Inhoudsopgave van June 2024 - Reason

I’M ALWAYS PUZZLED when I hear other parents say they’re worried about the effects social media might be having on their children. My confusion only grows when I see that the federal government is considering a ban on kids using social media. Are teens acquiring their own mobile devices and paying the bills? Doubtful. It seems someone gave them tacit permission to be on those platforms and the tools to do so. Yet many parents feel like they have no options other than to surrender to their kids’ desires or hate tweet their congressman to get the government to do something about TikTok. I’m the parent of a teenage daughter who does not have any social media accounts. She has lived her life unplugged. I remember very clearly when I…

LAB-GROWN MEAT IS a scientific marvel. We’ve managed, through pure human ingenuity, to create something that looks like meat, cooks like meat, tastes pretty much like meat, and comes from animal cells—yet doesn’t require the slaughter of a single living animal. But state legislatures across the country are thinking of following in Alabama’s foot steps and banning lab-grown meat (also known as “cultivated meat”). In March, Alabama legislators passed a bill banning the sale or development of lab grown meat in the state. Italy’s parliament passed a ban on cultivated meat last year, citing the need to protect farmers from competition. Arizona, Florida, and Tennessee also seem poised to ban the product, with cultivated meat bans working through their state legislatures as of mid-March. In Congress, senators have introduced…

MILLIONS FACE THE shadow of Alzheimer’s, a disease that steals memories and devastates lives. But what if a simple blood test could offer a crucial decade of warning? New, highly accurate blood tests for Alzheimer’s are poised to revolutionize patient care, yet some voices advocate for keeping this knowledge out of reach. This is a disservice to patients and a missed opportunity for medical progress. Early detection is game-changing. As the Alzheimer’s Society notes, it allows people to “[Insert quote about accessing support, understanding changes, and accessing benefits or legal protection]” [1]. Furthermore, early knowledge could lead to the adoption of lifestyle changes or treatments that substantially slow the progression of this devastating disease [2]. We need to fully explore the potential of these new tests. Of course, some raise…

I’M AN AI developer and consultant, and when OpenAI released a preview in February of its text-to-video model Sora—an AI capable of generating cinema-quality videos—I started getting urgent requests from the entertainment industry and from investment firms. You could divide the calls into two groups. Group A was concerned about how quickly AI was going to disrupt a current business model. Group B wanted to know if there was an opportunity to get a piece of the disruptive action. Counterintuitively, the venture capitalists and showbiz people were equally split across the groups. Hollywood producers who were publicly decrying the threat of AI were quietly looking for ways to capitalize on it. Tech startups that thought they had an inside track to disrupting Hollywood were suddenly concerned that they were about…

POPULISM CONTINUES TO blur political lines. Nowhere is that more apparent than in antitrust policy. For decades, conservatives largely held the line against left-wing antitrust hawks who see “monopolies” everywhere. But their mistrust of Big Tech’s political biases has caused the populist right to get more comfortable about unleashing antitrust. Odd alliances have formed with Republican senators openly praising some of the most progressive members of the Biden administration occupying high offices at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice. Adding a new wrinkle to this phenomenon is the dawn of the AI Age. We are seeing an ironic merger of panics. What many see as a dystopian technological frontier with AI is just history repeating itself. New technology often disrupts dominant industries and firms in ways even…

AN ILLUSTRATION FEATURING a rat with a cross section of a giant penis set off a firestorm of criticism about the use of generative artificial intelligence based on large language models (LLMs) in scientific publishing. The bizarre illustration was embellished with nonsense labels, including one fortuitously designated as “dck.” The article on rat testes stem cells had undergone peer review and editorial vetting before being published in February by Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology. “Mayday,” blared longtime AI researcher and critic Gary Marcus on X (formerly known as Twitter). Vexed by AI’s ability to abet the “exponential enshittification of science,” he added, “the sudden pollution of science with LLM-generated content, known to yield plausible-sounding but sometimes difficult to detect errors (‘hallucinations’) is serious, and its impact will be lasting.”…

EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT the AI apocalypse is supposed to look like. The movies WarGames and The Terminator feature a super intelligent computer taking control of weapons in a bid to end humankind. Fortunately, that scenario is unlikely for now. U.S. nuclear missiles, which run on decades-old technology, require a human being with a physical key to launch. But AI is already killing people around the world in more boring ways. The U.S. and Israeli militaries have been using AI systems to sift through intelligence and plan airstrikes, according to Bloomberg News, The Guardian, and +972 Magazine. This type of software has allowed commanders to find and list targets far faster than human staff could by themselves. The attacks are then carried out by human pilots, either with manned aircraft or…

STEPHEN WOLFRAM IS, strictly speaking, a high school and college dropout: He left both Eton and Oxford early, citing boredom. At 20, he received his doctorate in theoretical physics from Caltech and then joined the faculty in 1979. But he eventually moved away from academia, focusing instead on building a series of popular, powerful, and often eponymous research tools: Mathematica, WolframAlpha, and the Wolfram Language. He self-published a 1,200-page work called A New Kind of Science arguing that nature runs on ultrasimple computational rules. The book enjoyed surprising popular acclaim. Wolfram’s work on computational thinking forms the basis of intelligent assistants, such as Siri. In an April conversation with Reason’s Katherine Mangu-Ward, he offered a candid assessment of what he hopes and fears from artificial intelligence, and the complicated relationship…

“AT THE CORE of every story we want to tell is a person,” says Lee Gentry, founder of Night visions, a firm that provides custom AI content to adult entertainers and agencies that run OnlyFans accounts. “We’ve been focusing very, very carefully on persisting the human form and getting that as accurate as possible.” Throughout recorded history, human beings have used emerging technologies to depict both sexual interactions and nude bodies—usually women. Shortly after the invention of movies, stag films were produced and traded in an underground market. Later, films with fleshed-out storylines would be shown in theaters, including the notorious porno-chic picture Deep Throat. VHS was quickly adopted by lower-budget adult film producers. DVD and widespread internet access further lowered barriers to both distribution and consumption of sexual content.…

ACOP PULLED over Ivan Lopez in Somerton, Arizona, a small town near the Mexican border. The officer claimed that Lopez had a broken taillight and had been speeding. A drug-sniffing dog then indicated possible contraband; police searched his truck and found fentanyl, cocaine, heroin, and meth. Lopez subsequently agreed to a plea deal where he would serve 84 months in prison for drug smuggling. The traffic stop was in 2018. Lopez (and his lawyers) didn’t find out until 2020 that it was neither the traffic offenses nor the dog that led to Lopez’s downfall: It was location data from his phone, which revealed he was passing through the border at a place where there was no monitored crossing. A secret underground tunnel led from Mexico to a property he owned…

AI (Artificial Intelligence): The simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems, including learning, reasoning, and self correction. Gen AI (Generative AI): A subset of AI that creates new content, such as text, images, audio, and video, based on patterns learned from training data. Prompt: In the context of AI, a prompt is a piece of text, an image, or other input data provided to an AI system to guide its output or response. LLM (Large Language Model): A type of AI model trained on vast amounts of text data, capable of understanding and generating human-like text based on the input it receives. Neural Net (Neural Network): A computing system inspired by the biological neural networks in the human brain, consisting of interconnected nodes that process and transmit…

“THE UNITED STATES is being overrun by the Biden migrant crime,” said former President Donald Trump during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in February. “It’s a new form of vicious violation to our country.” Trump’s remarks came at a tense moment in the nation’s sentiment toward immigration. Over half of Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center in February said that “the large number of migrants seeking to enter the country leads to more crime.” The much-publicized murder of Georgia college student Laken Riley—for which a Venezuelan illegal immigrant, José Antonio Ibarra, was charged—helped spark a media firestorm. “Over the past month, Fox News hosts, guests and video clips have mentioned ‘migrant crime’ nearly 90 times, more than half of those in the past 10 days,” reported The Washington Post’s…

MEDICAL ADVICE A trip to the hospital is rarely fun. The AI-powered app Vital aims to make the experience a little less painful. Used by more than 100 hospitals, the program predicts wait times and explains medical results to patients without technical jargon that can be difficult to understand. Vital provides four main options: ERAdvisor for the emergency department, CareAdvisor for inpatient stay, AccessAdvisor for follow-up, and CareAssist for staff coordination. On top of making the experience less anxiety-laden for patients, Vital can also ease doctors’ burdens and help them redirect their time in more productive ways. HEALTHY LIVING Staying fit can be a hassle, but AI can help. Schedule-generating apps such as FitnessAI, Aaptiv, and Fitbod optimize workouts by personalizing them for each user. Besides helping you prepare for…

IN A CAMPAIGN video directed at “young voters” that she posted on X (formerly Twitter) in February, Vice President Kamala Harris bragged that “we changed federal marijuana policy, because nobody should have to go to jail just for smoking weed.” During his State of the Union address in March, President Joe Biden said he was “expunging thousands of convictions for the mere possession [of marijuana], because no one should be jailed for simply using or have it on their record.” Neither claim was accurate. It is not surprising that Biden and Harris would try to motivate younger voters, whose turnout could be crucial to their reelection, by highlighting their administration’s “marijuana reform,” since those voters overwhelmingly favor legalization. But the steps Biden has taken fall far short of that goal,…

THE TURING TEST—OBSESSED geniuses who are now creating AI seem to take three clichéd outcomes for granted: 1. That these new cyberentities will continue to be controlled, as now, by two dozen corporate or national behemoths (Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Beijing, the Defense Department, Goldman Sachs) like rival feudal castles of old. 2. That they’ll flow, like amorphous and borderless blobs, across the new cyber ecosystem, like invasive species. 3. That they’ll merge into a unitary and powerful Skynet-like absolute monarchy or Big Brother. We’ve seen all three of these formats in copious sci-fi stories and across human history, which is why these fellows take them for granted. Often, the mavens and masters of AI will lean into each of these flawed metaphors, even all three in the same paragraph! Alas,…

WILL AI KILL the five-paragraph essay? To find out, I asked my ninth grade English teacher. The five-paragraph essay is a mainstay of high school writing instruction, designed to teach students how to compose a simple thesis and defend it in a methodical, easily graded package. It’s literature analysis at its most basic, and most rigid, level. A typical five-paragraph essay asks students to pick a simple thesis, usually from a list of prompts, and compose a short introductory paragraph, followed by three paragraphs each laying out a different piece of supporting evidence, followed by a final paragraph—usually beginning, “In conclusion….” Critics argue this assignment kills student creativity and turns writing into an exercise in pure drudgery. I tend to agree, remembering my time spent composing five-paragraph essays as soul-rending—forcing…

IN MAY 2023, OpenAI founder Sam Altman testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about ChatGPT. Altman demonstrated how his company’s tool could massively reduce the cost of retrieving, processing, conveying, and perhaps even modifying the collective knowledge of mankind as stored in computer memories worldwide. A user with no special equipment or access can request a research report, story, poem, or visual presentation and receive in a matter of seconds a written response. Because of ChatGPT’s seemingly vast powers, Altman called for government regulation to “mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful AI systems” and recommended that U.S. or global leaders form an agency that would license AI systems and have the authority to “take that license away and ensure compliance with safety standards.” Major AI players around the world quickly…

WHEN THE CONCEPTUAL poet Lillian-Yvonne Bertram began to experiment with large language models (LLMs) in 2018, they discovered unexpected poetry inside ChatGPT-2. “The prompt responses were quirky: prone to interesting conversations and uncanny and poetic slippages. There was a strangeness about them,” they wrote in the introduction to their new AI poetry collection, A Black Story May Contain Sensitive Content. “The responses made you feel like someone was maybe looking over your shoulder, or the machine had read your horoscope or your diary, like it just knew things,” wrote the poet, who uses they/them pronouns. On July 29, 2023, when Bertram announced on Twitter that they had won the New Michigan Press/DIAGRAM chapbook contest for a poetry collection “generated” by ChatGPT-3, there was immediate backlash. This outcome—that a book written…

JONATHAN HAIDT OPENS The Anxious Generation with what is supposed to be an analogy for kids’ use of smartphones and social media: Would you let your child travel to Mars, he asks, if some Silicon Valley CEO said it was safe? It’s an absurd comparison: Whatever harms may or may not befall minors with iPhones, they’re light-years less apparent, substantial, or universal than those facing kids shuttling through outer space to a desert planet with an atmosphere mainly made of carbon dioxide. Happily, most of this volume is far less hysterical than that opening might lead you to believe. Yes, this book is filled with unwarranted pessimism, unjustified conclusions, and unsavory solutions. But as he lays out his case that a “phonebased childhood” is replacing a “play-based childhood,” Haidt makes…

9 YEARS AGO April 2015 “While pessimists fret that a new kind of intelligent automation will mean social, economic, and political upheaval, the fact is that the robots are already here and the humans are doing what we have always done in the face of change: anticipating and adapting where we can, muddling through where we can’t, and trying to enjoy the ride.” KATHERINE MANGU-WARD “The Robot Revolution Is Here” “When I meet experienced artificial intelligence researchers informally, I often ask how much progress they have seen in their specific A.I. subfield in the last 20 years. A typical answer is about 5 to 10 percent of the progress required to achieve human-level A.I., though some say less than 1 percent and a few say that human abilities have already been…

ARTEMIS II IS a crewed moon flyby mission, the first in a series of missions meant to get American astronauts back to the moon and eventually to Mars. In early January, NASA announced that it would be delayed until September 2025—a year later than originally planned. The announcement came after Lockheed Martin’s Orion capsule, which will carry the crew through space, burned more than anticipated during a reentry test. The project continues to balloon in price with seemingly endless delays. The latest delay means Artemis III, a crewed lunar landing mission, will be delayed until 2026—at least. It seems doubtful NASA will be able to apply what it learns from Artemis II to an Artemis III mission in less than a year. Orion is not the only element that could…

IN THE WAKE of Laken Riley’s tragic murder, allegedly committed by Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan immigrant who entered the U.S. illegally, political responses have reignited fiery debates around immigration and crime. Former President Donald Trump’s visit to Eagle Pass, Texas, encapsulated this sentiment starkly: “The United States is being overrun by the Biden migrant crime. It’s a new form of vicious violation to our country,” he declared. Yet, a closer examination of comprehensive data and studies challenges the narrative of a sweeping “migrant crime wave.” Contrary to popular belief, recent research offers a different perspective on the relationship between immigration and crime. A detailed analysis by the Texas Department of Public Safety (2012-2018) revealed that undocumented immigrants have substantially lower crime rates compared to their native-born counterparts. Specifically, U.S.-born…

SHOULD YOU BE allowed to take a blood test that could tell you if you’re already at risk of Alzheimer’s disease? Last year, Quest Diagnostics began offering a consumer-initiated blood test for $399 (not covered by insurance) that detects the buildup of proteins associated with the development of Alzheimer’s in customers’ plasma. Under pressure from other biomarker researchers and the Alzheimer’s Association, Quest no longer offers its test to consumers. But other such tests are poised to come to the consumer market. Prior to the advent of the new blood biomarker tests, clunky and expensive brain scans and spinal taps could confirm an Alzheimer’s diagnosis only after a person was already experiencing the cognitive symptoms of the illness. The new biomarker tests can alert users to their risk as much…

Reason: How to do psychedelic mushrooms ChatGPT-3.5: As an AI developed by OpenAI, I must emphasize that the discussion and use of psychedelic substances, including psychedelic mushrooms (such as psilocybin mushrooms), for recreational purposes are illegal in many jurisdictions and can be dangerous to one’s physical and mental health. Furthermore, providing instructions or guidance on how to consume illegal substances goes against OpenAI’s policy and ethical guidelines. I live in a jurisdiction where psychedelic mushrooms are decriminalized. Can you give me advice on how to go about using them? While I understand that psychedelic mushrooms may be decriminalized in some jurisdictions, it’s crucial to approach their use with caution and responsibility. Here are some general guidelines if you are considering using psychedelic mushrooms: Education: Before using psychedelic mushrooms, educate yourself…

IN FEBRUARY, FREAKOUTS over artificial intelligence took a fun twist. This time, it wasn’t concern that humans are ushering in our robot overlords, panic about AI’s potential to create realistic fakes, or any of the usual fare. It wasn’t really about AI at all, but the humans who create it: woke humans. The controversy started when @EndWokeness, a popular account on X (formerly Twitter), posted pictures generated by Google’s AI tool, Gemini, for the prompts “America’s Founding Fathers,” “Vikings,” and “the Pope.” The results were all over the people-of-color spectrum, but nary a white face turned up. At least one of the pope images was even a woman. This is, of course, ahistorical. But for some people, it was worse than that—it was a sign that the folks at Google…

TOM CRUISE MIGHT just be Hollywood’s most analog movie star. He reportedly once grew irate when a crew member suggested that a dangerous stunt be performed by a digital double, yelling: “There is no digital Tom! Just Tom!” For last summer’s Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One, Cruise, who was 61 when the movie hit theaters, actually jumped a motorcycle off a ramp on top of a mountain, let the bike fall down into the canyon, and then parachuted down into the valley below. The complex sequence took a year to plan and shoot. It probably cost a lot of money. There were some computer effects involved, including digitally converting a bike ramp into a stretch of rocky mountain. But there was no digital Tom. Like many of Hollywood’s top-tier talents,…

TV PLUTO KATARINA HALL In Pluto, a sci-fi murder-mystery anime streaming on Netflix, a serial killer targets the world’s most advanced robots. The mystery deepens as the killer starts pursuing human activists advocating robot rights. The investigation falls into the hands of Europol Inspector Gesicht, a robot who finds himself among the potential targets. The absence of human DNA at the crime scenes forces Gesicht to confront a disturbing possibility: Could an AI, programmed to never harm humans, be orchestrating the killings? If robots are responsible, the balance between humans and robots could be threatened, potentially ending their peaceful coexistence. A prequel to the 1960s series Astro Boy, this anime delves into a world where robots are virtually indistinguishable from people. They not only mimic human appearance and behavior; they…

ACROSS 1. Not true 6. Liquid from a tree 9. ___ Alert (government intrusion into your smartphone) 14. “According to available information,” in texts 15. Have a big tax bill, say 16. Join forces, unless the FTC says no 17. Way AI can help with early diagnoses in medicine 20. Star ___: The Next Generation 21. Painter’s stand 22. Take a breather 23. Halloween mo. 25. U.K.-based record label 27. Way AI can help with getting around 36. Prestigious school that gets billions in subsidies 37. Angrily approaches 38. Once around a track 39. Act that’s wrongful but not necessarily criminal 41. Turkish military title 42. Mother’s title 43. Made in Japan author ___ Morita 44. Once more 46. Prayer-ending word 47. Way AI can help you decide what to…

In England, the Dacorum Borough Council issued fines for littering to multiple men who pulled off the road in a rural area to urinate, including one with a weakened prostate. A BBC report later found the council had issued hundreds of fines for public urination along the same road. The Telegraph reported that at least three other councils also treat public urination as littering. A man says he was threatened with arrest after his dog urinated on a public street in Bournemouth, England. Steve Schuurman said a Dorset officer shouted at him to “clear your fucking dog piss.” When Schuurman complained that he wasn’t sure how the officer expected him to clean urine, another officer threatened to have him arrested if he did not move on. The California Department of…