AI gives crap answers to many questions and makes things up a lot. Yet a top Google executive thinks we’ll be colonizing the galaxy thanks to AI in just five years. I doubt he’ll change his tune despite this: “Apple said in a paper published at the weekend that large reasoning models (LRMs) – an advanced form of AI – faced a “complete accuracy collapse” when presented with highly complex problems.”
Despite which, techbros insist AI will give us so much benefit, research is invaluable: sure, AI data centers are sucking up power and worsening global warming but any day now they’ll be so smart they’ll solve global warming. As the linked article shows, it’s an article of faith (whether or not the AI companies truly believe it) that AI will work magic … eventually … so pay no attention to current problems, okay? Shut up about them!
Pixelfish on BlueSky sums their attitude up well:
Despite all their talk about a utopian future where AI takes all the burden of work off the rest of us … I think Pixelfish is closer to what’s really in their heads. Like the reporter in a link up top who got a list of non-existent book recommendations from AI or this year’s WorldCon vetting possible guests with AI, it doesn’t make things easier: someone still has to check all the work. And as the reporter showed, not everyone does. It’s too tempting, I suspect, to fall for the hype and think the computer knows. Perhaps someone using AI and not checking is why the government’s Make America Healthy Again report cited studies that don’t exist. As Erik Loomis says at LGM, “to use ChatGPT is simply an abandonment of your job and any ethical considerations.”
The standard argument is that scoffing at AI is like sneering at cars (never replace the horse!) or the wheel or fire or — well, you get the idea. But there are plenty of bullshit smoke-and-mirrors techno-visions that never came to pass: lie detectors don’t detect lies, nuclear power wasn’t too cheap to measure, personal jetpacks aren’t workable.
Mar Hicks says one way to push back is not to buy into the hype: “Technologies, even widespread ones, do not *necessarily* determine social norms and goods. If you can’t stop a social harm on the level of force/physical coercion (technology) you can often stop it on the level of consensus (custom, norms, law, governance).”
Disney and Comcast are pushing back another way: a lawsuit. As discussed here, these are not companies you want suing you.
Now, as to vaccines:
Fans of bleach-drinking are thrilled with RFK’s policies. “Science guy” Bill Nye is not.
A number of psychiatrists would like to see stronger systems of nonmedical social care to reduce the need for psychiatric drugs. The Felon and RFK just want to gut public health.
“This childish logical fallacy is the classic defense crank conspiracy theories use to defend themselves — expressing skepticism and citing various sources are things that scientists do, therefore every expression of skepticism and citation of sources is scientific.” Therefore, Kennedy’s skepticism is good science, right — wrong! Hell, he doesn’t even believe in germ theory. As the saying goes, you can’t be Galileo because people reject your theories — they also have to be right.
Your Local Epidemiologist shows how germ-theory nutjobs work around the facts: “it’s the belief that infections don’t pose a risk to healthy people who have optimized their immune system. And if you want to prevent infections, vaccines aren’t the solution, becoming healthier through nutrition, exercise, and dietary supplements are.
“We’re probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA [published by the American Medical Association] and those other journals, because they’re all corrupt,” Kennedy said during an appearance on the “Ultimate Human” podcast. He also described the journals as being under the control of pharmaceutical companies. Instead, government scientists will publish in in-house journals that will, I assume, support RFK Jr.’s bullshit. Like Pravda, the Russian propaganda newspaper, but for science!
Kennedy also whines that anti-vaxxers get criticized.
For all alternative health likes to position itself in opposition to corrupt medical money, there’s money in alt.health too.
And tax savings: Mehmet Oz thinks fewer people should have coverage under the Affordable Care Act. It’s our patriotic duty to stay healthy.
RFK talks a lot about fighting environmental chemicals to make people healthier. He’s lying, as witness FOTUS cutting the lab that fights Great Lakes algal blooms. He’s also cool with cutting a Narcan grant program that’s helped cut drug-overdose deaths by 24 percent. And NIH is ending participation in a program fighting sudden infant death syndrome.
In other news:
Felon administration budget cuts are threatening the agency that oversees the accuracy of GPS coordinates.
Mike Lindell (the MyPillow Guy) has a new theory how the 2020 voting machines were rigged: Satan did it.
I thought this year’s pollen season in North Carolina was extreme. I was right.
“Scientists from the University of South Carolina and the National Human Genome Research Institute have begun examining the DNA of 302 feral dogs found in or around the CEZ to better understand how radiation may have altered their genomes.” Other scientists disagree.
When the Felon announced he wanted to bring back manufacturing, he didn’t mean wind farms.
Covers top to bottom by Carmine Infantino/Murphy Anderson, Nicholas Cardy and Rich Buckler.
