When sycophancy and bias meet medicine

Biased, eager-to-please models threaten health research replicability and trust.

Once upon a time, two villagers visited the fabled Mullah Nasreddin. They hoped that the Sufi philosopher, famed for his acerbic wisdom, could mediate a dispute that had driven a wedge between them. Nasreddin listened patiently to the first villager’s version of the story and, upon its conclusion, exclaimed, “You are absolutely right!” The second villager then presented his case. After hearing him out, Nasreddin again responded, “You are absolutely right!” An observant bystander, confused by Nasreddin’s proclamations, interjected, “But Mullah, they can’t both be right.” Nasreddin paused, regarding the bystander for a moment before replying, “You are absolutely right, too!”

In late May, the White House’s first “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) report was criticized for citing multiple research studies that did not exist. Fabricated citations like these are common in the outputs of generative artificial intelligence based on large language models, or LLMs. LLMs have presented plausible-sounding sources, catchy titles, or even false data to craft their conclusions. Here, the White House pushed back on the journalists who first broke the story before admitting to “minor citation errors.”

It is ironic that fake citations were used to support a principal recommendation of the MAHA report: addressing the health research sector’s “replication crisis,” wherein scientists’ findings often cannot be reproduced by other independent teams.

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Lenovo ThinkCentre neo 55q Gen 6 is a mini PC with Ryzen AI 200 or 300 inside

The Lenovo ThinkCentre neo 55q Gen 6 is a desktop computer small enough to be mounted to the back of a display or under a desk, measuring just 183 x 179 x 37mm (7.2″ x 7.1″ x 1.4″). As the smallest member of the new ThinkCentre neo 55…

The Lenovo ThinkCentre neo 55q Gen 6 is a desktop computer small enough to be mounted to the back of a display or under a desk, measuring just 183 x 179 x 37mm (7.2″ x 7.1″ x 1.4″). As the smallest member of the new ThinkCentre neo 55 family, it lacks some of the features found […]

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SpaceX disables 2,500 Starlink terminals allegedly used by Asian scam centers

Starlink not allowed in Myanmar, but scammers reportedly use it “on a huge scale.”

SpaceX said it disabled over 2,500 Starlink terminals suspected of being used by scammers in Myanmar. Lauren Dreyer, vice president of Starlink business operations, described the action in an X post last night after reports that Myanmar’s military shut down a major scam operation.

“SpaceX complies with local laws in all 150+ markets where Starlink is licensed to operate,” Dreyer wrote. “SpaceX continually works to identify violations of our Acceptable Use Policy and applicable law… On the rare occasion we identify a violation, we take appropriate action, including working with law enforcement agencies around the world. In Myanmar, for example, SpaceX proactively identified and disabled over 2,500 Starlink Kits in the vicinity of suspected ‘scam centers.'”

Starlink is not licensed to operate in Myanmar. While Dreyer didn’t say how the terminals were disabled, it’s known that Starlink can disable individual terminals based on their ID numbers or use geofencing to block areas from receiving signals.

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Samsung Galaxy XR is the first Android XR headset, now on sale for $1,800

It may not be as spendy as the Vision Pro, but $1,800 is still a lot.

The era of Android virtual reality is here… again. Google’s first two attempts at making Android fit for your face didn’t work out, but the AI era and a partnership with Samsung have enabled a third attempt, and maybe the third time’s the charm. Samsung has unveiled the Galaxy XR headset, the first and currently only device running Google’s new Android XR platform. It’s available for pre-order today, but it will not come cheap. The headset, which doesn’t come with controllers, retails for $1,800.

Galaxy XR is a fully enclosed headset with passthrough video. It looks similar to the Apple Vision Pro, right down to the battery pack at the end of a cable. It packs solid hardware, including 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 processor. That’s a slightly newer version of the chip powering Meta’s Quest 3 headset, featuring six CPU cores and an Adreno GPU that supports up to dual 4.3K displays.

The new headset has a pair of 3,552 x 3,840 Micro-OLED displays with a 109-degree field of view. That’s marginally more pixels than the Vision Pro and almost three times as many as the Quest 3. The displays can refresh at up to 90Hz, but the default is 72Hz to save power.

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AWS outage reminds us why $2,449 Internet-dependent beds are a bad idea

“Would be great if my bed wasn’t stuck in an inclined position …”

This week’s Amazon Web Services outage had some people waking up on the wrong side of the bed.

A Domain Name System (DNS) resolution problem affected AWS cloud hosting, resulting in an outage that impacted more than 1,000 web-based products and services and millions of people.

Perhaps one of the most avoidable breakdowns came via people’s beds. The reliance on the Internet for smart bed products from Eight Sleep resulted in people being awoken by beds locked into inclined positions and sweltering temperatures.

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Wahl: Künftige niederländische Regierung will Nexperia-Lösung

Auf Druck der Automobilkonzerne will eine mögliche neue niederländische Regierung schnell eine Lösung für Nexperia. Die bisherige Regierung enteignete das chinesische Unternehmen. (Unternehmen, Wirtschaft)

Auf Druck der Automobilkonzerne will eine mögliche neue niederländische Regierung schnell eine Lösung für Nexperia. Die bisherige Regierung enteignete das chinesische Unternehmen. (Unternehmen, Wirtschaft)

Google has a useful quantum algorithm that outperforms a supercomputer

An approach it calls “quantum echoes” takes 13,000 times longer on a supercomputer.

A few years back, Google made waves when it claimed that some of its hardware had achieved quantum supremacy, performing operations that would be effectively impossible to simulate on a classical computer. That claim didn’t hold up especially well, as mathematicians later developed methods to help classical computers catch up, leading the company to repeat the work on an improved processor.

While this back-and-forth was unfolding, the field became less focused on quantum supremacy and more on two additional measures of success. The first is quantum utility, in which a quantum computer performs computations that are useful in some practical way. The second is quantum advantage, in which a quantum system completes calculations in a fraction of the time it would take a typical computer. (IBM and a startup called Pasqual have published a useful discussion about what would be required to verifiably demonstrate a quantum advantage.)

Today, Google and a large collection of academic collaborators are publishing a paper describing a computational approach that demonstrates a quantum advantage compared to current algorithms—and may actually help us achieve something useful.

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Samsung launches the $1800 Galaxy XR headset with Android XR

The first Android XR headset has arrived (well, almost). The Samsung Galaxy XR is a mixed reality headset that combines high-res micro OLED displays, a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 processor, and a set of cameras and sensors that allow you to toggle …

The first Android XR headset has arrived (well, almost). The Samsung Galaxy XR is a mixed reality headset that combines high-res micro OLED displays, a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 processor, and a set of cameras and sensors that allow you to toggle between immersive views or a passthrough mode that lets you see the environment […]

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