it’s not scientific, in the sense that it’s not rigorous or experimental. But he added that he actually means something more literal when he says that AI is alchemy. “The people building it actually think that what they’re doing is magical,” he said. “And that’s rooted in a lot of metaphors, ideas that have now filtered into public discourse over the past several months, like AGI and super intelligence.” The prevailing idea, he explained, is that intelligence itself is scalar — depending only on the amount of data thrown at a model and the computational limits of the model itself.

But, he emphasized, like alchemy, much of today’s AI research is not necessarily trying to be what we know as science, either. The practice of alchemy historically had no peer review or public sharing of results, for example. Much of today’s closed AI research does not, either. “It was very secretive, and frankly, that’s how AI works right now,” he said. “It’s largely a matter of assuming magical properties about the amount of intelligence that is implicit in the structure of the internet — and then building computation and structuring it such that you can distill that web of knowledge that we’ve all been building for decades now, and then seeing what comes out.”

by MIT Technology Review by Cassandra Willyard — Just last week Microsoft announced that it had partnered with a digital pathology company, Paige, in order to build the world’s largest image-based AI model for identifying cancer. This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. I just had a birthday, and you know what that means—I’m newly eligible for a screening colonoscopy. (#milestones!). I’ve been thinking about cancer screening a lot recently, because I’ve seen a handful of headlines in the past few months about how AI will revolutionize cancer detection. Just last week Microsoft announced that it had partnered with a digital pathology company, Paige, in order to build the world’s largest image-based AI model for identifying cancer. The training data set for the algorithm contains 4 million images. “This is sort of a groundbreaking, land-on-the-moon kind of moment for cancer care,” Paige CEO Andy Moye told CNBC.

Well, it might be. Last month, results from the first clinical trial of AI-supported breast cancer screening came out. The researchers compared two methods for reading a mammogram: a standard reading by two independent radiologists, and a system that used a single radiologist and an AI to assign patients a numerical cancer risk score from 1 to 10. In the latter group, those who scored a 10—the highest risk—then had their images read by two radiologists. The AI-supported model reduced workload by 44% and detected 20% more cancers. That sounds like a good thing. In theory, catching cancers earlier should make them easier to treat, saving lives. But that’s not always what the data shows. A study published in late August combed the literature for randomized clinical trials that compared mortality (from any cause, not just cancer) in two groups: people who underwent cancer screening and people who did not. For most common types of cancer screening, they found no significant difference. The exception was sigmoidoscopy, a type of colon cancer screening that involves visualizing only the lower portion of the colon.

by Diane Herbst — today show — For three years, her young son suffered from increasing pain and other symptoms – with no answers from 17 doctors. “We saw so many doctors. We ended up in the ER at one point. I kept pushing,” the boy’s mom, Courtney, who did not wish to reveal her last name for privacy concerns, told Today. Earlier in the year, this frustrated mom turned to ChatGPT to input information from her son Alex’s medical records, including notes from his MRI. “I really spent the night on the (computer) … going through all these things,” she told Today. Courtney finally discovered a correct diagnosis from the artificial intelligence technology. When ChatGPT suggested that Alex, whose medical odyssey started at the age of 4, could be suffering from tethered cord syndrome, a rare neurological condition associated with spina bifida, “it made a lot of sense,” she told Today.

Her hunch was confirmed by a pediatric neurosurgeon: After viewing Alex’s MRI, “she said point blank, ‘Here’s occula spinal bifida, and here’s where the spine is tethered,”’Courtney recalled to the outlet. With the diagnosis, Courtney felt “every emotion in the book, relief, validated, excitement for his future,” she told Today. Tethered cord syndrome is caused by tissue attachments limiting the movement of the spinal cord within the spinal column, causing abnormal stretching of the cord, according to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. Dr. Holly Gilmer, a pediatric neurosurgeon at the Michigan Head & Spine Institute who treated Alex, told the outlet that the condition is hard to diagnose in young children “because they can’t speak.” Several weeks ago, Alex underwent surgery to repair his tethered cord syndrome and is still recovering, according to Today.

Story by Steve Mollman — fortune.com — The pandemic hit Airbnb hard. The company lost 80% of its business in March 2020, and people were questioning its ability to survive. Barely two months into the pandemic, it laid off about 1,900 people, or a quarter of its employees. Fast forward to today and not only did it weather the crisis, but in June Airbnb made its debut on the Fortune 500 list of top U.S. public companies by revenue, coming off its first-ever profitable year. \ The turnaround wasn’t easy. Airbnb had to completely reorganize itself. “We shuttered most of the divisions,” CEO Brian Chesky said on a Wednesday episode of The Social Radars podcast. That move was something Airbnb needed to do anyway, he said—as do many startups that have grown into larger organizations, he believes.

For a startup, he explained, it’s tempting to “divisionalize” in order to move faster, since decision-making can become a bottleneck at the top of the organization. But while that might work at first, he added, in the long run it can slow a company down. The problem that the pandemic forced him to face, he said, was that “we had this culture where everyone could do anything. People could own their own projects.” There were too many divisions, or “fiefdoms,” he said, such as ones focused on luxury, pro hosts, a magazine, transportation, and so on. Airbnb had followed a common line of thinking in Silicon Valley, he said. It goes like this: “Basically you share the values of the company, you democratize data, you hire smart people, and you assume that they’ll make the right decisions for the company.”

But, he added, “that is all wrong. It sounds great, and it’s right for some people, but it was wrong for us.” Chesky studied how Steve Jobs revamped a struggling Apple when he returned to the company he’d cofounded, noting how he “shuttered most of the divisions, and he went from a divisional structure to a functional structure.” Adopting a similar strategy, Chesky got rid of the unnecessary divisions at Airbnb. A few core ones would remain, but from then on, he said, “Everyone’s gonna work on everything together. There are no longer swim lanes. There’s one road map, and no one ships anything unless it’s on the roadmap. And then I’m gonna review every single thing in the company before it ships.”

by breakingdefense.com — WASHINGTON — Human rights concerns have prompted the Biden administration to divert $85 million away from a larger foreign military financing (FMF) pot for Egypt and divvy it up between Taiwan and Lebanon, State Department officials announced today. In an email to Breaking Defense, an administration source confirmed that $55 million would be bound for Taiwan and $30 million for Lebanon. In total, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has notified Congress that Washington will provide Cairo with $1.215 billion in FMF from its fiscal 2022 budget, one State Department official told reporters. “Egypt is making specific and ongoing contributions to US national security priorities,” the official said. “Egypt is a strategic partner of the United States with a crucial voice in efforts to advance regional peace and security …. This decision in no way diminishes our commitment to advancing human rights in Egypt and around the world.”

A $1.3 billion FY22 pot included $980 million in funds that were not subject to human rights conditions, and another $320 million that had the conditions attached. From that second coffer, Blinken opted to “waive the certification requirements” due to “US national security interest” for $235 million of that total, the official explained. However, he was not able to do that with the remaining $85 million because it was subject to different statutory certification requirements aimed at ensuring that Egypt is making “clear and consistent progress in releasing political prisoners,” providing detainees with due process and preventing American citizens from being harassed. “That requirement on the $85 million may not be waived [and] the secretary determined that Egypt has not fulfilled those conditions,” the State Department official said. “Therefore, we are reprogramming $85 million [for] other priorities and other countries in consultation with the Congress.” “As we have done for decades, consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act, we will continue to provide defensive articles and services necessary for Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability,” an administration official wrote in a statement to Breaking Defense. “We will support Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities commensurate with the threat it faces.” That $55 million joins a $80 million military transfer to Taiwan that the Biden administration unveiled last month.

by middleeasteye.net — Influential Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has blamed the floods in Libya that have left more than 5,000 people dead on the country’s involvement in the disappearance of Lebanese cleric Musa al-Sadr in 1978. Writing on his social media accounts on Tuesday, Sadr listed a litany of causes for the natural disasters that […]

by MATTHEW MILLER, DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON — The United States is today designating key Hizballah operatives and financiers operating a network in South America and Lebanon that generates revenue for Hizballah’s terrorist activities and provides cover for its presence in Latin America. Today’s action, taken in collaboration with partners in the U.S. government, including the Drug […]

Story by David Rufful — Speculation is swirling about who is really in charge and the Biden Administration as President Joe Biden appears unfit for office. At 80 years old, Biden is the oldest president in US history. If re-elected, he would be 82 at the start of his next term and 86 at the end of it. Numerous high-profile political commentators and former politicians, including former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, have suggested Biden can’t possibly be making the important decisions. (Poll: Is Joe Biden Fit to be President? VOTE)

During an appearance on Newsmax, political commentator Megyn Kelly suggested that former president Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama may be actually running the show. “There are a lot of people who think the Obamas are already running the government and that there is some sort of shadow puppet situation going on that they’re controlling,” Kelly told Newsmax. “There’s been questions from the beginning — is it Joe Biden really making the calls?” “I think Michelle Obama is seen as a savior figure by the Democrats who think she’s the most beautiful person ever. They think she’s the strongest leader. They think she’s their big hope,” Kelly said. Obama Suggested Having a ‘Front-Man’ For 3rd Term Dr. Ronny Jackson, the former White House physician for both Obama and Trump, has suggested that Biden is suffering from age-related dementia based on his constant mental lapses and gaffes in public.

Story by Katyanna Quach – the register — • It’s not all bad news. Poets are safe. And machines will take some jobs no human wants Generative AI will replace 2.4 million US jobs by 2030, and influence another eleven million, but other forms of automation will cost more jobs, according to a report from analyst firm Forrester.… The firm’s 2023 Generative AI Jobs Impact Forecast [PDF] predicts that the tech will reshape more jobs than it replaces, but also includes a section titled “Let’s Be Clear: Generative AI Is Coming After White Collar Jobs”. White collar workers most at risk of being left behind will be technical writers, social science research assistants, proofreaders, copywriters, and those in administrative positions. The biggest disruptions will be felt by workers that have college degrees, perform white-collar jobs, and are middle class. People with annual salaries less than $60,000, for example, will be impacted less by generative AI than those that earn $90,000 or more. Here’s a chart below showing how much different types of jobs can expect to be influenced by technology: Such workers have a couple of years in which to prepare, Forrester’s analysts suggest, because its modelling assumes it will take time for “questions on intellectual property rights, copyright, plagiarism, model refresh rates, model bias, ethics, and model response reliability” to be resolved.

The report also predicts that while generative AI will cost jobs, other forms of automation will have a greater impact. In 2023, the report predicts, generative AI will cause 9.3 percent of jobs lost to automation, rising to 30.4 percent by 2030. Not every job replaced by automation is a job lost to humans, the report asserts, because humans don’t want certain jobs. “In some cases, automation will stand in for jobs that have been hard to fill,” the report states. “For instance, physical robotics and automation are only beginning to fill the workforce gaps that have plagued frontline work in the 2020s.” But other jobs will impact humans and Forrester’s analysts warn of “deep social challenges like those faced in the post-industrial Rust Belt.”

By MUSTAFA SULEYMAN — time.com — We are about to see the greatest redistribution of power in history. Over millennia, humanity has been shaped by successive waves of technology. The discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel, the harnessing of electricity—all were transformational moments for civilization. All were waves of technology that started small, with a few precarious experiments, but eventually they broke across the world. These waves followed a similar trajectory: breakthrough technologies were invented, delivered huge value, and so they proliferated, became more effective, cheaper, more widespread and were absorbed into the normal, ever-evolving fabric of human life.

We are now facing a new wave of technology, centered around AI but including synthetic biology, quantum computing, and abundant new sources of energy. In many respects it will repeat this pattern. Yet it will also depart from it in crucial ways only now becoming clear. Amidst all the hype, the hope, the fear, I think the fundamentals are getting lost; the unique characteristics of this wave are getting missed in the noise. Understanding them, seeing what, exactly, is changing, is critical to understanding the future. AI is different from previous waves of technology because of how it unleashes new powers and transforms existing power. This is the most underappreciated aspect of the technological revolution now underway. While all waves of technology create altered power structures in their wake, none have seen the raw proliferation of power like the one on its way.

Think of it like this. Previous era’s most powerful technologies were generally reserved to a small capital rich elite or national governments. Building a steam powered factory, an aircraft carrier or a nuclear power plant were costly, difficult and immense endeavors. With the leading technologies of our time, that’s no longer going to be true. If the last great tech wave—computers and the internet—was about broadcasting information, this new wave is all about doing. We are facing a step change in what’s possible for individual people to do, and at a previously unthinkable pace. AI is becoming more powerful and radically cheaper by the month—what was computationally impossible, or would cost tens of millions of dollars a few years ago, is now widespread.