Month: May 2023

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

When it comes to artificial intelligence, the hype, hope, and foreboding are suddenly everywhere. But the turbulent tech has long caused waves in health care: from IBM Watson's failed foray into health care (and the long-held hope that AI tools may one day beat doctors at detecting cancer on medical images) to the realized problems of algorithmic racial biases.

But, behind the public fray of fanfare and failures, there's a chaotic reality of rollouts that has largely gone untold. For years, health care systems and hospitals have grappled with inefficient and, in some cases, doomed attempts to adopt AI tools, according to a new study led by researchers at Duke University. The study, posted online as a pre-print, pulls back the curtain on these messy implementations while also mining for lessons learned. Amid the eye-opening revelations from 89 professionals involved in the rollouts at 11 health care organizations—including Duke Health, Mayo Clinic, and Kaiser Permanente—the authors assemble a practical framework that health systems can follow as they try to roll out new AI tools.

And new AI tools keep coming. Just last week, a study in JAMA Internal Medicine found that ChatGPT (version 3.5) decisively bested doctors at providing high-quality, empathetic answers to medical questions people posted on the subreddit r/AskDocs. The superior responses—as subjectively judged by a panel of three physicians with relevant medical expertise—suggest an AI chatbot such as ChatGPT could one day help doctors tackle the growing burden of responding to medical messages sent through online patient portals.

Since Monday, Pornhub has begun blocking access for all Utah visitors, taking a strong stance against the state's recently passed age-verification law. In a video statement that now appears on Pornhub's homepage when Utah users attempt to access the adult site, Pornhub spokesperson Sharita Bell said the law was not a "real solution."

"As you may know, your elected officials have required us to verify your age before granting you access to our website," Bell said in the video. "While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users—and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk."

In its statement, Pornhub warned that "without proper enforcement," Utah's law would put children and privacy at risk by driving Pornhub users to platforms that choose not to comply with the law—including pirate sites possibly hosting illegal content.

Enlarge / A still image from "Synthetic Summer," an AI-generated beer commercial. (credit: Privateisland.tv)

While many fear a future where AI-generated media becomes indistinguishable from traditional media, destroying society and/or civilization in the process, we aren't quite there yet. Exhibit A comes in the form of a surreal AI-generated beer commercial that went viral over the weekend.

Titled "Synthetic Summer," the 30-second video first appeared on Instagram about a week ago, created by Helen Power and Chris Boyle of a London-based production company called Privateisland.tv. The pair were not available for comment before this story was published, but judging by the look of the video, it appears they likely created it using Runway's new Gen-2 AI model, which can create short video clips based on written prompts similar to how Stable Diffusion can create still images.

In the video, set to a raucous crowd backing track and Smash Mouth's "All Star," we see simulacra of people partying at a stereotypical American backyard barbecue, occasionally physically merging with impressionistic beer vessels. Women laugh, jaws flaring. Beer glasses turn into beer cans. Flaming grills achieve columnar fire tornado status and arc across the yard. It's a vision of surrealistic hell that is at once familiar and impressively alien.

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  Apple's AirTag. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

Today, Apple and Google announced that the two companies have jointly "submitted a proposed" specification to combat stalking using devices like AirTag or Tile trackers.

In its newsroom post, Apple claims that the specification has been developed based on feedback from a range of device manufacturers as well as safety and advocacy groups. Samsung, Tile, Chipolo, Eufy, and Pebblebee have all "expressed support" for the specification.

This new development comes after countless examples of trackers like Apple's AirTag trackers being used for malicious stalking in various contexts. When Ars first reviewed the AirTag, we wrote that the tracker's capabilities were impressive for its intended uses—but that they were unfortunately also impressive for malicious purposes.

Enlarge / Fakespot adds letter grading, adjusted review scores, and other context ("New Seller Alert") to product pages across the web. (credit: Amazon/Fakespot)

Fakespot, a useful service that explains how products you've never heard of could have 12,000 reviews with a 4.6-star average, has been acquired by Firefox maker Mozilla, and Mozilla plans to integrate it into Firefox.

"We are joining a company that develops one of the most popular browsers in the world in Firefox with a lineage that dates back to the origins of the Internet," writes Saoud Khalifah, founder of Fakespot, on the company's site. "In Mozilla, we have found a partner that shares a similar mission as to what the future of the internet should look like, where the convergence of trust, privacy, and security play an imperative part of our digital experiences."

Mozilla acquired the article-saving tool Pocket (formerly Read It Later) in February 2017 but had already integrated its extension directly into Firefox. Pocket was a key piece of what Mozilla calls its Context Graph, a kind of human-powered web discovery and understanding system. It's easy to see Fakespot as part of that.

Enlarge / Spools of fiber conduits for broadband network construction. (credit: Getty Images | Akchamczuk)

Colorado yesterday eliminated an 18-year-old state law that made it harder for cities and towns to offer broadband Internet service. The 2005 law required local governments to hold an election before offering cable television or telecommunications service, a process that pitted city and town leaders against well-funded broadband industry lobbying campaigns.

Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, signed a bill to eliminate that law yesterday. The bill had been approved by the State House in a 48-14 vote and in the Senate by a 31-4 vote. Both chambers have Democratic majorities, but the votes didn't go entirely along party lines; all of the "no" votes came from Republicans, but other Republicans joined Democrats in approving the bill.

The bill signed by Polis "gives local governments the authority to provide broadband service, either on their own or by partnering with industry service providers, without holding a local election," the Governor's Office of Information Technology said.

Enlarge / Spools of fiber conduits for broadband network construction. (credit: Getty Images | Akchamczuk)

Colorado yesterday eliminated an 18-year-old state law that made it harder for cities and towns to offer broadband Internet service. The 2005 law required local governments to hold an election before offering cable television or telecommunications service, a process that pitted city and town leaders against well-funded broadband industry lobbying campaigns.

Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, signed a bill to eliminate that law yesterday. The bill had been approved by the State House in a 48-14 vote and in the Senate by a 31-4 vote. Both chambers have Democratic majorities, but the votes didn't go entirely along party lines; all of the "no" votes came from Republicans, but other Republicans joined Democrats in approving the bill.

The bill signed by Polis "gives local governments the authority to provide broadband service, either on their own or by partnering with industry service providers, without holding a local election," the Governor's Office of Information Technology said.

Enlarge / Researchers examined folio 843 of Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus to determine the cause of mysterious black stains. (credit: Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan)

Researchers at the Politecnico di Milan in Italy examined mysterious black stains on a folio of Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus and confirmed the presence of starch and vinyl glues in the affected areas. The glues were most likely applied during an earlier restoration effort some 50 years ago, according to a recent paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. They also identified a likely cause of the dark stains: nanoparticles of a mercury sulphide called metacinnabar in the protective paper holding the folio, although it is unclear how this unusual black crystalline phase might have formed.

Da Vinci produced more than 13,000 pages in his notebooks (later gathered into codices), less than a third of which have survived. The notebooks contain all manner of inventions that foreshadow future technologies: flying machines, bicycles, cranes, missiles, machine guns, an “unsinkable” double-hulled ship, dredges for clearing harbors and canals, and floating footwear akin to snowshoes to enable a man to walk on water. The notebooks also contain da Vinci's detailed notes on his extensive anatomical studies. Most notably, his drawings and descriptions of the human heart captured how heart valves can ebb blood flow 150 years before William Harvey worked out the basics of the human circulatory system.

The largest single set is the 12-volume Codex Atlanticus, in which (among other observations) da Vinci foresaw the possibility of constructing a telescope when he wrote of “making glasses to see the moon enlarged”—a century before the instrument’s invention. The codex was subjected to a major 10-year restoration effort from 1962 to 1972, in which each individual folio in the 12 volumes was framed by a "passe-partout": a protective paper cover consisting of three modern paper layers glued to each folio so they could be more easily handled and displayed. It also enabled the double-sided documents to be read and examined. The codex is currently housed in the Biblioteca Ambrosia in Milan.