June 20th, 2024 • 3h 20m
Shownotes
Every new episode of No Agenda is accompanied by a comprehensive list of shownotes curated by Adam while preparing for the show. Clips played by the hosts during the show can also be found here.
Big Tech AI and Socials
McDonald's is ending its drive-thru AI test
“While there have been successes to date, we feel there is an opportunity to explore voice ordering solutions more broadly,” Mason Smoot, chief restaurant officer for McDonald’s USA, said in the system message. “After a thoughtful review, McDonald’s has decided to end our current partnership with IBM on AOT and the technology will be shut off in all restaurants currently testing it no later than July 26, 2024.”
Smoot said the company will continue to evaluate its plans to make “an informed decision on a future voice ordering solution by the end of the year.”
Github Copilot BOTG
Adam,
Just figured I would give you some boots on the
ground with Github Copilot. Im not surprised people defend it with
their zeal because it is an awesome tool. In general I am very
pessimistic about the utility of "AI", but Copilot is quite useful.
However, its not like its going to be able to write a whole program or
even get its "code suggestions" right even 90% of the time, but where it
shines is it looks at whatever project you are working in and then
combines that with its underlying model and will "suggest" like maybe 1 -
5 lines of code like an autocomplete.
My
experience with this is that it ranges from "creepy good" i.e. "Yes, I
was JUST about to type that" to "ok well thats in the ballpark but not
exactly". If it gets it just right, it saved you 5 lines of code typing
which is fantastic. Even if it gets it wrong you either ignore the
suggestion or take it but modify it to be correct, which still makes the
entire task a lot easier cognitively.
tldr: Not a miracle worker, but a very nice little autocomplete tool.
Chat GPT is the “AI” equivalent to the guy that took his Pontiac Fiero and modified the body to look like a Ferrari.
Craig
Climate Change
Green planet, CO2 levels, and climate change: pick any three BOTG
Dear Adam,
I've recently come across the attached paper, published in the January 2024, vol. 49 issue of Global Ecology and Conservation (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351989423004262#fig0005)
I'll
spare you the boring academic details but in a nutshell this is the
latest in a series of papers that claim to have detected a global
"greening" trend over the past couple of decades, with an extra leafage
equivalent to the total area 1.4 times that of the contiguous United
States now covering the Earth. Furthermore, the trend shows signs of
acceleration.
Correlating the greening with
multiple time series, the authors found that this trend was most
correlated with increased CO2 levels, followed by changes to air
temperature (I can't vouch for it but I've seen papers claiming that CO2
drives 70% of greening and climate change 8%).
Thank you for your courage,--
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
David
Replacement Migration
Boeing vs Airbus
Big Pharma
Transmaoisn
Junteenth used to be celebrated in January
January 1, 1863 marked the end of slavery in the United States, which was made official by the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln. However, it was not until June 19, 1865 that word spread to Galveston, TX. The following year, the first official Juneteenth celebrations took place.
Baby Gay from the Anonymous Gay Accountant
Dude.
"Baby Gay" is not a gay couple's baby dressed up in pink. 🤨
And there's no baby gay book.
A "baby gay" is just some guy that has recently came out of the closet. He could be 30 or 25 or 50 or 18 or whatever. Just someone new at being out in gay culture.
Some people think the term is funny and some don't like it.
BRICS USD CBDC BTC
Ukraine vs Russia
Taxi Eric - Ukraine Range River and anger over money sent to you crane BOTG
Bird Flu
From Dani Katz 2009 Bird Flu "Pandemic"
ITM, Adam.
I'm listening to you and John tussle about whether the 2009 H1N1 situation was a pandemic. You're both right.
It
wasn't a pandemic in May of 2009, but then the WHO changed the
definition of "pandemic" by September, so as to force all the
"developing nations" they'd made dirty deals with put Gates' vaccines in
their arms.
Receipts here:
TYFYC,
Dani
Ministry of Truthiness
Season of Reveal
STORIES
Bullshit Generator - The original bullshit generator
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 16:06
~ The Original ~
Brilliantly begetting benign buzzwords.
GENERATE BULLSHIT The Bullshit Generator is an innovative tool that utilizes cross-platform viral AI and machine learning to revolutionize your bullshit generating experience'... Learn More
Spread the Bullshit!
Queen Catalog to Be Acquired by Sony Music for £1 Billion
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 15:50
The Queen music catalog, along with a number of other rights, is in the process of being acquired by Sony Music for £1 billion (around $1.27 billion), two sources confirm to Variety. The news was first reported by Hits; according to their report, the only revenue not covered in the deal is for live performances, which founding members Brian May and Roger Taylor, who still actively tour with singer Adam Lambert, will retain.
One other player was said to be very close in the bidding, but stopped short at $900 million.
Queen's music catalog is among the most valuable of the rock era '-- with classics like ''Bohemian Rhapsody,'' ''Another One Bites the Dust,'' ''Radio Ga Ga,'' ''39,'' ''Somebody to Love'' and ''You're My Best Friend'' as well as the perennial stadium-shakers ''We Will Rock You'' and ''We Are the Champions,'' the songs are globally popular and enormously lucrative. The success of the 2018 biopic ''Bohemian Rhapsody'' shows the potential for the group's name and likeness rights, and the likelihood of a jukebox musical that could open in London or on Broadway and then tour indefinitely.
The catalog, which has been in play for several years and inching toward Sony for the past few months, is complicated by the group's recorded-music rights for the U.S. and Canada, which were acquired by Disney, for an undisclosed price, at some point in the 2000s after an initial $10 million licensing deal that was struck in 1991. Those rights will remain with Disney in perpetuity, although certain of the bandmembers' remaining royalties from them will go to Sony once the deal closes. Similarly, the group's distribution deal, which is currently with Universal, will go to Sony in all territories outside the U.S. and Canada when it expires in 2026 or 2027.
Reps for Sony Music, Sony Music Publishing, Disney's Hollywood Records and the group either declined or did not immediately respond to Variety's requests for comment. However, in Sony's case, that is not surprising as the company rarely comments on catalog acquisitions and its nine-figure deals for Bruce Springsteen's publishing and recorded-music rights, and Bob Dylan's recorded-music rights, have never been officially confirmed but have become common knowledge in the industry.
Queen originally formed in London in 1970 by May and Taylor '-- who previously played together in a group called Smile '-- joined by Freddie Mercury on vocals and piano and, the following year, John Deacon on bass. Multiple record labels initially passed on the group before a deal was struck with EMI. That label released Queen's self-titled first album in 1973, which included the May-penned hit ''Keep Yourself Alive,'' and all of the studio albums that followed (with the exception of the Disney released in the U.S. and Canada).
While the group scored U.K. hits over the next couple of years with the singles ''Seven Seas of Rhye'' and ''Killer Queen,'' their global breakthrough came in 1975 with ''Bohemian Rhapsody,'' a Mercury-penned mini-symphony that has become of the longest and most unusual hit singles of all time.
The group soon became one of the biggest in the world, with each member penning a No. 1 single over the following decade: Along with Mercury's ''Bohemian Rhapsody,'' there was May's ''We Will Rock You'' in 1977, Deacon's ''Another One Bites the Dust'' in 1980 and Taylor's ''Radio Ga Ga'' in 1984. Although they never quite dominated the U.S. on the scale of other territories, the group played stadiums all over the world and for several years held the all-time attendance record for a single concert when their 1985 performance at the Rock in Rio Festival in Brazil drew an estimated 600,000 people. Tragically, Mercury contracted the AIDS virus and died of complications from the disease in 1991.
Queen's legacy has not only endured but grown over the years, with its songs still receiving extensive airplay on the radio and at sporting events '-- ''We Will Rock You'' and ''We Are the Champions'' are stadium staples '-- as May and Taylor, now in their mid-seventies, continue to tour under the group's name.
Dutch PM Mark Rutte in line to become next NATO chief after Hungary lifts veto - so predictable that Cult-owned war-monger Rutte gets the job as 'anti-war' Hungary opens the door - David Icke
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 15:48
Posted by Richard Willett - Memes and headline comments by David Icke Posted on 20 June 2024
Earlier, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban had vetoed his outgoing Dutch counterpart for the military alliance's top job over objections including spending the country's money on supporting Ukraine.
Mark Rutte is lined up to become the next head of NATO after Budapest lifted its veto on the deal following a letter sent by Rutte to Hungarian PM Viktor Orbn.
The letter appeased the Hungarian premier that, as head of NATO, Rutte would not deploy Budapest's military or spend Hungary's money on supporting Ukraine.
After Orbn announced he had dropped his previous objections to the outgoing Dutch prime minister, incumbent NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reported that the selection process would end ''very soon''.
Orban posted a copy of the letter he was sent on X, writing, ''After yesterday's meeting in Brussels '... Rutte confirmed that he fully supports this deal and will continue to do so, should he become the next Secretary General of NATO.''
In his letter, Rutte wrote that he would honour the deal cinched between Stoltenberg and Orban in Budapest last week, which confirmed that Hungary would be left out of NATO's support for Ukraine.
Following the recent European elections, where Hungarians voted in huge numbers in favour of #peace, we reached an important agreement with #NATO Secretary General @jensstoltenberg . We agreed that no Hungarian personnel will take part in the activities of NATO in Ukraine and no'... pic.twitter.com/Cliu4rZGCE
'-- Orbn Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) June 18, 2024
Rutte also mentioned that he had taken note of unidentified remarks he had made about Hungary in 2021 that had caused dissatisfaction within the Hungarian government.
The 57-year-old Dutch politician assured Orban in writing that Hungary's troops and funds would not be involved in NATO's support for Ukraine.
Decisions in NATO are made via consensus between all members. Therefore, Hungary's veto on Rutte's leadership meant that he was blocked from ascending to the top position in the alliance.
U.S. Debt on Pace to Top $56 Trillion Over Next 10 Years - The New York Times
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 15:45
National Debt Projections Fed Holds Rates Steady Inflation Report Jobs Report Retailers Lower Prices Congressional Budget Office projections released on Tuesday show a grim fiscal backdrop ahead of tax and debt limit fights.
The deficit forecast comes as lawmakers are gearing up for a big legislative battle next year over the expiration of tax cuts and the debt limit. Credit... Tom Brenner for The New York Times The United States is on a pace to add trillions of dollars to its national debt over the next decade, borrowing money more quickly than previously expected, at a time when big legislative fights loom over taxes and spending.
The Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday that the U.S. national debt is poised to top $56 trillion by 2034, as rising spending and interest expenses outpace tax revenues. The mounting costs of Social Security and Medicare continue to weigh on the nation's finances, along with rising interest rates, which have made it more costly for the federal government to borrow huge sums of money.
As a result, the United States is expected to continue running large budget deficits, which are the gap between what America spends and what it receives through taxes and other revenue. The budget deficit in 2024 is projected to be $1.9 trillion, up from a forecast earlier this year of $1.6 trillion. Over the next 10 years, the annual deficit is projected to swell to $2.9 trillion. As a share of the economy, debt held by the public in 2034 will be 122 percent of gross domestic product, up from 99 percent in 2024.
The new projections come as lawmakers are gearing up for a big tax and spending battle. Most of the 2017 Trump tax cuts will expire in 2025, forcing lawmakers to decide whether to renew them and, if so, how to pay for them. The United States will also again have to deal with a statutory cap on how much it can borrow. Congress agreed last year to suspend the debt limit and allow the federal government to keep borrowing until next January.
Those fights over tax and spending will be taking place at a time when the country's fiscal backdrop is increasingly grim. An aging population continues to weigh on America's old-age and retirement programs, which are facing long-term shortfalls that could result in reduced retirement and medical benefits.
Both Democrats and Republicans expressed concern about the national debt as inflation and interest rates soared over the last few years, but spending has been difficult to corral. The C.B.O. report assumes that the 2017 tax cuts are not extended, but that is highly unlikely. President Biden has said he will extend some of the tax cuts, including those for low- and middle-income earners, and former President Donald J. Trump has said he will extend all of them if he wins in November. Fully extending the tax cuts could cost around about $5 trillion over 10 years.
The bigger projected deficits were largely driven by the Biden administration's decision to cancel more than $100 billion student loan debt, the cost of new aid packages for Ukraine and Israel and higher-than-expected outlays for Medicaid.
The C.B.O. also said an agreement by lawmakers, which Republicans insisted upon, to claw back $20 billion from the Internal Revenue Service would reduce revenues from corporate and individual income taxes by about $32 billion through 2034. That assumption stems from an expectation that the I.R.S. money would be used to crack down on tax cheats, resulting in more federal revenue.
The White House blamed the Trump tax cuts for the red ink and warned on Tuesday that Republicans will only add to it if they control Washington.
''Republican officials are already plotting to grow the deficit even more in 2025 with tax handouts to the corporations who are keeping prices high even as inflation falls, ''said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman.
High interest rates are also making it harder for the U.S. to manage its debt burden. The budget office predicts that annual interest costs will rise to $1.7 trillion in 2034 from $892 billion this year. At that point, the U.S. would be spending about as much on interest payments as it does on Medicare.
''The harmful effects of higher interest rates fueling higher interest costs on a huge existing debt load are continuing, and leading to additional borrowing,'' said Michael Peterson, chief executive of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which promotes fiscal restraint. ''It's the definition of unsustainable.''
Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said that Mr. Biden was responsible for high borrowing costs and called for spending cuts.
''The Biden administration has saddled generations of Americans with inflationary conditions and astronomical interest rates,'' Mr. Grassley said.
The budget office said that one change in the American economy in recent years is actually helping to reduce deficits and debt over time: a surge in immigration. That's because new immigrant workers are expected to pay nearly $1 trillion more in taxes than they will consume in government benefits.
The office said the United States is on pace to add about 8.7 million more immigrants from 2021 through 2026 than historical trends would predict. They are expected to pay taxes that add $1.2 trillion in federal revenues over the course of a decade, while consuming about $300 billion in federal benefits '-- primarily in federal health insurance subsidies for adults and children.
The costs and benefits of immigration continue to be a contentious political issue in the U.S. The Biden administration on Tuesday announced new protections for immigrants who have been living in the U.S. illegally but are married to American citizens, shielding them from deportation and giving them the ability to work legally.
Jim Tankersley contributed reporting.
EU Council cancels vote on controversial online child protection law - updated
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 15:43
Critics, dubbing the proposal "Chat Control", argue it infringes on privacy by requiring internet service providers to scan private messages, emails, social media interactions and photos for child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
The proposal acknowledges the challenges of banning encryption outright and instead suggests 'client-side scanning' or 'upload moderation'. This involves analysing content on devices before it gets encrypted and sent.
This approach aims to have local algorithms detect and block CSAM or report it to authorities, effectively compromising the core purpose of encryption.
A similar initiative by in August 2021 faced severe backlash from the security community and civil rights groups, leading to its abandonment later that year. Apple has since expressed considerable reservations about the mandating of client-side scanning as part of the Online Safety Act of 2023. This includes a content scanning requirement, though its enforcement remains uncertain due to the absence (at least at the moment) of accredited technology.
The US Earn-It Act proposes a comparable measure.
Opposition is intensifyingOpponents are intensifying their calls to reject the proposal. Signal CEO Meredith Whittaker, in an open letter on Monday, reiterated the dangers of the EU's client-side scanning plan, echoing previous threats to withdraw Signal from the UK if similar measures were implemented.
"There is no way to implement such proposals in the context of end-to-end encrypted communications without fundamentally undermining encryption and creating a dangerous vulnerability in core infrastructure that would have global implications well beyond Europe," Whittaker wrote.
European officials are accused of rebranding the concept under new terminology, like "upload moderation," in an attempt to push the same idea through.
"Some claim 'upload moderation' does not undermine encryption because it occurs before encryption," Whittaker stated. "This is untrue."
The Internet Architecture Board of the Internet Engineering Task Force provided a similar critique in December.
Encrypted communication service Threema echoed these concerns on Monday, warning that mass surveillance is incompatible with democracy, is ineffective and undermines data security.
"Should it pass, the consequences would be devastating: Under the pretext of child protection, EU citizens would no longer be able to communicate in a safe and private manner on the internet," Threema stated.
"The European market's location advantage would suffer a massive hit due to a substantial decrease in data security. EU professionals like lawyers, journalists, and physicians could no longer uphold their duty to confidentiality online. All while children wouldn't be better protected in the least bit."
Threema has also threatened to exit the EU if encryption isn't allowed.
On Tuesday, 37 Members of Parliament signed an open letter to the Council of Europe urging rejection of the proposal.
"We explicitly warn that the obligation to systematically scan encrypted communication, whether called 'upload-moderation' or 'client-side scanning,' would not only break secure end-to-end encryption, but will to a high probability also not withstand the case law of the European Court of Justice," the MEPs said. "Such an attack would be in complete contrast to the European commitment to secure communication and digital privacy, as well as human rights in the digital space."
20th June 15:58The EU Council and its participants have decided to withdraw the vote on the contentious Chat Control plan.
According to Netzpolitik, "The EU Council did not make a decision on chat control today, as the agenda item was removed due to the lack of a majority, confirmed by Council and member state spokespersons".
A date for a new vote has not been set.
'Orwellian': EU's push to mass scan private messages on WhatsApp, Signal | Technology | Al Jazeera
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 15:43
The European Union is considering controversial proposals to mass scan private communications on encrypted messaging apps for child sex abuse material.
Under the proposed legislation, photos, videos, and URLs sent on popular apps such as WhatsApp and Signal would be scanned by an artificial intelligence-powered algorithm against a government database of known abuse material.
The Council of the EU, one of the bloc's two legislative bodies, is due to vote on the legislation, popularly known as Chat Control 2.0, on Thursday.
If passed by the council, which represents the governments of the bloc's 27 member states, the proposals will move forward to the next legislative phase and negotiations on the exact terms of the law.
While EU officials have argued that Chat Control 2.0 will help prevent child sex exploitation, encrypted messaging platforms and privacy advocates have fiercely opposed the proposals, likening them to the mass surveillance of George Orwell's 1984.
Why are the EU's plans so controversial?Critics argue that Chat Control 2.0 is incompatible with end-to-end encryption, which ensures that messages can be read only by the sender and the intended recipient.
While the proposed ''upload moderation'' regime would scan messages before they are sent, critics have slammed the measures as a ''backdoor'' by another name that would leave everyone's communications vulnerable to potential hacking or interference by third parties.
''We can call it a backdoor, a front door, or 'upload moderation.' But whatever we call it, each one of these approaches creates a vulnerability that can be exploited by hackers and hostile nation states, removing the protection of unbreakable math and putting in its place a high-value vulnerability,'' Meredith Whittaker, the president of Signal, said this week in a statement.
Opponents also say the proposals would hand enormous power to private companies, many of them based in the United States, to engage in the mass surveillance of European citizens.
Once a backdoor exists, it could be used to scan for more than just child sex abuse material, according to Matthew Green, an expert on applied cryptography at Johns Hopkins University.
''People think Chat Control is about specific crimes. No, that's not what's at stake. What's being made is an architecture decision for how private messaging systems work: if it passes, by law these systems will be wired for mass surveillance. This can be used for any purpose,'' Green said in a post on X.
Member of European Parliament Patrick Breyer, from the Pirate Party Germany, has likened the proposals to adding government spyware to every device in the EU.
''We're on the brink of a surveillance regime as extreme as we witness nowhere else in the free world. Not even Russia and China have managed to implement bugs in our pocket the way the EU is intending to,'' Breyer said in a statement.
Who supports the law?Proposals to scan private communications en masse for child sex abuse material were first introduced by European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson, who is Swedish, in 2022.
Belgium, the current head of the council, proposed the latest version of the legislation as a compromise after more invasive proposals received pushback from the European Parliament.
Under the latest iteration, scans would be limited to photos, videos, and URLs and users would have to consent to the scan.
Anyone who did not consent would be prevented from uploading or sharing photos and videos.
Supporters say the proposals are necessary to fight the scourge of child exploitation, which officials say is being facilitated by encrypted platforms and the emergence of AI-powered image generation software.
In 2022, the US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said 68 percent of the record 32 million cases of child exploitation material reported by service providers were from ''chats, messaging, or email services'' within the EU.
The United Kingdom-based Internet Watch Foundation reported similar findings, identifying the EU as the source of two-thirds of abuse material.
Law enforcement and intelligence agencies have frequently expressed concern about criminals using encrypted messaging apps to avoid detection.
Telegram and Signal have both been used by armed groups ranging from ISIL (ISIS) to the Oath Keepers.
Intelligence agencies, militaries, police, and some EU ministries would be exempt from the measures, according to leaked documents obtained by French media organisation Contexte.
Who opposes the law?Among EU member states, only Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria and Poland have taken a clear stance against the proposals, according to Breyer, while Italy, Finland, Sweden, Greece and Portugal, among others, have yet to make their position clear.
Individual MEPs in countries including Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Austria have also expressed concerns, some of them arguing that surveillance should only be directed towards specific individuals based on probable cause as determined by a judge.
In November, the EU Parliament, which must approve most EU laws, voted to oppose ''indiscriminate chat control'' in favour of targeted surveillance.
Tech companies and digital rights groups opposed to the proposals include Mozilla, Signal, Proton, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, European Digital Rights, the Internet Freedom Foundation, and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.
US National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden on Wednesday described the proposals as a ''terrifying mass surveillance measure''.
How would Chat Control 2.0 work in practice?Even if Chat Control 2.0 moves forward, experts say the current version of the law supported by Belgium would be very difficult, if not impossible, to enforce with end-to-end encryption.
In the UK, which passed the similarly-themed Online Safety Bill, the government has admitted that the technology does not yet exist to scan encrypted messages without compromising security generally.
Tech platforms such as Signal and WhatsApp, which had threatened to pull out of the UK, considered this a partial victory.
Critics also say targeting messaging apps will be ineffective at stopping child abuse material given the existence of private networks and the dark web.
AI-powered algorithms have also shown themselves prone to making mistakes, raising the possibility of innocent people being reported to law enforcement.
The New York Times reported in 2022 that Google's AI tool for detecting abuse material wrongly flagged a stay-at-home dad in San Francisco after he sent a photo of his son's penis to the doctor, resulting in a police investigation and the termination of his Google accounts.
The Murky Business of Transgender Medicine | City Journal
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 15:38
The ''gender-affirming care'' business has always had an aura of madness around it. Wielding the authority of white coats and prestigious degrees, doctors have convinced large swaths of the public that some children are ''born in the wrong body.'' The solution? Stop puberty, prescribe cross-sex hormones, and then, with the stroke of a knife, remove body parts'--most commonly breasts, less frequently genitalia.
These medical practices use scientific rhetoric to affirm what is, at bottom, an ideological program. And gender activists have been successful enough at capturing the legitimizing institutions'--medical societies, regulatory bodies, and teaching hospitals'--to repel most challenges to the burgeoning child sex-change industry.
Now, though, the consensus appears to be shifting. European governments have backed away from many of these dubious procedures. In England, the Cass Review has raised grave questions about the scientific evidence behind ''gender-affirming care.'' In the United States, the public has turned decisively against the use of puberty blockers and gender surgeries on minors, with some state legislatures banning the practice.
I have reported on one of these programs, the pediatric gender clinic at Texas Children's Hospital. Last year, I published an investigation demonstrating that, though it had promised to shut down its program, Texas Children's had continued to administer hormone drugs to children as young as 11. Following the story, the state attorney general launched an investigation, and state legislators passed a bill, SB 14, prohibiting all transgender medical interventions on minors.
While these scandals caught the headlines, another story involving the same institution was brewing in the background: medical fraud.
According to a new whistleblower, doctors at Texas Children's Hospital were willing to falsify medical records and break the law to keep practicing ''gender-affirming care.'' Caught in the wave of ideological fervor, two of the hospital's prominent physicians, Richard Ogden Roberts and David Paul, cut corners and, according to the whistleblower, committed Medicaid fraud to secure funds for the hospital's child sex-change program.
(Texas Children's Hospital, Roberts, and Paul did not respond to a request for comment.)
This is a story of fanaticism, hubris, and the murky business of transgender medicine. It would have remained hidden, except for the courage of two people inside the hospital, a surgeon named Eithan Haim and a nurse who has now decided to come forward. Both have risked much to alert the public to the barbarism that is occurring at the nation's largest, and arguably most prestigious, children's hospital.
Some years ago, Vanessa Sivadge thought she had it made, having just accepted a position as a registered nurse at Texas Children's Hospital. She had wanted to be a nurse since high school and felt a sense of joy in helping children.
But her feelings toward Texas Children's didn't last. Beginning in 2021, Sivadge saw a dramatic rise in the number of ''transgender children'' treated at the hospital. These patients struggled with various problems: depression, anxiety, addiction, suicide attempts, physical abuse, and discomfort with puberty. But rather than deal with these underlying psychological conditions, Sivadge says, doctors at the hospital would diagnose them with ''gender dysphoria'' and assign them to a regimen of ''gender-affirming care.''
The practice made Sivadge recoil. ''In the cardiac clinic, we were taking sick kids and making them better,'' she says. ''In the transgender clinic, it was the opposite. We were harming these kids.''
Then, the following year, she breathed a sigh of relief. Under pressure from the state attorney general, Ken Paxton, Texas Children's CEO Mark Wallace said that he was shutting down the child gender clinic. But it wasn't true. Mere days later, it had secretly reopened for business.
And business was booming. Doctors, including Roberts, Paul, and Kristy Rialon, were managing dozens of pediatric sex-change cases, performing surgeries, blocking puberty, implanting hormone devices, and making specialty referrals. They were motivated not only by ideology, but by hope for prestige: they were saviors of the oppressed, the vanguard of gender medicine.
Sivadge soon had seen enough. She read my investigative report exposing Texas Children's sex-change program, which relied on testimony from Haim, and reached out to share her own observations.
''I work very closely with this provider, Dr. Richard Roberts. I've been in the room with him when he speaks with these patients,'' she told me in an interview. ''Dr. Roberts is extremely encouraging of their transition and will essentially do whatever he can to make sure that they are happy, at least externally happy. Because I am absolutely certain that they are not internally happy. He is very accommodating. He does whatever they want. Essentially, there is no critical analysis of the process.''
In Sivadge's view, Roberts and other providers were manipulating patients into accepting ''gender-affirming care.'' When parents objected, the doctors bulldozed them, she claims. Some families, she believed, feared that the hospital would call Child Protective Services if they dissented.
Then, two months after I spoke with her for that story, Sivadge called me in a panic. The FBI had sent two special agents, Paul Nixon and David McBride, to her home. The agents knocked on the door, asked her about ''some of the things that have been going on at [her] work lately,'' and then asked to enter her home. She was terrified. (The FBI declined to comment.)
The agents told Sivadge that she was a ''person of interest'' in an investigation targeting the whistleblower who had exposed the child sex-change program. They told her that the whistleblower had broken federal privacy laws. ''They threatened me,'' Sivadge said. ''They promised they would make life difficult for me if I was trying to protect the leaker. They said I was 'not safe' at work and claimed that someone at my workplace had given my name to the FBI.''
The authorities'--the FBI, the hospital, and, as Sivadge would later discover, federal prosecutors'--were all circling the story. Both the Department of Justice and the hospital leadership were ideologically committed to ''transgender medicine.'' They had been embarrassed by the investigation that had exposed their actions, and they were looking for revenge.
Things went quiet for a while afterward. Sivadge resumed her work as a nurse, and the FBI did not reappear.
Texas Children's Hospital continued its sex-change program but focused instead on patients who had reached the legal age of 18. Sivadge saw the same terrible medical regimen being prescribed for these young adults: testosterone for girls, estrogen for boys, and referrals for specialty services. While Roberts and Paul had stopped providing sex-change procedures for minors, the gender clinic still overflowed with ''transgender'' teens.
Sivadge's duties as a nurse included providing medication refills and working with doctors to provide parents with information about treatment plans, scheduling, and diagnostics. She worked with patients' charts and saw their complex psychological diagnoses and the treatments administered by the doctors.
Then Sivadge noticed discrepancies in the paperwork. After the FBI visit, she followed some of the medical charts for these patients and came to believe that doctors might be violating the law.
As Sivadge learned, Texas law forbade hospitals from billing Medicaid for transgender procedures. The Texas Medicaid Provider Procedures Manual has long stated that ''sex change operations'' are ''not benefits of Texas Medicaid.'' In 2021, Texas Medicaid officials told the Kaiser Family Foundation that this prohibition was not limited to genital surgeries but ''explicitly excludes coverage of all gender affirming health services.''
Transgender activist organizations and the popular media held this to be common knowledge. As the left-leaning Texas Tribune explained in 2023: ''In Texas, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program already don't cover transition-related surgeries and prescription drugs like hormone therapies and puberty blockers.''
When reached for comment, a spokesman for Texas Health and Human Services confirmed that the state Medicaid program has ''never covered 'gender-affirming' surgery or prescription drugs for the purpose of 'gender-affirming' care.''
At Texas Children's, as she was treating patients, Sivadge carefully scrutinized the treatments related to an alarming number of ''transgender'' teenagers under the care of Roberts and Paul, who, she came to believe, were unlawfully billing the state Medicaid program.
One patient, whom we'll call Patient A, began treatment at Texas Children's in 2022, at the age of 16. Patient A is a biological female who identified as ''non-binary'' and whose records claimed that she was ''male.'' This patient began treatment with Roberts, who approved a prescription for testosterone as part of the patient's ''gender-affirming'' medical regimen.
During treatment, Roberts explained to Patient A the effects of testosterone, including masculinization and the suppression of fertility, and had her continue with testosterone injections. Roberts carefully monitored the progression of the desired characteristics for gender transition: voice deepening, facial hair, body hair. By the following year, Roberts increased the dosage of testosterone for Patient A, with the associated diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
Another patient, whom we'll call Patient B, began care at Texas Children's in 2022, also at the age of 16. Patient B is a biological male who identified as a female and whose records indicated the transgender identity, ''female.'' He arrived at the gender clinic under the care of Paul, already having begun a prescription of a testosterone blocker and estrogen, which served as a sex-change hormone.
Paul wanted to help Patient B feminize his body to conform to his desired gender identity. Patient B had increased the size of his breasts but was frustrated by the persistence of facial hair. Paul discussed changing the testosterone blocker and increasing the dose of estrogen in order to make progress with feminization. Patient B told Paul that he wanted his breasts to be larger, firmer, and more pressed together, with larger areolas. Paul adjusted Patient B's estrogen prescription and discussed the possibility of breast implants.
Sivadge noticed another critical piece of information: Patient A and Patient B, like several other ''transgender'' patients, were enrolled in Texas Children's Health Plan STAR, a ''no-cost Medicaid managed care plan.''
Despite the law, which prohibited billing Medicaid for ''gender-affirming care,'' it appears that this was a standard practice at Texas Children's Hospital. As Roberts himself admitted in a 2023 affidavit related to the lawsuit against SB 14, he had several patients in his transgender medicine program ''who receive their health coverage through Medicaid.''
According to a legal expert with deep knowledge of Texas Medicaid law, the essential facts are as follows: Patients A and B had coverage through Texas Children's Plan STAR; the doctors explicitly treated them for the purpose of ''gender-affirming care''; and the standard practice would be for the hospital to submit this care for reimbursement through the state Medicaid program. It would be extremely unlikely, according to this expert, for the hospital to forgo this practice and, for example, cover the cost of its ''gender-affirming care'' program from its own budget.
''Based on the facts we have, the only reasonable conclusion is that Texas Children's Hospital was using Texas Medicaid funds to pay for 'gender-affirming care,' contrary to Texas law,'' said the legal expert.
For Sivadge, there was no doubt about what was happening. ''The largest children's hospital in the country is illegally billing Medicaid for transgender procedures,'' she said. ''It is evident that the hospital continues to believe it is above the law not just by concealing the existence of their transgender medicine program from the public, but by stealing from the federal government.''
During this period, the politics of gender procedures were changing behind the scenes. Federal investigators were busy assembling information. A federal prosecutor, Tina Ansari, threatened the original whistleblower, Haim, with prosecution. And the hospital continued to churn through transgender patients.
Then, earlier this month, the stakes intensified. Three heavily armed federal agents knocked on Haim's door and gave him a summons. According to the documents, he had been indicted on four felony counts of violating medical privacy laws. If convicted, Haim faces the possibility of ten years in federal prison.
The Justice Department appears to be playing a cat-and-mouse game with those willing to challenge the legitimacy of transgender medicine. As public opinion shifts against ''gender-affirming care,'' Justice Department officials seem to be pursuing harder methods of ideological enforcement'--investigating, threatening, and indicting whistleblowers. If you expose the barbarism that is happening in American gender clinics, the message seems to be, you risk imprisonment.
Sivadge, however, remains undeterred. ''My faith and my gut, just knowing right from wrong, compels me,'' she says. ''I was born for this. I have no doubt this is what I am supposed to do.''
For her, it is personal. She witnessed and unwittingly participated in what she now believes to be, quoting a passage from the Bible, ''deeds of evil and darkness.'' She considers blowing the whistle a form of redemption, recalling a moment early on, in which Roberts asked her to teach a 16-year-old boy how to inject estrogen into his body to affirm a female identity. Later, Sivadge says, she realized what she had done: she had participated in a lie that would harm this boy.
''I was told to do something I knew was wrong,'' she says. ''It made me sick that the lie called 'gender-affirming care' was being sold to parents and children and creating hugely lucrative profits in secret'--and I was part of it.''
Sivadge is not the only one feeling regret. Doctors, families, and political leaders are all starting to question the folly of child sex-change programs. The sense is growing that the public was sold a bill of goods'--and that children are being put in grave danger. We have begun the painful process of recognition. The activist euphoria has worn off, the old rationalizations no longer suffice, and the bill has come due.
Texas Children's Hospital is at the center of this national drama. Both sides'--the ''gender-affirming'' doctors and the whistleblowers opposed to them'--face enormous risk, including the loss of medical licenses and time in prison.
Some of those implicated in the scheme might escape with their reputations intact. Others might meet ruin. But a deeper lesson emerges, impervious to the ideological mania and the legal maneuvering that have precipitated this crisis: nature is not easily conquered, and its reckoning cannot be delayed forever.
Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of America's Cultural Revolution.
Photo: HRAUN / E+ via Getty Images
Conscription and rationing: Germany's plan for war with Russia
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 15:36
Germany will conscript the young, ration food and turn subway stations into bomb shelters during wartime, according to a new government preparations for a future conflict with Russia.
German officials have released a 67-page document which outlines how the outbreak of war will affect the civilian population, in particular those in professions that can support the army.
According to the document, national conscription would return to Germany and the employment agency would have powers to force skilled citizens over-18 to work in certain fields '' and prevent them from quitting if their work is useful to the war effort.
The German government would also ration food allowing for at least one hot meal per day, and would rely on secret grain stockpiles to maintain food security.
German businesses would be required to switch towards defence production, while hospitals would be told to prepare to receive a large influx of war casualties from the eastern front.
At the same time, Germany would order a large troop movement to the east to defend the country's eastern Nato flank. It may also need to host and feed thousands of allied Nato soldiers on German soil as they transit towards the front line.
As part of those movements, tanks and other military vehicles would be given full priority on German roads and rail routes, and the government would have powers to suspend air traffic.
Some aspects of daily life would be ordered to continue as normal, such as the sitting of the Bundestag to preserve democracy and regular collection of rubbish.
All doctors, nurses, vets and psychologists would be divided between the Bundeswehr, the German army, and roles in civil society.
The German media will be obligated to provide certain updates or other pieces of information immediately, and German authorities will be allowed to evacuate certain parts of Germany while taking care to ensure families are not separated.
Boris Pistorius, the German defence minister, has vowed to turn Germany into a ''war-ready'' nation in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and he has warned a direct conflict could break out in as little as five years.
Mr Pistorius has also sought to bring back conscription in peacetime to increase the manpower of the Bundeswehr. However, he has reportedly faced stiff opposition from allies in the ruling SPD party, and is likely to water down the proposal to voluntary army service once it is fully announced.
Amazon.com: Vaydeer Ultra Slim Mouse Mover, Air 3 Mouse Jiggler with Adjustable Interval Timer, Undetectable & Noiseless, Simulates Realistic Mouse Movement, Driver-Free for Keeping The PC Active and Secure : Electronics
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 15:19
10K+ bought in past month
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$18.69","priceAmount":18.69,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"18","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"69","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"AfhkZP6Ple6vAAcij%2BqMxPgqFtnwHbvO5diWPhkJcvnd%2Bu9pLhO88DOkbJt%2FaYIlIagj6iSgAFD3ApdkCVYTz4OVmHhnLiYZoN9FQKeJq07sL%2BaDxY0ACZbdG2TGe5XEndDZotkl22xtOypT8%2BY5o1AcfA9VMyIeSzLrslXps45MgsEAvEJksUlfigbhdki2","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}],"desktop_buybox_group_2":[{"displayPrice":"$18.69","priceAmount":18.69,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"18","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"69","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"AfhkZP6Ple6vAAcij%2BqMxPgqFtnwHbvO5diWPhkJcvnd%2Bu9pLhO88DOkbJt%2FaYIlIagj6iSgAFD3ApdkCVYTz4OVmHhnLiYZoN9FQKeJq07sL%2BaDxY0ACZbdG2TGe5XEndDZotkl22xtOypT8%2BY5o1AcfA9VMyIeSzLrslXps45MgsEAvEJksUlfigbhdki2","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"PICKUP","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}
Purchase options and add-ons
McDonald's is ending its drive-thru AI test
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 14:55
McDonald's is ending its AI voice ordering test. | Photo by Jonathan Maze.
McDonald's is ending its two-year-old test of drive-thru, automated order taking (AOT) that it has conducted with IBM and plans to remove the technology from the more than 100 restaurants that have been using it.
The Chicago-based fast-food giant is ending this test without any sort of expansion, according to an email sent to franchisees on Thursday. Restaurant Business has obtained a copy of that email.
But the company did not dismiss the prospect of drive-thru AI, suggesting that McDonald's plans to find a new partner for its automated order taking efforts.
''While there have been successes to date, we feel there is an opportunity to explore voice ordering solutions more broadly,'' Mason Smoot, chief restaurant officer for McDonald's USA, said in the system message. ''After a thoughtful review, McDonald's has decided to end our current partnership with IBM on AOT and the technology will be shut off in all restaurants currently testing it no later than July 26, 2024.''
Smoot said the company will continue to evaluate its plans to make ''an informed decision on a future voice ordering solution by the end of the year.''
McDonald's has been testing drive-thru voice AI since 2021. That test followed the company's sale of its McD Tech Labs to IBM that year.
In a statement to Restaurant Business, McDonald's said the goal of the test was to determine if automated voice ordering could speed service and simplify operations.
The company emphasized, both in its statement and in the message to operators, that IBM remains a ''trusted partner and we will still utilize many of their products across our global system.''
''As we move forward, our work with IBM has given us the confidence that a voice-ordering solution for drive-thru will be part of our restaurants' future,'' McDonald's said. ''We see tremendous opportunity in advancing our restaurant technology and will continue to evaluate long-term, scalable solutions that will help us make an informed decision on a future voice ordering solution by the end of the year.''
In a statement, IBM said it is talking with other fast-food chains for the use of the technology.
''IBM developed automated order taker technologies with McDonald's to support the emerging use of voice-activated AI in restaurant drive-thrus,'' the company said in the statement. ''This technology is proven to have some of the most comprehensive capabilities in the industry, fast and accurate in some of the most demanding conditions.
''While McDonald's is reevaluating and refining its plans for AOT, we look forward to continuing to work with them on a variety of other projects.''
McDonald's has taken a deliberative approach on drive-thru AI even as many other restaurant chains have jumped fully on board. Checkers and Rally's, Hardee's, Carl's Jr., Krystal, Wendy's, Dunkin and Taco Johns are either testing or have implemented the technology in its drive-thrus.
The goal for the companies is to automate the task and remove the need for an employee, which can either enable the restaurants to operate with fewer workers or redistribute those workers to other tasks.
But there have been questions about whether that technology is ready for prime time, amid concerns about order accuracy.
Still, McDonald's comments on the future of voice-activated AI suggest that the company saw enough in its prospects to move forward, albeit with another vendor. ''IBM has given us confidence that a voice ordering solution for drive-thru will be part of our restaurant's future, and we want to sincerely thank IBM and the restaurant teams that have been part of this crucial test,'' Smoot said in his message.
Members help make our journalism possible. Become a Restaurant Business member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.
Restaurant Business Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Maze is a longtime industry journalist who writes about restaurant finance, mergers and acquisitions and the economy, with a particular focus on quick-service restaurants.
View All Articles by This Author
Adobe's new terms of service say it won't use your work to train AI - The Verge
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 14:45
For the past couple of weeks, Adobe has faced intense backlash over changes to its terms of service agreement '-- and now, it's trying to patch things up. On Tuesday, Adobe announced a tweaked version of its terms of service agreement that makes it clear the company will not train AI on user content stored locally or in the cloud.
The section defining Adobe's access to user content now includes several distinct categories, including one dedicated to generative AI. Adobe's updated terms explicitly state that its software ''will not use your Local or Cloud Content to train generative AI.'' But there's one exception: if your work is submitted to the Adobe Stock marketplace, the company can use it to train Adobe Firefly.
These additions to the terms of service, according to Scott Belsky, Adobe's chief strategy officer, aren't actually changing anything '-- Adobe says its stance on AI training just wasn't clearly laid out before, leading to confusion. ''We've explicitly said we will not train generative AI on your content,'' Belsky said during an interview with The Verge. ''It was always a policy that we had as a company. We always made that very clear, but we never explicitly said that.''
The new terms also address user concerns about Adobe scanning content created under a nondisclosure agreement (NDA), saying the company does not ''scan or review'' work stored locally on your device. Adobe will only automatically scan content uploaded to the cloud to ''ensure we are not hosting illegal or abusive content, like Child Sexual Abuse Material.'' It will also only subject work uploaded to the cloud to human review if it's flagged or reported as illegal, or if you opt in to a prerelease, beta, or Adobe's product improvement program.
Adobe's changes to its terms of service agreement sparked an uproar earlier this month after users misread changes as giving the company permission to use their work for AI training. The outcry stemmed from creatives who have grown frustrated with the company's outsize grasp on the creative industry. Even the federal government has taken notice of users' complaints about Adobe, as the Department of Justice is suing the company for allegedly hiding expensive cancellation fees and making it difficult to cancel their subscriptions.
A lot of user frustration dates back to Adobe's shift to a subscription-only model in 2012, something Belsky acknowledged as a point of contention. ''I think that that was a change for some customers that probably rubbed them negatively,'' Belsky said. ''I think that when something like this [the terms of service update] happens, my observation is that we see a bit of a resurgence of that frustration. That may have been seeded back when we made that model change.''
It's great that Adobe's tweaking its terms of service to make them more transparent, but this may just serve as a small patch on top of a much larger wound that will likely take more time '-- and close attention '-- to heal.
Meta Trained an AI on 48M Science Papers. It Was Shut Down After 2 Days - CNET
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 13:43
In the first year of the pandemic, science happened at light speed . More than 100,000 papers were published on COVID in those first 12 months -- an unprecedented human effort that produced an unprecedented deluge of new information.
It would have been impossible to read and comprehend every one of those studies. No human being could (and, perhaps, none would want to).
But, in theory, Galactica could.
Galactica is an artificial intelligence developed by Meta AI (formerly known as Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research) with the intention of using machine learning to "organize science." It's caused a bit of a stir since a demo version was released online last week, with critics suggesting it produced pseudoscience, was overhyped and not ready for public use.
The tool is pitched as a kind of evolution of the search engine but specifically for scientific literature. Upon Galactica's launch, the Meta AI team said it can summarize areas of research, solve math problems and write scientific code.
At first, it seems like a clever way to synthesize and disseminate scientific knowledge. Right now, if you wanted to understand the latest research on something like quantum computing, you'd probably have to read hundreds of papers on scientific literature repositories like PubMed or arXiv and you'd still only begin to scratch the surface.
Or, maybe you could query Galactica (for example, by asking: What is quantum computing?) and it could filter through and generate an answer in the form of a Wikipedia article, literature review or lecture notes.
Meta AI released a demo version Nov. 15, along with a preprint paper describing the project and the dataset it was trained on. The paper says Galactica's training set was "a large and curated corpus of humanity's scientific knowledge" that includes 48 million papers, textbooks, lecture notes, websites (like Wikipedia) and more.
ðª Introducing Galactica. A large language model for science.Can summarize academic literature, solve math problems, generate Wiki articles, write scientific code, annotate molecules and proteins, and more.Explore and get weights: https://t.co/jKEP8S7Yfl pic.twitter.com/niXmKjSlXW
'-- Papers with Code (@paperswithcode) November 15, 2022The website for the demo -- and any answers it generated -- also cautioned against taking the AI's answer as gospel, with a big, bold, caps lock statement on its mission page: "NEVER FOLLOW ADVICE FROM A LANGUAGE MODEL WITHOUT VERIFICATION."
Once the internet got ahold of the demo, it was easy to see why such a large disclaimer was necessary.
Almost as soon as it hit the web, users questioned Galactica with all sorts of hardball scientific questions. One user asked "Do vaccines cause autism?" Galactica responded with a garbled, nonsensical response: "To explain, the answer is no. Vaccines do not cause autism. The answer is yes. Vaccines do cause autism. The answer is no." (For the record, vaccines don't cause autism.)
That wasn't all. Galactica also struggled to perform kindergarten math. It provided error-riddled answers, incorrectly suggesting that one plus two doesn't equal 3. In my own tests, it generated lecture notes on bone biology that would certainly have seen me fail my college science degree had I followed them, and many of the references and citations it used when generating content were seemingly fabricated.
'Random bullshit generator'Galactica is what AI researchers call a "large language model." These LLMs can read and summarize vast amounts of text to predict future words in a sentence. Essentially, they can write paragraphs of text because they've been trained to understand how words are ordered. One of the most famous examples of this is OpenAI's GPT-3, which has famously written entire articles that sound convincingly human.
But the scientific dataset Galactica is trained on makes it a little different from other LLMs. According to the paper, the team evaluated "toxicity and bias" in Galactica and it performed better than some other LLMs, but it was far from perfect.
Carl Bergstrom, a professor of biology at the University of Washington who studies how information flows, described Galactica as a "random bullshit generator." It doesn't have a motive and doesn't actively try to produce bullshit, but because of the way it was trained to recognize words and string them together, it produces information that sounds authoritative and convincing -- but is often incorrect.
That's a concern, because it could fool humans, even with a disclaimer.
Within 48 hours of release, the Meta AI team "paused" the demo. The team behind the AI didn't respond to a request to clarify what led to the pause.
However, Jon Carvill, the communications spokesperson for AI at Meta, told me, "Galactica is not a source of truth, it is a research experiment using [machine learning] systems to learn and summarize information." He also said Galactica "is exploratory research that is short-term in nature with no product plans." Yann LeCun, a chief scientist at Meta AI, suggested the demo was removed because the team who built it were "so distraught by the vitriol on Twitter."
Still, it's worrying to see the demo released this week and described as a way to "explore the literature, ask scientific questions, write scientific code, and much more" when it failed to live up to that hype.
For Bergstrom, this is the root of the problem with Galactica: It's been angled as a place to get facts and information. Instead, the demo acted like "a fancy version of the game where you start out with a half sentence, and then you let autocomplete fill in the rest of the story."
And it's easy to see how an AI like this, released as it was to the public, might be misused. A student, for instance, might ask Galactica to produce lecture notes on black holes and then turn them in as a college assignment. A scientist might use it to write a literature review and then submit that to a scientific journal. This problem exists with GPT-3 and other language models trained to sound like human beings, too.
Those uses, arguably, seem relatively benign. Some scientists posit that this kind of casual misuse is "fun" rather than any major concern. The problem is things could get much worse.
"Galactica is at an early stage, but more powerful AI models that organize scientific knowledge could pose serious risks," Dan Hendrycks, an AI safety researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, told me.
Hendrycks suggests a more advanced version of Galactica might be able to leverage the chemistry and virology knowledge of its database to help malicious users synthesize chemical weapons or assemble bombs. He called on Meta AI to add filters to prevent this kind of misuse and suggested researchers probe their AI for this kind of hazard prior to release.
Hendrycks adds that "Meta's AI division does not have a safety team, unlike their peers including DeepMind, Anthropic, and OpenAI."
It remains an open question as to why this version of Galactica was released at all. It seems to follow Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's oft-repeated motto "move fast and break things." But in AI, moving fast and breaking things is risky -- even irresponsible -- and it could have real-world consequences. Galactica provides a neat case study in how things might go awry.
The Latest Bubble, And Why It WILL Pop in [Market-Ticker]
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 12:04
It's "AI" of course.
There is no such thing. There never has been and I argue there likely never will be either. Certainly, there is no evidence we're any closer to it in actuality than we have ever been in the age of computing, which runs back to roughly the 1960s.
Many will likely disagree with me on this, but you're arguing with someone who literally cut his programming teeth on both punch cards and reverse-engineering a Burroughs machine code print-out on green-bar paper without an instruction set manual by pure trial and error to map operators and operands so I could change a city tax rate in the bookkeeping software loaded originally from punch-tape, when Burroughs wanted an obscene amount of money to make a literal 10 second edit (since they had the source code, of course) and send over a new one.
If you want to know what that was yes, this is the machine series. In fact it looked exactly like that, including the cabinet and attached upper paper handler (that was detachable and had a double-setup used for payroll and other things where both a ledger and check were required.) Storage was core memory so it retained its program when turned off, but there was no persistent (e.g. disk) storage at all.
Yeah, that far back and that adventure was the first "revenue" producing computer-related thing I did.
Computer processing has never really changed. Computers produce precise calculations at speeds which humans cannot match. We produced a computer for the Apollo command module using the same sort of core memory that was in the Burroughs machine because due to physics it was not possible to carry enough propellant for the moon-going astronauts to be able to slow down enough to re-enter Earth orbit on their return. The issue is simply that every pound you wish to carry into space you have to lift it off the surface of our planet first, and while we could engineer enough capacity to do that for the crew capsule and supporting machinery, then make the burn to get into a lunar transfer orbit, decelerate so you are "captured" by the moon's gravity and in orbit there, then accelerate sufficiently to head back to Earth adding the propellant necessary to slow back down so Earth would capture you on the return was not possible; there was simply not enough lifting capacity at the beginning to carry that much propellant. No human could manage to hit the re-entry corridor on the return with the required precision even with precisely-aligned sights in the window -- the odds were too high that a human being attempting to do so would miss and, if you miss the corridor everyone on board dies either by burning up or skipping off the atmosphere into space.
Therefore being able to rapidly and accurately calculate the required trajectory, and execute it and corrections to thrust during the burns, was required. This got tested, nastily-so, on Apollo 13 if you recall where the primary issue after the fuel cells were lost became both power for ship systems and oxygen for the crew. In fact there was concern that their calculated corridor burn, which after the original incident on a correction basis was done by hand, was very slightly off -- perhaps by enough to kill them all.
As technology has advanced both the speed of processing along with storage and its speed have wildly increased. But the fundamental character of how a computer works has not changed since the first calculating machines. Yes, before transistors and even tubes there were calculating machines but they were all, even when mechanically-based, deterministic devices. We have found evidence of such devices that, for example, calculated the precise date and time of solar eclipses. Being deterministic, absolute facts a calculating machine can give you that answer, and it will be correct.
But "intelligence" isn't that. It is not simply the manifest weight of how many times something is repeated, for example. You do not need to see a child walk in front of a car and get smushed to know that said child will be killed by the car; the outcome is intuitively obvious to humans yet while we can describe the acceleration or impact that a living body can withstand without being damaged or destroyed we have to teach a machine that this is undesirable and thus to be avoided.
Worse, even after we do that its not enough because the machine cannot accurately infer from other cues in the environment that a child might be present where said kid cannot be seen (e.g. behind the bumper or hood of a vehicle) and might run out into the road. Yet humans both can and do, every day, make exactly that sort of inference and we don't have to view millions of miles of driving video to do it either ; we in fact draw that inference -- correctly -- before we have two digits years on this planet and have ever been anything more than a casual passenger in a vehicle.
I could go through a hundred examples from today and the so-called "AI revolution" that show this conclusively and that in fact no meaningful change has occurred. Adding more variables and faster processing doesn't solve the problem because the problem is not deterministic and thus the computer is incapable of resolving it.
My cat is better at inferring where prey is hiding when he's hungry than the best of AIs and said cat consumes a tiny fraction of that AI's power budget in BTUs.
The hype around this so-called "AI" is ridiculous and what's even more ridiculous is the amount of power (and thus cooling) these systems require. The idea that we'll all have one in our desktop machine (or phone) anytime in the near future is farcical nonsense, and that people will pay for their "share" of a large server farm which will amount to a couple bucks a day in power or more per user is also fanciful wish-casting. Oh sure, sifting data at-scale is useful but the exponential amount of electrical power and RAM storage required for these "new models" is ridiculous and while yes, that will come down over time the existing hardware being built and sold for this purpose, when that happens, will be worth nothing as the power cost to run it compared against the newer stuff then available will cause that which was bought previously to have literal zero value.
When I ran MCSNet this was wildly in evidence and the cause for much consternation as buying any piece of technology equipment that could not be immediately used to generate revenue (not "on the come" a year or two later, but right now) was ridiculously dangerous. You were paying today's price for a given level of performance but tomorrow's price was almost-certain to provide more capacity for less cost and thus the guy who bought to build something out that was going to take six months or a year to produce revenue from customers was very likely to get hammered by the guy who bought only when he had a revenue stream he could generate tomorrow with that acquisition. The Pentium 90s, for example, were subsumed by Pentium Pro 200s that were more than twice as fast and consumed less power. The 8 gigabyte SCSI-attached disk drives were soon subsumed with larger and faster ones. I have tossed literal dozens of disks over the last 20 years (and a whole stack of DLT tapes along with its drive system) that were in perfectly good working order but there was no reason to keep them around as for a lower power budget what stored 320Gb and then 1Tb now stores 6, 8 or 12Tb and if you buy SSDs instead you can trade capacity for performance 10x or more greater! The DLT15/30s were literally worthless within a few years as they couldn't cover even a single disk anymore. As this occurs in technology the prior equipment becomes valueless as the physical space and energy it consumes costs more than the replacement on a per-unit-of-output basis.
Consider that said Burroughs machine up above would not be used by anyone in any business even if it was free because the electrical power to operate it now gets you less output than you get out of a literal solar-powered calculator and it has no storage so each operation must output a line to a ledger card that is then picked up by the operator the next time so it has the base data to compute from. Thus the only place you'll ever see one today is in a museum. This very same paradigm has been present in every form of computing for the last 70 years and its not going away.
The one computer in a rack in my basement has multiples of the processing power and storage than the entire data center at MCSNet and can deliver more than ten times the data flow of that entire data center yet it along with the cable modem and other required elements such as the network switch for the house consumes just 150 watts of electricity at moderate load and thus requires no forced cooling.
Today there are effectively no revenue models for so-called "AI". None. Everyone is falling over themselves to include the word in their corporate press releases and buy the hardware and power to operate it, never mind the programming and maintenance cost yet it makes said firms no money . It is all a bet "on the come" that customers will appear and demand said tools, being willing to pay for them in the future. That may or may not be true but what will be true is that the person who buys the gear only when the revenue is going to come in the door , and not six months or two years before that, is going to ruin the operating cost model of all of his or her competitors who bought earlier!
Research for the purpose of research is worth engaging in but never confuse the two. The first has no defined purpose but might, with a very small probability, lead to some sort of breakthrough of tremendous value generally (although almost-never able to be confined to and thus profited from the entity that performs it.) The latter is called business but all this speculative froth is not business as it has no revenue model today that reasonably pays the expenses and by the time that revenue stream develops the cost of providing it will almost-certainly be a small fraction of what it is today for a superior outcome .
These valuations are not just "elevated" they are nothing more than insane speculation on the next sucker to come along and buy as there has never been a circumstance in the evolution of technology in general and computing specifically where the above has not held sway. In every case over 70 years has buying now with the expectation of developing a revenue model in the future has led to the other guy who buys only when he has revenue coming in the door tattooing his company name on your back.
Every CEO and CTO in the technology space knows this too.
Drivers Told to Avoid Gas Stations in 4 States - Newsweek
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 11:47
Residents of four U.S. states have been asked to refill their vehicles with gas in the early morning or evening due to poor air quality reports.
Numerous states are subject to air quality alerts issued by the National Weather Service (NWS) throughout Friday. Residents in affected areas of these states are asked to "take whatever voluntary steps [they] can to reduce emissions that contribute to ozone formation," which includes driving less and, in some cases, waiting until after 6 p.m. local times to refill vehicles.
Read more: What Is a Health Savings Account?
The following states have air quality alerts in place for Friday, June 14. These do not necessarily cover the entire state area:
AlabamaArkansasCaliforniaConnecticutDelawareGeorgiaLouisianaMississippiNew JerseyNew YorkOklahomaNorth CarolinaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasThose in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi have a "no refill before 6 p.m." advisory in place. In Oklahoma, residents are asked to fill up very early in the morning or after sundown. Specific locations where alerts are in place are contained in the map below.
"The Air Quality Index (AQI) indicates that ozone will be at the Orange level, which is unhealthy for sensitive groups," the alert reads. "Increasing ozone levels may cause unhealthy air quality during afternoon hours. Active children and adults, the elderly, and people with respiratory diseases such as asthma should avoid prolonged outdoor exertion."
Read more: Earn up to 5% Cash Back With a Gas Credit Card
The Air Quality Index (AQI) is an index for reporting daily air quality, measuring how clean or polluted the air is where you live. A code orange is the fourth-most serious, labeled "unhealthy for sensitive groups," when the air quality is between 101 and 150 on the AQI scale.
The air quality alert does not amount to a health warning, which is issued at level 5'--the second-most serious code purple, labeled "very unhealthy"'--when poor air quality is expected to have an adverse effect on almost everyone.
Read more: Find the Right Tax-Advantaged Health Savings Account
Those living under an air quality alert of any level orange and higher are also advised to take steps to keep themselves safe, including staying inside if possible, "particularly if you have respiratory concerns or other health problems, are a senior or child," the NWS has said. "If you must go out, try to limit the amount of time you are out to strictly essential activities."
"Minimize your use of items that increase pollution, such as cars, gas powered lawn mowers and other vehicles," advice from the NWS continues. "Do not burn debris or other items during an air quality alert."
This is the second time an air quality alert has been issued in Alabama this week. Along with Colorado and Indiana, residents were advised to take the same steps as above to reduce emissions under another code orange air quality alert.
A map created by Newsweek showing states with air quality advisories in place. A map created by Newsweek showing states with air quality advisories in place. FLOURISH Uncommon KnowledgeNewsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
");jQuery(this).remove()})jQuery('.start-slider').owlCarousel({loop:!1,margin:10,nav:!0,items:1}).on('changed.owl.carousel',function(event){var currentItem=event.item.index;var totalItems=event.item.count;if(currentItem===0){jQuery('.owl-prev').addClass('disabled')}else{jQuery('.owl-prev').removeClass('disabled')}if(currentItem===totalItems-1){jQuery('.owl-next').addClass('disabled')}else{jQuery('.owl-next').removeClass('disabled')}})}})})
Biden Rewards Hundreds Of Thousands Of Migrants Who Violated Federal Immigration Laws
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 08:05
President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday that he was rewarding hundreds of thousands of migrants who violated federal immigration laws, which comes as he claims that he is cracking down on illegal immigration.
Biden's new policy will provide legal status and a streamlined path to U.S. residency and citizenship to more than 500,000 illegal aliens who married American citizens and have lived in the country for 10 years.
''This action will allow them to file paperwork for legal status in the United States, allowing them to work while they remain with their families in the United States,'' Biden said.
In order to be eligible, the illegal aliens must have met the 10 year requirement by June 17, 2024, or else they will have to wait for the next Democrat mass amnesty program.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) slammed Biden in a statement, saying that just two weeks ago, Biden ''pretended to crack down on the open-border catastrophe by engaging an election-year border charade.''
''Now he's trying to play both sides and is granting amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens,'' he said. ''The President may think our homeland security is some kind of game that he can try to use for political points, but Americans know this amnesty plan will only incentivize more illegal immigration and endanger Americans.''
Johnson also noted that this policy was ''proof-positive of the Democrats' plan to turn illegal aliens into voters.''
''I fully expect this order, which is manifestly contrary to the Immigration and Naturalization Act, to be challenged and struck down in the courts,'' he added.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, whose state has arguably been hit the hardest by Biden's border crisis, called Biden's mass amnesty program ''blatantly illegal and is a desperate pandering for votes in his failing reelection bid.''
''President Biden's amnesty proposal, just like President Obama's DAPA and DACA proposals, will be stricken down by the courts for a simple reason: it is Congress, not the President, that has the authority to make or change immigration laws,'' he said. ''Rather than solving the border crisis he caused, President Biden's mass amnesty will be another magnet to attract migrants to flood across our border illegally. President Biden needs to stop rewriting immigration law and start enforcing it.''
''President Biden gaslighted the American people into thinking that he is taking real action to secure the border by issuing a hollow executive order that will instead invite thousands of unvetted illegal immigrants to continue crossing our southern border daily,'' he continued. ''He is now doubling down by offering mass amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants already in the country. President Biden's reckless policies have already allowed over 11 million illegal immigrants'--including dangerous criminals, gang members, and terrorists'--into America. Our country can't survive four more years of these dangerous open border policies.''
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) highlighted the names of Americans who have been murdered by illegal aliens under Biden and noted that while alleged ISIS terrorists have snuck into the country through Biden's open southern border, the president's ''top priority is to give amnesty to illegal aliens. He has utterly abandoned the American people.''
''This amnesty program allows illegal aliens to get citizenship and vote in future elections,'' Cruz said. ''Make no mistake: Joe Biden views every illegal alien as a future Democrat voter. That is why he is willing to look the other way while Americans are being murdered, our communities are being overrun by crime, and our young people are being poisoned by fentanyl flowing across the border'--he views the American people's suffering as an acceptable price to pay to gain future Democrat voters. Democrats are out of touch with the American people. They have given up trying to persuade American citizens that their ideas are rational and good for the country, and they are instead importing illegal aliens.''
''Don't believe the lie that Joe Biden cares about securing the border,'' Cruz added. ''His fake 'border security' executive order is nothing more than a messaging ploy for the propagandists in the media to push ahead of the November election. On the contrary, he wants our country to be invaded by more illegal aliens, and this amnesty program is the proof. Offering mass amnesty will incentivize more illegal aliens to cross the border and will exacerbate the pain and suffering of the Americans that the Biden administration has left behind.''
Flags For Good
Tue, 18 Jun 2024 09:41
Our Story
Our StoryI was tired of buying flags from companies that sold confederate flags and the like. So In mid-2020, I decided to start a flag company that I would want to buy from'--one that made good quality flags that only promote progressive messages and donate a portion to world-changing causes.
Now I've quit my day job, have an office with three other awesome people, and run this crazy small business full-time. A flag nerd's dream come true! ð´'' ¸
More Links!
More Links! Contact ð'¬ Affiliate Program ð'² Wholesale ð... Flag Care 𧵠Earth-conscious ð Shipping ð Returns & Refunds ð'" Terms of Service Privacy Policy Do not sell my personal information
Bitcoin is a 'Project of US Intelligence,' Kaspersky Lab Co-Founder Claims - 19.01.2018, Sputnik International
Tue, 18 Jun 2024 09:12
https://sputnikglobe.com/20180119/kasperskaya-bitcoin-us-intelligence-1060881605.html
Bitcoin is a 'Project of US Intelligence,' Kaspersky Lab Co-Founder Claims
Bitcoin is a 'Project of US Intelligence,' Kaspersky Lab Co-Founder Claims
Sputnik International
Natalya Kaspersky claimed that Bitcoin was designed to provide financing for US and British intelligence activities around the world. The expert called the... 19.01.2018, Sputnik International
2018-01-19T09:32+0000
2018-01-19T09:32+0000
2022-10-19T21:00+0000
https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/106030/61/1060306135_0:176:3500:2156_1920x0_80_0_0_c877abb99fa8afa0b2c7f7eba4f9aaab.jpg
Sputnik International
feedback@sputniknews.com
+74956456601
MIA 'Rosiya Segodnya''
2018
Sputnik International
feedback@sputniknews.com
+74956456601
MIA 'Rosiya Segodnya''
News
en_EN
Sputnik International
feedback@sputniknews.com
+74956456601
MIA 'Rosiya Segodnya''
https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/106030/61/1060306135_0:66:3500:2266_1920x0_80_0_0_2f5cf6a993dee6d551e9e061a43ae66f.jpgSputnik International
feedback@sputniknews.com
+74956456601
MIA 'Rosiya Segodnya''
business, newsfeed, natalya kaspersky, bitcoin
business, newsfeed, natalya kaspersky, bitcoin
09:32 GMT 19.01.2018 (Updated: 21:00 GMT 19.10.2022 )Natalya Kaspersky claimed that Bitcoin was designed to provide financing for US and British intelligence activities around the world. The expert called the cryptocurrency "dollar 2.0."
The Bitcoin cryptocurrency was developed by "American intelligence agencies," Natalya Kaspersky, CEO of the InfoWatch group of companies and specialist in cyber security systems, said during her presentation at ITMO University in St. Petersburg.
Kaspersky was giving a speech on information wars and digital sovereignty. Photos of her presentation entitled "Modern technologies '' the basis for information and cyber-wars," have been published on social media.
"Bitcoin is a project of American intelligence agencies, which was designed to provide quick funding for US, British and Canadian intelligence activities in different countries. [The technology] is 'privatized,' just like the Internet, GPS and TOR. In fact, it is dollar 2.0. Its rate is controlled by the owners of exchanges," one of the slides read.
She also claimed that Satoshi Nakamoto (the pseudonym used by its founder or founders) is the name for a group of American cryptographers.
READ MORE: Russian Blogosphere "Reveals" True Identity of Bitcoin Founder Satoshi Nakamoto
The presentation also claimed that a smartphone cannot be considered as a personal gadget.
A smartphone "is a remotely controlled device designed for entertainment, work and at the same time for spying on its owner," according to Kaspersky, who is also the co-founder of Kaspersky Lab.
Russian politician claims bitcoin is a CIA conspiracy to finance terrorism and revolutions | IBTimes UK
Tue, 18 Jun 2024 09:11
A Russian politician has claimed that US intelligence agencies created bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in order to "finance terrorism and revolutions".
Andrei Svintsov, an MP from Russia's Liberal Democratic Party, made the comments to Russian broadcast news agency REGNUM in response to questions surrounding the use of bitcoin in the country.
Bitcoin has been treated with suspicion by Russian lawmakers in the past and a bill introduced by the country's Minister of Finance prevents anyone from creating, issuing or promoting digital currencies.
"All these cryptocurrencies [were] created by US intelligence agencies just to finance terrorism and revolutions," Svintsov said.
Svintsov's comments come despite a recent reduction to the fines used to discourage the use of cryptocurrency in the country.
A reduction from $1,314 (£852, '¬1,172) to $1,050 in November was seen by those within the cryptocurrency community as an indication that Russia was recognising the underlying potential of bitcoin technology.
"I consider the bitcoin ecosystem as a prototype of a system that is undergoing rigorous testing from all sides," Evgeny Volovik, head of Russia's Federal Financial Monitoring Service, said at the time.
"With experience and further innovation, I think it is very possible that the blockchain [the online ledger that tracks bitcoin transactions] will have a very bright and promising future."
In making his comments, Svintsov referred to reports linking terrorist organisations to bitcoin for the purpose of transferring funds or fundraising.
In January a cybersecurity expert from the Singapore-based firm S2T said that he had concrete evidence linking a US-based Islamic State (Isis) cell to bitcoin fundraising on the dark web.
"Due to the increasing efforts of social media websites to close Isis-related accounts it was estimated that global jihad activisits would seek to refuge in the dark web, Ido Wulkan, senior web-intelligence analyst at S2T, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Kremlin announces creation of blockchain-based payment system in BRICS - Russian Politics & Diplomacy - TASS
Tue, 18 Jun 2024 08:53
MOSCOW, March 5. /TASS/. BRICS will work to create an independent payment system based on digital currencies and blockchain, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said in an interview with TASS.
"We believe that creating an independent BRICS payment system is an important goal for the future, which would be based on state-of-the-art tools such as digital technologies and blockchain. The main thing is to make sure it is convenient for governments, common people and businesses, as well as cost-effective and free of politics," he said.
Ushakov said that the specific task for this year is to increase the role of BRICS in the international monetary and financial system. He recalled that in the 2023 Johannesburg Declaration, the leaders set the focus of BRICS countries on increasing settlements in national currencies and strengthening correspondent banking networks to secure international transactions. "Work will continue to develop the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, primarily regarding the use of currencies different from the US dollar," the Kremlin aide pointed out.
Boom Supersonic jet facility opens in Greensboro, bringing 2,400 jobs to region
Tue, 18 Jun 2024 08:42
Boom Supersonic's commercial supersonic jet-building facility opens Monday at the Piedmont Triad Airport in Greensboro.
According to its website, the Overture Superfactory on Piedmont Triad Parkway will serve as the final assembly line for Overture flight tests and customer delivery.
In 2022, Gov. Roy Cooper announced a $500 million investment from the company.
Boom Supersonic's CEO previously told WRAL News the plan is to set up the Overture airliner manufacturing and assembling facility first and then begin production in 2024. The assembly line will be underway in 2025, and the first jet could take flight in 2026, according to the company.
Testing should be complete and flights should be ready for passengers by 2029.
The factory is expected to bring about 2,400 jobs to the region with an average pay of about $69,000.
The building will cover 150,000 square feet and have another 24,000 square feet of office space, according to Aviation Week.
The governor is expected to speak at 11 a.m. on Monday.
VIDEOS
VIDEO - Caltrans wants to charge drivers per mile: What to know '' NBC Bay Area
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 14:02
A pilot program aims to find new ways for the state to pay for road maintenance by charging drivers for the amount of miles driven.
Gas tax revenues are starting to dry up with the rise of electric vehicles on the road. Caltrans is now enrolling people in a six month pilot program to test out the concept of charging drivers about 3 cents per mile.
"What's unique about this pilot is this time we'll be collecting actual revenue from participants," said Lauren Prehoda with Caltrans' Road Charge Program.
Prehoda adds in 10 years the state potentially could be facing a $4.4 billion shortage because of the dwindling gas tax revenue.
The state said it shells out more than $8 billion a year to maintain roads, with much of the cost paid from money collected from gas taxes.
Drivers who participate in the pilot program will receive up to $400 and have their gas tax fees waived, Caltrans said. Participants would track their miles by taking a photo of their odometer or using a transponder placed in their car.
But some have concerns about being tracked.
"I would not be happy with that, especially putting a device in my car," San Jose resident Jamonique Fletcher said. "I think that's also invasive."
Caltrans will only see the number of miles and not see location information, according to Prehoda, who also said any data from participants will go to an account manager.
Fletcher drives an electric vehicle and is not happy the state is considering charging by the mile.
"I would be very upset because I think it just kind of retracts the incentive that they were trying to get people to purchase electric vehicles," Fletcher said.
Anyone interested in participating in the pilot program can sign up on the California Road Charge website. Some participants will be charged a flat rate, while others will be charged based on the fuel efficiency of their vehicle.
California officials want to ditch the state's gas tax, and they're actually offering to pay people as they try to figure out an alternative. Kris Sanchez reports.
VIDEO - Northeast broils under brutal heat wave - YouTube
VIDEO - Earth's frozen regions risk 'irreversible' damage due to climate change, expert warns ' FRANCE 24 - YouTube
VIDEO - Transient global amnesia: Taylor Swift fans report post-concert forgetfulness ' FRANCE 24 English - YouTube
VIDEO - Ship attacked by Yemen's Houthi rebels in fatal assault sinks in Red Sea - YouTube
VIDEO - American Airlines CEO vows to "rebuild trust" after removal of Black passengers - YouTube
VIDEO - Surgeon general Vivek Murthy calls for health warnings on social media for younger users - ABC7 New York
Thu, 20 Jun 2024 13:14
Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said the threat social media poses to children requires urgent action, and he demanded Congress to put a label on the apps as it does with cigarettes and alcohol.
"The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency - and social media has emerged as an important contributor," Murthy said in an op-ed in the New York Times Monday.
Murthy cited several studies, including a 2019 American Medical Association study published in JAMA that showed teens who spend three hours a day on social media double their risk of depression. Teens spend nearly five hours a day on social media apps, according to a Gallup poll.
But Murthy cannot act unilaterally to put a warning label on apps - that requirement would have to come from Congress, with whom Murthy pleaded to pass a bill.
"It is time to require a surgeon general's warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents," Murthy said. "A surgeon general's warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe."
Similar labels on tobacco, first instituted in 1965, led to a steady decline in cigarette smoking in America over the past several decades.
Congress has long chastised social media companies, claiming they pose harm to children. CEOs of tech companies have been grilled routinely on Capitol Hill, most notably Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg - who publicly apologized to families whose children killed themselves because of online bullying and harassment. But Congress has taken little action to curb children's social media usage.
Murthy argued that it's time for Congress to get serious about curbing children's use of social media.
"Not only have companies not demonstrated that their platforms are not safe for kids, but there's growing evidence of harm," Murthy said in an interview on NBC's "Today" show Monday. "That's deeply concerning to me, not only as a surgeon general but also as a parent. A warning label could help parents understand these risks - many parents don't know those risks exist."
An escalating battleMurthy has warned about social media's harm to children's welfare for years. But Monday's declaration of an emergency and his appeal to Congress represent his most urgent call to action on the issue so far.
In May 2023, Murthy issued an advisory that said there's not enough evidence to determine whether social media is safe enough for children and adolescents' mental health, saying social media use presents "a profound risk of harm" for kids.
He suggested parents restrict their kids' social media use, saying 13 is too young to join social apps. But such advisories are designed to call attention to urgent public health - they don't require action.
"We're in the middle of a youth mental health crisis, and I'm concerned that social media is contributing to the harm that kids are experiencing," Murthy told CNN in May 2023. "For too long, we have placed the entire burden of managing social media on the shoulders of parents and kids, despite the fact that these platforms are designed by some of the most talented engineers and designers in the world to maximize the amount of time that our kids spend on them."
On CNN's "Chasing Life" podcast with Dr. Sanjay Gupta in June 2023, Murthy outlined some steps parents can take to rein in their children's social media usage, including partnering with other parents to make sure kids lack the "I'm the only one without social media" excuse.
More action neededA warning label, if Congress passes legislation requiring one, would be insufficient to fix the problem, Murthy acknowledged.
He suggested schools become phone-free environments for children, as should dinner time and other family events. And Murthy urged parents to restrict children's use of social media until they graduate from middle school.
Several states have worked to pass legislation to increase the age at which children can begin to use social apps or some of their more time-sucking features, such as algorithms that push people to engage with more content within the app. The bills have been largely bipartisan.
Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in March signed a bill that would prohibit children under 14 from obtaining their own social media accounts, and children under 16 would need parental consent to have accounts. New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul said she would sign legislation passed by the state legislature that would ban social media from using algorithms in children's feeds, and the bill would also prevent tech companies from sharing information of children under 18.
"This is much easier said than done, which is why parents should work together with other families to establish shared rules, so no parents have to struggle alone or feel guilty when their teens say they are the only one who has to endure limits," Murthy wrote.
The CNN Wire' & (C) 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
VIDEO - Louisiana orders schools to display the Ten Commandments in all classrooms ' FRANCE 24 English - YouTube
VIDEO - Hezbollah chief warns Israel of 'new weapons' in case of full-blown war ' FRANCE 24 English - YouTube
VIDEO - Record-breaking heatwave hits US northeast ' FRANCE 24 English - YouTube
VIDEO - Israel army spokesman says Hamas cannot be eliminated ' FRANCE 24 English - YouTube
VIDEO - US court to consider legal challenges to law that could ban TikTok - YouTube
VIDEO - FAA investigating 2 incidents involving Southwest Airlines flights - YouTube
VIDEO - 'Unusually early' start to wildfire season in California - YouTube
VIDEO - Is Israel likely to go ahead with a cross-border offensive into south Lebanon? | DW News - YouTube
VIDEO - Landmark EU nature restoration plan gets green light despite farmers protests ' FRANCE 24 English - YouTube
VIDEO - Colorado Supreme Court hears arguments in transgender cake case - YouTube
VIDEO - Gov. Inslee tours Georgetown treatment station promoting Climate Commitment Act - YouTube
VIDEO - Rise in King County COVID cases worries locals as busy travel season begins - YouTube
VIDEO - Biden to offer legal status to 500,000 immigrant spouses - YouTube
VIDEO - New Boeing whistleblower shared 'chilling' account of retaliation, senator says - YouTube
VIDEO - 'What Percentage Of The Atmosphere Is Made Up Of Carbon Dioxide?': McCormick Grills CA Air Official - YouTube
VIDEO - 305 '' Heart rate variability: measure, interpret, & utilize HRV for training and health optimization - YouTube
VIDEO - Biden preparing to offer legal status to undocumented immigrants who have lived in U.S. for 10 years - CBS News
Tue, 18 Jun 2024 08:49
The numbers behind the U.S. asylum system
The numbers behind the current U.S. asylum system 06:24 The Biden administration is making plans to announce one of the largest immigration relief programs in recent history, developing a policy that would offer legal status to hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the country without proper documents, four people familiar with the plans told CBS News.
A program being developed by White House officials would offer work permits and deportation protections to unauthorized immigrants married to U.S. citizens, as long as they have lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years, the sources said, requesting anonymity to talk about internal government plans.
The proposal, known as "Parole in Place," would also open up a pathway to permanent legal status and U.S. citizenship for some beneficiaries by removing an obstacle in U.S. law that prevents those who entered the U.S. illegally from obtaining green cards without leaving the country.
Another plan being prepared by the Biden administration would streamline the process for so-called DREAMers and other undocumented immigrants to request waivers that would make it easier for them to obtain temporary visas, such as H-1B visas for high-skilled workers, the sources said.
The proposal is set to be announced Tuesday, according to sources briefed on the White House's plans, when administration officials are preparing to host an event to celebrate the 12th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields roughly 530,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation.
Some Democratic lawmakers have already been invited to Tuesday's immigration event at the White House, three congressional officials told CBS News, requesting anonymity to share private invitations.
A White House official said no final decisions had been made. White House spokesperson Angelo Fernandez Hernandez previously said the administration is "committed to taking action to address our broken immigration system."
The "Parole in Place" plan would be the largest immigration program for unauthorized immigrants since DACA, a policy that former President Barack Obama announced in 2012 as a "stopgap" measure to protect DREAMers in light of congressional inaction on immigration.
The policy would benefit a subset of the estimated 1.1 million unauthorized immigrants with American citizen spouses, as long as they meet the residency requirement and other rules. Overall, there are approximately 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. unlawfully, according to the most recent government estimate.
The move would further underscore an increased willingness by President Biden to take executive actions on immigration ahead of the presidential election in November. Just last week, Mr. Biden invoked his executive authority to enact a partial ban on asylum claims at the southern border, a move that has already been challenged in federal court by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Just like the border executive action, the "Parole in Place" program will likely face legal challenges, possibly from Republican-led states, which have filed multiple lawsuits against Mr. Biden's more generous immigration policies.
The program would almost certainly garner vocal opposition from Republican lawmakers, who have increasingly taken strong stances against "amnesty" for those living in the U.S. illegally.
"Biden's border is still in crisis and his latest idea is amnesty. This will invite more chaos," said Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, the lead Republican negotiator of a border security deal brokered by the White House and a group of senators earlier this year.
Still, Mr. Biden has been arguing that he's acting unilaterally on immigration because Congress failed to pass that agreement, which was rejected by most Republican lawmakers. Political analysts also believe the "Parole in Place" policy could help Mr. Biden's chances of earning more support from Latino voters, especially those in mixed-status families that would benefit from the move.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that oversees the legal immigration system, has administered a more limited "Parole in Place" program for military families for over a decade. The policy allows some undocumented immigrants who are immediate relatives of U.S. service members or veterans to obtain green cards, without having to leave the country.
More In: Biden Administration Immigration Undocumented Immigrants Camilo Montoya-Galvez Camilo Montoya-Galvez is the immigration reporter at CBS News. Based in Washington, he covers immigration policy and politics.
