August 9, 2024
(Undark) – Many of life’s biggest questions can’t be answered by an algorithm. We must learn to embrace uncertainty instead. I’ve seen the tendency to ask AI life-and-death questions first-hand. After hearing I was a computer scientist, a professor at … Read More
August 8, 2024
(Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) – It is often said that autonomous weapons could help minimize the needless horrors of war. Their vision algorithms could be better than humans at distinguishing a schoolhouse from a weapons depot. They won’t be … Read More
August 5, 2024
(The Guardian) – Sam Altman’s ChatGPT promises to transform the global economy. But it also poses an enormous threat. Here, a scientist who appeared with Altman before the US Senate on AI safety flags up the danger in AI – … Read More
July 26, 2024
(The Atlantic) – Whenever AI companies present a vision for the role of artificial intelligence in the future of searching the internet, they tend to underscore the same points: instantaneous summaries of relevant information; ready-made lists tailored to a searcher’s … Read More
July 25, 2024
(BMJ Blog) – While deepfake technology may be promising for certain patients, it also raises significant ethical and legal questions. Deepfakes may be viewed as disturbing and are often associated with sci-fi stories. The grief counselling case is reminiscent of … Read More
July 19, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – If we’re going to protect ourselves from genetic discrimination, we first have to figure out what it is. Unfortunately, no one has a good handle on how widespread it is, says Yann Joly, director of the … Read More
July 12, 2024
(The Hastings Center) – The Biden Administration is struggling with a dilemma that has a clinical ethics component. Where does the President’s right to privacy about his health end and the public’s right to know begin? This question has recurred … Read More
July 5, 2024
(The Hedgehog Review) – Humans are, in fact, the necessary ingredient in the ongoing success of generative AI. I don’t mean that the business model of generative AI depends on consumer interest—that is obviously true. What I am proposing is … Read More
July 4, 2024
(The Dispatch) – Something about the human heart works hard to avoid honest reflection on the meaning of our existence. And yet at the same time, a life without meaning is hardly worth living. Such is the dual nature of … Read More
July 2, 2024
(Aeon) – Even happy families cannot avoid the reality – my reality – that adoption is predicated on transacting the life of a child. In truth, it can only ever be a happier ending. Of course, every kid who escapes … Read More
July 2, 2024
(The Atlantic) – In 2010—well before the rise of ChatGPT and Claude and all the other sprightly, conversational AI models—an army of bots briefly wiped out $1 trillion of value across the NASDAQ and other stock exchanges. Lengthy investigations were … Read More
July 1, 2024
(RNS) – Perhaps it is the time your childhood friend, still so young, posts a photo of her first grandchild on social media. Perhaps it is when the first grandchild is born to your sibling. Perhaps it is the first … Read More
June 24, 2024
(The Atlantic) – I trained as a physician and have asked patients the very same question thousands of times, so I think hard about how to quantify the sum of the sore hips, the prickly thighs, and the numbing, itchy … Read More
June 21, 2024
(AEI) – Recent advances in AI should generate optimism for, not fear of, the future. Yes, it will be disruptive. But workers in the United States have undergone multiple waves of disruptive technological change throughout history, and emerged better off … Read More
June 20, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – A resolution affirms the moral goodness of new life, but not of all means to achieve it. The Southern Baptist Convention—whose nearly 13 million members make it the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.—is often described … Read More
June 20, 2024
(The Guardian) – Artificial intelligence is creating companions who can be our confidants, friends, therapists and even lovers. But are they an answer to loneliness or merely another way for big tech to make money? Could you fall in love … Read More
June 19, 2024
(The Atlantic) – So youth in English-speaking Canada are becoming sadder faster than those in French-speaking Canada, and measures of teen suicidality are rising in the Anglosphere but less so in similar less-English-speaking countries. What’s the deal with Anglosphere despair? Maybe … Read More
June 18, 2024
(STAT News) – I have spent my career studying infectious diseases that fall under the heading of neglected tropical diseases. Now I have a neglected disease — long Covid — an incurable (for now and for me) disease. As a medical anthropologist working in global … Read More
June 18, 2024
(Generation Tech) – Self-harm is much more common among girls than among boys, so we’ll focus on girls. The CDC keeps data on emergency room admissions for intentional self-harm, and the 2022 data were just released. The news is not good. ER admissions … Read More
June 18, 2024
(New York Times) – The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency — and social media has emerged as an important contributor. Adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and … Read More
June 11, 2024
(The Baffler) – The stigma is not hard to understand: magazine features, books, and movies for two decades now have chronicled America’s drug problems, including the rapacious role of drug manufacturers like Purdue Pharma, which made OxyContin a household name … Read More
May 24, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – This week, I wrote about an external stimulator that delivers electrical pulses to the spine to help improve hand and arm function in people who are paralyzed. This isn’t a cure. In many cases the gains … Read More
May 16, 2024
(Comment) – On July 5, 1978, a handful of activists rolled their wheelchairs in front of two buses at the Colfax and Broadway transit stop in downtown Denver. They held cardboard signs with “Freedom rider” and “Buses are for everyone” … Read More
May 14, 2024
(Ars Technica) – In a viewpoint published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, the researchers point out that many common—nearly unquestioned—practices in dentistry aren’t backed up by solid data. That includes the typical recommendation that everyone should get a dental check-up … Read More
May 14, 2024
(New York Times) – To embark on a career in medicine is like moving to a foreign country where you do not understand the customs, rituals, manners or language. Your main concern on arrival is how to fit in and … Read More
