Week of December 2, 2024
Over the last few weeks, our 4.5-year-old robot vacuum, Dustin', began demonstrating signs of senescence. Its brush can no longer handle area rugs, and at times, it aimlessly wanders despite a verifiable map of our house's floor plan. As I contemplated Dustin's near-end-of-life status, I became nostalgic. My kids (home for Thanksgiving) and I processed the (unexpectedly) complex questions and emotions evoked by our robot with diminished capabilities (cue Jude Law & Haley Joel Osment scene from Stanely Kubrick's 2001 movie AI). Did I provide Dustin' enough preventative maintenance? How do I honor its work? (We shouldn't bury or burn plastic and lithium batteries (Viking funeral style).) Why is there no home for decrepit household robots? I note the irony that none of these questions stopped me from purchasing a new vacuum (to be named) "Dustin' Too" (thank you, Ecovacs Black Friday sale). Ethical dilemmas aside, we still need the kitchen floor cleaned. It can be a cruel, Hobbesian world for robots (as well as humans).
It's only a matter of time before the vacuums know we are discarding them. This scene from AI (mentioned above) touches on the ethical complexity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29TzvtlHDmI
and
There is a current Broadway play on this topic:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/theater/maybe-happy-ending-broadway-criss.html?unlocked_article_code=1.d04.aIvO.IsjKzg3OBrtE&smid=url-share
and here is a great New Yorker article on how robots learn:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/02/a-revolution-in-how-robots-learn
P.S. We will recycle Dustin' if it can't handle his [demotion/retirement/banishment] to our carpet-free finished basement.
https://www.ecovacs.com/us/blog/how-to-dispose-and-recycle-your-robot-vacuum
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Listen to a Google Notebook LM A.I.-generated podcast of the newsletter with two virtual "hosts." It sounds like a typical podcast this week. Amazing.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tbfhSFPxho_kfzF4TY6BstXJUSIkXvGO/view
About NotebookLM: https://blog.google/technology/ai/notebooklm-audio-overviews/
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Science and Technology Trends
The FDA began a series of public meetings on how the agency can review and appropriately regulate medical tools that rely on generative AI. The article is a good reminder of AI-driven patient-facing tools' differential levels of risk and reward.
https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/regulatory/fda-advisory-committee-discuss-generative-ai-meeting-week
I graduated medical school 24 years ago this coming spring and have been a nephrologist since 2006. At no point in my training or clinical practice did anyone ever ask me the question, "Are there medical concerns about urinating in the shower?" Fortunately, CNN is exploring this most important scientific question. I can only imagine what the urologists they interviewed were thinking as they answered questions from CNN writer Jocelyn Solis-Moreira on this topic (and I hope it was audio-only since the physicians' eye-rolling must have created enough momentum to yield a neck injury).
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/26/health/peeing-in-shower-wellness
I continue to monitor H5N1 (bird flu) stories.
"Since April, 55 H5N1 cases have been reported in humans, and all but three have occurred in farmworkers in close contact with dairy cows or poultry, which the virus is infecting in droves. But health officials have not been able to determine the source of three cases in humans, raising questions about whether there is low-level community spread happening."
https://www.salon.com/2024/11/26/three-mysterious-bird-flu-cases-worry-experts-that-another-is-looming/
and
H5N1 RNA is now found in California wastewater, meaning there appears to be some low volume of community spread. Note that the wastewater data is from larger cities and more rural communities.
https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/rv/wwd-h5.html
Anti- Anti-Science Articles of Note
A group of Canadian and British physicians published a meta-analysis of 100+ studies about preventing airborne infectious diseases with masks. The methodology section is the critical part - the authors describe how previous meta-analyses (i.e., the Cochrane study from early 2023) over-weighted the value of randomized control trials from clinical journals, ignoring important data from non-medical journals as well as high-quality observational, case-control, and cohort studies. I STRONGLY recommend reading the introduction and methodologic approach sections of this paper. The author's discussion on the epistemology of scientific knowledge is outstanding. And, for those who live in a TLDR world, here are the conclusions from this meta-analysis:
- Strong evidence exists for airborne transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and other respiratory pathogens.
- If correctly and consistently worn, masks effectively reduce respiratory disease transmission and show a dose-response effect.
- Respirators are significantly more effective than medical or cloth masks.
- Mask mandates are, overall, effective in reducing community transmission of respiratory pathogens.
- Masks serve as important sociocultural symbols; non-adherence to masking is sometimes linked to political and ideological beliefs and circulated mis- or disinformation.
- While masks are not generally harmful to the general population, masking may be relatively contraindicated in individuals with certain medical conditions who may require an exemption.
- Certain groups, notably deaf individuals, are disadvantaged by widespread mask use.
- Single-use masks and respirators generate large amounts of trash.
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/cmr.00124-23
and
Here is my February 2023 post in which I discussed the Cochrane Library meta-analysis indicating masks were NOT helpful.
http://www.whatadamisreading.com/2023/02/what-adam-is-reading-week-of-2-6-23.html
Living with AI.
Anthropic’ s Claude now offers adjustable, customizable writing styles. I uploaded about 50 of my newsletter's openings to Claude. It can almost write like me and suggested I call the Adam writing-trained style "amused observational essayist," which I may need to add as a skill for my resume.
https://www.croma.com/unboxed/claude-ai-can-now-adapt-to-your-unique-writing-style
NVIDIA's Fuggato is a text-to-music LLM-driven audio generator and editor ["EDM beat with plastic bucket drums, zither, and a glockenspiel for 30 seconds here."] Google offers a less capable but similar tool. The point is how fast this tech is moving.
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/fugatto-gen-ai-sound-model/
Fuggatto is not publicly available, but Google Labs MusicFX is
https://aitestkitchen.withgoogle.com/tools/music-fx
or hear my generated EDM/zither/glockenspiel clip here:
https://aitestkitchen.withgoogle.com/tools/music-fx/4eikr9h0d0000
Butterball, the turkey people, used machine learning to process years of Thanksgiving turkey hotline calls to identify new business opportunities. They discovered that "thawing a turkey" was a key customer dissatisfier and, as a result, developed the no-thaw frozen turkey for 2024. This story is a fantastic, albeit seemingly mundane, use of AI/ML analytics, and it offers insight into the incredible logistics that Butterball employs for the holiday.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/thank-big-data-for-killing-off-the-worst-part-of-thanksgiving-meal-prep-892808cb
The Butterball story pairs nicely with this story (just in time for Christmas?) - a Swiss church offers an AI Jesus avatar to hear confession and engage in spiritual discussions. While this is more of an experimental art exhibition, the artist is not mocking religion. In fact, "The experimental art installation "Deus in Machina" opens up a space of intimacy. Visitors share their thoughts and questions in a confessional with a heavenly hologram. An artificial intelligence that reacts aesthetically as [the AI] Jesus may create a holy moment." How will AI Jesus respond to the notion of turning him off at the end of the project? (What will Jesus do?!?)
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/ai-jesus-church-switzerland-religion-b2653130.html
and the project website [requires browser translation from German]
https://www.kathluzern.ch/mein-engagement/deus-in-machina
Infographics
The chemistry of turkey
https://www.compoundchem.com/2017/11/23/turkey/
Things I learned this week
I learned that Scandinavian cooking in the 1200s (A.D.) was about sauces— no mention of precursors to Ikea meatballs and lingonberry jam.
https://www.medievalists.net/2020/11/13th-century-scandinavian-cookbook/
Australians have chosen their 2024 word of the year: enshitification -
noun (Colloquial) the gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking.
https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/5-top-enshittification-picks-for-2024,19213
Corey Doctorow coined the word in 2023 (and the American Dialect Society chose it for their 2023 word of the year). The Australians seem late to enshitification realization.
https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5
AI Art of the Week.
(A visual mashup of topics from the newsletter, now using ChatGPT to summarize the newsletter, suggest prompts, and make the images).
"A cozy living room featuring a nostalgic, worn-out robot vacuum tangled in threads on an area rug, symbolizing aging technology. In the background, a glowing holographic AI Jesus appears in a modern confessional setup, radiating a peaceful aura, with a person sitting thoughtfully in front of it. Nearby, a high-tech robot recycling station processes dismantled parts of household robots, emphasizing sustainability and environmental care. The scene blends warmth, ethical contemplation, and futuristic technology."
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RiK87D2KtXgE-ni7V2vKyVKjse4HQ6FJ/view
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Since 2020, COVID rates rise from Thanksgiving to a peak in January before declining in February. See the PMC data below.
The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) website uses wastewater levels to forecast 4-week predictions of COVID rates.
https://pmc19.com/data/
based upon https://biobot.io/data/
Wastewater Scan offers a multi-organism wastewater dashboard with an excellent visual display of individual treatment plant-level data.
https://data.wastewaterscan.org/
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Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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