Air conditioning is great, until the power is knocked out by excessive heat. CC-licensed photo by Schezar on Flickr.
You can sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam.
There’s another post coming this week at the Social Warming Substack on Friday at 0845 UK time. Free signup.
A selection of 9 links for you. Cool it. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
The UK politician accused of being AI is actually a real person • The Verge
Mia Sato:
»
Mark Matlock, a political candidate for the right-wing Reform UK party, clarified in The Independent that he is a real person, not an AI bot, as some suspected.
Perhaps it was the glossy, hyper-smooth skin in a campaign image or the fact that Matlock had apparently missed events like the election count — but earlier this week, a thread on X questioned whether Matlock existed at all. “We might be on the verge of a HUGE SCANDAL,” the post read.
An AI-generated political candidate isn’t totally out of the realm of possibility: during this election, an executive at an AI company used an AI persona to run for Parliament in the UK. He lost, obviously, getting just 179 votes.
Matlock, however, is a human candidate who apparently was very ill during the election.
“I got pneumonia three days before election night I was exercising taking vitamins so I could attend but it was just not viable. On election night I couldn’t even stand,” he told The Independent. Matlock also provided the outlet with the original photo that drew attention, saying the background was removed and the color of his tie was changed. The photo does have that rubbery, uncanny look to it that’s come to be associated with AI, though —particularly Matlock’s hair and skin. This seems like a good lesson for all elected officials: don’t edit your pictures in a way that looks like a Midjourney result for the prompt “youthful, nonthreatening-looking politician.”
The 2024 elections in the US and abroad are already feeling the effects of the proliferation of AI tools, though, for now, we still haven’t seen an AI bot replace a human politician. (To be fair, some people would probably prefer that.)
«
Touchscreen-ready interface hidden in tvOS amid HomePod rumours • 9 to 5 Mac
Filipe Espósito:
»
We’ve seen a lot of evidence pointing to a new Apple home accessory (like a HomePod with a display) in recent months. And to corroborate all these rumors, the latest beta version of tvOS 18 available to developers has a new hidden interface that is touchscreen-ready.
The new tvOS interface, or system shell, is internally called “PlasterBoard.” Similar to SpringBoard (the iOS system shell), it provides some core interface elements for the system. 9to5Mac was able to confirm the existence of the new interface through the tvOS 18 beta 3 code.
Of course, this interface wasn’t meant to be seen by the public, but we found a way to access it. For instance, the new tvOS PlasterBoard interface has a Lock Screen with a passcode keypad very similar to the one on the iPhone and iPad. The PlasterBoard interface seems to be at an early stage of development, so there’s not much to see beyond basic Lock Screen controls.
Code and how the interface behaves strongly suggest that it was made for touchscreens and not for regular TVs. It’s also worth noting that there’s no option to lock Apple TV with a passcode, which only makes sense for more personal devices.
Last week, backend code revealed the existence of an unreleased “HomeAccessory17,1” device. There are currently no Apple products under this identifier category, but it’s very similar to the “AudioAccessory” identifier used for HomePods. Just like HomePods, this device also runs tvOS – but is based on the yet-to-be-announced A18 chip.
«
Nobody has any idea what this will look like (the mockups are bizarre, like the first iPhone guesses which stuck an iPod click wheel on a phone). Might sell more than the Vision Pro though.
unique link to this extract
China outspends the US on fusion in the race for energy’s holy grail • WSJ
Jennifer Hiller and Sha Hua:
»
A high-tech race is under way between the US and China as both countries chase an elusive energy source: fusion.
China is outspending the US, completing a massive fusion technology campus and launching a national fusion consortium that includes some of its largest industrial companies.
Crews in China work in three shifts, essentially around the clock, to complete fusion projects. And the Asian superpower has ten times as many Ph.D.s in fusion science and engineering as the US.
The result is an increasing worry among American officials and scientists that an early US lead is slipping away.
JP Allain, who heads the Energy Department’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, said China is spending around $1.5bn a year on fusion, nearly twice the U.S. government’s fusion budget. What’s more, China appears to be following a program similar to the road map that hundreds of US fusion scientists and engineers first published in 2020 in hopes of making commercial fusion energy.
“They’re building our long-range plan,” Allain said. “That’s very frustrating, as you can imagine.”
Scientists familiar with China’s fusion facilities said that if the country continues its current pace of spending and development, it will surpass the U.S. and Europe’s magnetic fusion capabilities in three or four years.
Fusion has long been a clean-energy dream. The process of combining atoms is the same process that powers the sun, and scientists hope to harness it to deliver almost-limitless energy. The technology faces daunting scientific and engineering hurdles, and some experts consider it a mirage that will remain out of reach.
«
The USSR economy was wrecked by trying to keep up with the imagined spending on the US’s (impossible) Star Wars defence programme. I wonder if fusion will do something similar for China’s.
unique link to this extract
Growth stalls at Elon Musk’s X • FT
Clara Murray and Cristina Criddle:
»
X has been hit by stalling user growth, as the social media platform’s owner Elon Musk divides audiences and it faces new competition from the rise of Meta’s rival platform Threads.
In previously unreleased figures, X said its number of global daily active users in the second quarter of this year was 251mn, a rise of 1.6% from the same period the year before.
This contrasts with the double-digit growth experienced in the years leading up to the acquisition by Musk, who took the listed company private for $44bn in October 2022.
Musk has proved a divisive leader of X, which he rebranded shortly after the takeover. The group has shed advertisers since Musk’s takeover partly due to his stance as a “free speech absolutist”, and his decision to remove most of the platform’s content moderators.
Critics argue this has led to a more toxic experience, but Musk claimed “drastic action” was needed to stem mounting financial losses.
His social media platform is also facing new competition for attention. Facebook owner Meta launched rival platform Threads a year ago in an effort to challenge X. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg revealed it had grown to 175m monthly active users. This compares with 600m monthly users claimed by X.
However, analytics company Sensor Tower estimates Threads has only 38m daily users — people who open the app at least once a day — suggesting users are using it less frequently than other social media platforms.
…A recent Ofcom survey found 17% of UK adults use X as a news source. However, engagement on the platform has been sliding during national election campaigns in the US, UK and France, Similarweb data showed.
«
I know: eX-Twitter had growth? But that Threads number is interesting. It isn’t that sticky.
unique link to this extract
The case for criminalizing scientific misconduct · Chris Said
Said is a data scientist at Propel:
»
In 2006, Sylvain Lesné published an influential Nature paper showing how amyloid oligomers could cause Alzheimer’s disease. With over 2,300 citations, the study was the 4th most cited paper in Alzheimer’s basic research since 2006, helping spur up to $287 million of research into the oligomer hypothesis, according to the NIH.
Sixteen years later, Science reported that key images of the paper were faked, almost certainly by Lesné himself, and all co-authors except him have agreed to retract the paper. The oligomer hypothesis has failed every clinical trial.
Lesné’s alleged misconduct misled a field for over a decade. We don’t know how much it has delayed an eventual treatment for Alzheimer’s, and it was not the only paper supporting the oligomer hypothesis. But if it delayed a successful treatment by just 1 year, I estimate that it would have caused the loss of 36 million QALYs (Quality Adjusted Life Years), which is more than the QALYs lost by Americans in World War II. (See my notebook for an explanation.)
Lesné is not alone. This year we learned of rampant image manipulation at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, including in multiple papers published by the institute’s CEO and COO. So far 6 papers have been retracted and 31 corrected. The 6 retracted papers alone have 1,400 citations and have surely polluted the field and slowed down progress. If they delayed a successful cancer drug by just 1 year, I estimate they would have caused the loss of 15 million QALYs, or twice the number of QALYs lost by Americans in World War I.
To put it bluntly, scientists who commit research misconduct extract money from a trusting public so that they may enrich themselves and gain prestige. Along the way they knowingly pollute future research, undermine the credibility of science, and may cause the deaths of millions of people.
And yet, researchers who commit misconduct rarely face any consequences. The vast majority are never caught. Sylvain Lesné, the lead author on the Alzheimer’s paper, remains a professor at the University of Minnesota and still receives NIH funding. Despite clear evidence of image manipulation and all co-authors agreeing to a retraction, the university “has closed this review with no findings of research misconduct pertaining to these figures.”
«
Heat waves are why your AC can’t save you anymore • CNN
Laura Paddison:
»
When Hurricane Ida battered Louisiana with catastrophic flooding and powerful winds in August 2021, more than 1 million people lost power. Then came the heat wave. Temperatures rose above 90ºF — a sucker punch to those sweltering in their homes, unable to turn on air conditioning as power outages stretched on for days.
It was the heat that proved deadliest in New Orleans, responsible for at least nine of the city’s 14 hurricane-related deaths.
The combination of a hurricane, heat wave and a multi-day power outage is a nightmare scenario, but it’s one set to become more common as humans continue to warm the planet, fueling devastating extreme weather. And it reveals an uncomfortable truth about the vulnerability of humanity’s ultimate protection against heat: air conditioning (AC).
Air conditioning is far from perfect. It gobbles up energy, most of which still comes from planet-heating fossil fuels, meaning it exacerbates the very problem it’s used to mitigate. Plus, it’s only available to those who can afford it, further widening social inequality.
But it is also a lifeline against increasingly brutal heat, the deadliest type of extreme weather. It allows people to live in places where temperatures push close to the limits of survivability and where extreme heat persists even at night.
Demand for AC is exploding, expected to triple worldwide by 2050, as global temperatures soar and incomes grow. The problem is that without electricity, access to air conditioning is lost. And many electrical grids are being pushed to a breaking point due to increasingly frequent extreme weather and soaring demand for cooling.
Weather accounted for 80% of major power outages across the US between 2000 and 2023, according to a report from Climate Central, a nonprofit research group.
«
New study sparks debate about whether H5N1 virus in cows is adapted to better infect humans • STAT
Megan Molteni:
»
A study published Monday provides new evidence that the H5N1 virus currently causing an outbreak of bird flu in U.S. dairy cattle may be adapted to better infecting humans than other circulating strains of the virus, a result that is already courting controversy among the world’s leading flu researchers.
Across the globe, different influenza viruses are constantly circulating in many different kinds of animals. One of the things that determines what kind of animal a given flu virus can infect is the type of receptors present on the outside of tissues that virus comes in contact with. Flu viruses that typically infect birds have an affinity for latching on to the particular shape of a receptor commonly found in the guts of avian species. Human influenza viruses, on the other hand, prefer the shape of a receptor that lines our upper respiratory tracts.
The new work, published in Nature, showed that the bovine H5N1 virus could bind to both receptors.
“There is an ability to bind to human-type receptors,” the study’s lead author, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, told STAT in an interview. But he cautioned that it’s too soon to say whether this ability means the recently emerged bovine branch of the H5N1 evolutionary tree has increased potential to become a significant human pathogen. “Binding to human-type receptors is not the only factor that is required for an avian flu virus to replicate well in humans,” said Kawaoka, a leading influenza virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied H5N1 for decades.
«
Just a watching brief, don’t worry, nothing to see here.
unique link to this extract
Lucy Letby: killer or coincidence? Why some experts question the evidence • The Guardian
Felicity Lawrence:
»
Throughout the trial period, and much of the preceding six years when Cheshire police were investigating a cluster of baby deaths at the Countess of Chester (CoC) hospital and had arrested Letby, laws intended to ensure juries are not influenced by stories in the press meant British journalists reported only what was said in court.
Outside court, however, there has been a growing chorus of voices raising questions about some of the key evidence presented in the trial.
There was no forensic evidence to prove her guilt and no one saw Letby – who continues to maintain her innocence – causing harm.
That also applied to the retrial that reached a guilty verdict last week. Although one of the doctors concluded that she must have tampered with the breathing tube of a baby on three occasions, he did not actually see her doing it.
The prosecution’s case instead drew on accounts from doctors and nurses on the hospital’s neonatal unit and relied heavily on statistical evidence and expert opinion on complex medical points, some of which took days to explain to the lay jury. It is these opinions that some clinicians claim do not stand up to scrutiny.
The case was high-profile and emotionally charged. Successive juries and the families of the babies who died are convinced Letby was responsible. While few of the experts the Guardian spoke to went as far as to say they believed Letby was innocent, the questions about the evidence called into doubt, they said, the safety of the convictions.
A Guardian investigation has interviewed dozens of these experts and seen further evidence from emails and documents. Those raising concerns include several leading consultant neonatologists, some with current or recent leadership roles, and several senior neonatal nurses. Others are public health professionals, GPs, biochemists, a leading government microbiologist, and lawyers. Several of those still working in the NHS have asked to remain anonymous, fearing the impact if they are named.
«
I honestly cannot decide on the Letby case. The alternatives are: an apparently nondescript nurse killed or tried to kill more than a dozen babies. Or a colossal coincidence of failure. Both are incredibly unlikely. But only one is true.
unique link to this extract
A Pigouvian pollution tax on ChatGPT • ratpie
The eponymous, anonymous “ratpie” back in January 2023:
»
If one had to characterise the state of mind among knowledge and creative workers, musicians included, in 2022, worries about meeting demand for quantity or variety of content would not figure high. Misinformation, provenance, and the difficulties of making a living, yes. Being short a few million blog posts, product reviews, or new music tracks, no.
So it was perhaps a bit surprising when the appearance of a flock of AI engines, and their ubermensch ChatGPT, an easy to use interface to a new text AI, generated (pun intended) wild enthusiasm, along with some doomsterism, and of course digital reams of new content as the commentariat contemplated their own industry’s potential demise.
…Some activities create costs that are borne by people who don’t share in the gains of those undertaking them. Congested roads, smoke from factory chimneys, and unusual demands on publicly funded health services are examples. Economists think of these as costs external to the economic activity associated with producing things, driving somewhere, or smoking tobacco. There are rare cases of external gains too; think of how good state-funded schools inflate property prices in their catchment areas.
The external costs from ChatGPT are the teachers’ time and effort, and pupils’ lack of learning caused by cheating at school, incorrect Stack Overflow advice followed, as well as revenue extracted from copyright markets and the extra efforts human creators need to put in to compete. Arthur Pigou himself, Cambridge Professor of Economics in the first half of the C20th, was deeply interested in welfare. He argued that tax was the simplest and most effective way to deal with gains and losses that fell to those outside of a transaction.
As well as being a redress for harmful activity, Pigouvian taxes can provide funding for more of what we do want. This is important – interventions need to have broad popular understanding and support. In this case the harms fall on education and the arts, two significant absorbers of taxpayers money which could be supplemented or offset.
I asked ChatGPT if it thought it should be taxed; it denied any knowledge of itself. It might not yet write a decent poem, but AI has clearly got its head around tax evasion.
«
Neat. Reminds me of the line from Veep, when the fictional vice-president goes to Silicon Valley to pump some tech companies for money, only to be told: “we like to think of ourselves as post-tax.”
unique link to this extract
| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 