It Will Be A While Before We Know If SearchGPT Is A Serious Google Competitor.

This appeared last week:

Look out Google, here comes SearchGPT

Gerrit De Vynck

Jul 26, 2024 – 9.25am

ChatGPT maker OpenAI has revealed a new web search product that will directly challenge search giant Google and lay out its vision for how chatbots may change the way people interact with the broader web.

The free tool, called SearchGPT, consists of a search box similar to that of a traditional search engine. Users can ask follow-up questions in a conversational tone to get more specific answers. SearchGPT will initially be available to a small group of users and publishers before eventually being integrated into ChatGPT, OpenAI said in a blog post.

Since ChatGPT’s launch in November 2022, tech analysts have suggested that chatbots could upend the way people surf the web. The bots are trained on huge amounts of information scraped from the internet, which they can draw on to answer questions. But the technology also constantly makes up information, making the tools unreliable in terms of accuracy.

AI companies have tried to fix the problem by plugging their chatbots into search engines. ChatGPT already searches Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, to find up-to-date information for some queries.

Perplexity AI, an AI search start-up, uses AI to search the web, read articles and provide summaries that it aims to make more direct and conversational in comparison to regular Google search results.

OpenAI’s push into search comes after Google in May jumped heavily into using generative AI in search. After ChatGPT’s launch, the company began testing its own AI search features, and in May it put AI answers at the top of search results for most people in the United States.

The results have been mixed, with some of the search answers being nonsensical or just plain incorrect, such as Google’s bot telling people to put glue on pizza. A spokesperson for Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Search partnerships

It’s unclear whether the new OpenAI tool also works with Bing. Microsoft uses OpenAI’s technology as part of a licensing agreement. A spokesperson for OpenAI said its search tool draws on information from “third-party partners and direct feeds”.

Publishers, from newspapers to one-person bloggers, have raised concerns that the move to AI answers over search results could undermine or even destroy their businesses. Web publishers rely on traffic from Google to stay afloat and make money, and they have had a long and uneasy relationship with the search giant, which often disrupts web publishers with tweaks and changes to the way search results work.

OpenAI has tried to position itself as more of an ally to publishers by signing deals with news organisations such as News Corp, the Atlantic, the Associated Press and Politico’s parent company, Axel Springer.

The new search tool gives the source of the information and links back to it, according to images provided in OpenAI’s blog post. The announcement featured positive quotes from the chief executives of News Corp and the Atlantic.

News organisations have also begun developing their own AI-driven tools to keep up with tech companies. The Washington Post launched a “Climate Answers” bot in July that uses generative AI to answer readers’ questions about climate change, based on information from Washington Post stories.

Individual news workers, including at some companies that have signed deals with OpenAI, are more sceptical. Some journalists have said they are worried that AI trained on their work will eventually be used to replace them.

The union representing workers at the Atlantic said in May that it was “deeply troubled” with the company’s deal with OpenAI.

OpenAI also said it would be “improving the experience” in areas such as commerce, signalling that the tool could have advertisements, another direct challenge to Google’s dominant business model of showing ads on search results.

Washington Post

Here is the link:

https://www.afr.com/technology/openai-reveals-searchgpt-the-ai-web-search-bot-to-challenge-google-20240726-p5jwru

This has to be very good news with some innovation and competition coming to the search space. It will be fun to see how the space evolves and how much more useful it can become!

Fasten the seatbelts – this will be a battle royale!

David.

I Think The Medical Profession Needs To Work Much Harder On This!

This appeared last week:

More Australians die while waiting for an organ donor

By Mary Ward

July 28, 2024 — 5.00am

In 2016, the Burrows family were living in San Diego while dad Anthony served with the Australian navy. In the middle of his three-year stint, Anthony and wife Clare welcomed a baby girl, Kate.

In her first weeks of life, Kate’s skin started to turn yellow. The family suspected jaundice, but a blood test revealed she had a condition called biliary atresia – her body could not process bile.

Kate was fortunate to be matched with an altruistic donor, who would provide a portion of their liver for her tiny body. But after a number of weeks, it became apparent the nine-month-old wasn’t responding well to the piece of liver she’d received. She remained in hospital with ongoing complications, as the family’s time in the US came to an end.

“They always tell you there’s a percentage of transplants that fail, but you never think you will be in that percentage,” Clare said. “We got Kate to a point where she was stable enough to be on a plane, and then we left.”

The Burrows arrived back in Sydney on a Friday. The following Monday, they received a call from the Children’s Hospital at Westmead: a local donor had been found for Kate.

On March 1, 2017, the then 15-month-old received her new transplant.

Organ donations dropping

The organisation which manages organ donation in Australia, DonateLife, is concerned about a decline in donor numbers, with those registering to donate falling by 13 per cent in NSW and 15 per cent in Victoria in 2023. In some parts of south-west Sydney, fewer than one in five adults are registered organ donors, while in Melbourne’s Brimbank and Greater Dandenong councils, the rate is one in 10.

More than 50 Australians died while on the organ transplant waitlist last year. Twenty-two died while on the liver transplant waitlist alone, compared to five in 2022. There are about 1800 Australians on the waitlist.

NSW state medical director at DonateLife Dr Michael O’Leary said organ donation sign-ups had remained pretty static for years until last year’s fall, with an actual bump in 2021 when more people downloaded the Medicare app to receive their COVID-19 vaccination certificate.

“It was actually just quite lucky that to get onto the Medicare app and get your certificate, the button was really close to the one for signing up to be an organ donor,” he said.

O’Leary said multiple factors affect how many make it off the waitlist in any given year. “We are nowhere near being able to provide organs as required for transplantation in Australia,” he said. “Anyone on the waitlist is on there because the specialists in organ failure felt these patients were warranted for transplantation.”

Kate proud of her scars

Now aged nine, Kate is a happy and healthy year 4 student, who recently gave a speech about organ donation to her classmates.

“She’s quite proud of her scars. She takes medication day and night for anti-rejection, but if you met her you wouldn’t know,” said her mother Clare. “She’s met every single milestone since she had the transplant.”

In the months after their daughter’s life-saving gift, the Burrows reached out to her donor’s family, but didn’t hear back.

In September last year, they did. Kate’s donor was a young woman who loved to dance, and wanted to be a paramedic when she grew up. The Burrows wrote back, telling them that Kate, too, loved dancing, as well as playing soccer and taking part in Nippers.

“Kate wrote that letter, and she was so grateful to be able to share what she has done in the years since,” said Clare. “We encourage her to see her donation as a very special gift.”

Here is the link:

https://www.smh.com.au/healthcare/more-australians-die-while-waiting-for-an-organ-donor-20240719-p5jv1f.html

In another life, a very long time ago, I found myself doing the almost unimaginable. In the office outside the ICU I was trying to console a family of a recently severely head-injured teenager who I knew had but a few days to exist while at the same time I was seeking consent to remove many of his organs, which would transform the lives of five of six people with new and long lasting organs.

This was, at once, the hardest, most rewarding and saddest role I ever had to undertake. It is an awful job but at the same time very hopeful and rewarding – especially when the recipients dropped in to say hello – and you could see the life-changing outcome you had helped in!

There needs to be much better education on all this and better explanations of the care that is taken to ensure the best outcome for all.

Australia is not doing anywhere near well enough in ensuring that organs from the clinically dead – and you are really dead if you brain has irreversibly and totally ceased to function -  are properly used and deployed to do the most good! (A decent ongoing national education program is needed)

Having seen the recipients years later I know it is a truly good thing! The dead can really help the living continue a rich life and we need to work harder at it!

David.

Terrifyingly We Have Places That Are Almost As Hot As Nevada And Not That Far From CBDs.

This appeared last week:

Extreme heat

Life at 115F: a sweltering summer pushes Las Vegas to the brink

Record heat is killing hundreds in Clark county. But one of America’s fastest-growing metro areas just keeps getting bigger

Gabrielle Canon in Las Vegas

Thu 25 Jul 2024 21.00 AEST Last modified on Fri 26 Jul 2024 02.31 AEST

Hot air wafted through the heavy, gold-lined doors of a Las Vegas casino as they opened, offering a reminder of a disaster quietly unfolding outside. Even though the sun had just set on an evening in mid-July, temperatures were yet to dip below 100F (37C).

Spawned from a paved-over oasis in the Mojave, this desert metropolis has always been hot. But a string of brutal heatwaves this summer has pushed Sin City to a deadly simmer.

It’s hard to tell from inside the cool, cavernous buildings that line the Las Vegas Strip, which have become unwitting refuges from the summer elements. Tourists willing to enter labyrinths of slot machines and blaring pop music, shops and shows can spend hours lost in an alternate world, away from the sun.

For the 2.3 million people who call this valley home, the dangerous elements are harder to ignore. When temperatures climb, shadeless streets are hot enough to cause second-degree burns in seconds.

This June was the city’s hottest on record. In July, things got even worse: the city experienced a record seven days at 115F or higher and set a new all-time high of 120F.

The heat is just a signal of what’s to come. Temperatures in Las Vegas are rising faster than almost anywhere else in the US.

Meanwhile, Clark county, where Las Vegas is located, is bursting at the seams. The region is among the fastest-growing metro areas in the US. Roughly 2 million people have moved here over the last 50 years, with nearly a million more expected by 2060.

I have been living here since 1972 and it would get hot – but not this kind of hot

Louis Lacey, Help of Southern Nevada

To accommodate them, the county has thrown its support behind a federal bill that would open up 25,000 acres of the surrounding desert for housing and commercial development. The county also has plans for a new airport, slated for completion in 2037, that would pave over thousands more acres of arid landscape near the California border.

New shopping centers and cul de sacs all mean more concrete – and more heat – in an area where the ability to afford or access air conditioning can already mean the difference between life and death.

Even after she spent most of the day inside, the heat still shocked Inata, a woman who traveled with her friends Chastity and Belinda from Massachusetts to vacation in the city last week. “It was horrendous,” she said. “In Massachusetts, if there was weather like this, there would be ambulances around.”

The three women said they struggled to cool down at the pool because the warm water offered little relief and the surrounding pavement burned their feet. “I don’t know how Las Vegas people do it but kudos to them,” she added. “I couldn’t do this every day.”

A daily battle for survival

The record heat is pushing residents to their limits – and has perhaps been most sinister for the more than 5,000 people in the county estimated to be experiencing homelessness.

Some have opted to seek refuge in underground tunnels during the summer, risking the waters that surge through them during summer monsoons over exposure to the brutal heat.

“We are trying to live – and it’s difficult,” said Tyson Williams, who has spent the last year living in his tent on the east side of town.

Williams paused to wipe the sweat rolling down his face as he filled a rolling cooler with water bottles provided to him by an outreach team, before downing an entire bottle in a single chug. A dilapidated umbrella he positioned over his tent did little to provide relief.

Born and raised in Las Vegas, he is a brick mason by trade, but now he panhandles for money to buy ice. He has just landed a job waving a sign outside a smoke shop, which will keep him outside and exposed to the elements. “We are all just one check away from being homeless,” he said.

Louis Lacey spends most of his summer days trying to save the lives of people like Williams, as the director of Help of Southern Nevada, a non-profit organization that hands out water, hygiene kits, and hope as part of a larger mission to get more people into permanent housing.

“I have been living here since 1972 and it would get hot – but not this kind of hot,” Lacey said last week as he drove through the city scanning sidewalks and drainages for anyone in need of aid.

As someone who has experienced homelessness himself, he said, the work is a calling. It’s also laced with heartbreak.

There was the woman whose leg was amputated after she got third-degree burns from passing out on the scalding hot sidewalk. She now uses a wheelchair. Just last week, he and other aid workers rushed to revive another woman, age 81, who passed out in an encampment. They found her surrounded by her pet dogs, who had all died in the heat. He was relieved they were able to save her. That’s not always how the story ends.

July is typically when local health officials report the highest number of heat-related deaths. Between 2022 and 2023 there was an 80% increase in fatalities, with the official number around 300, nearly double those counted in 2020.

The actual toll is believed to be far higher. Dozens of unhoused people died in the heat last year, and many of them, Lacey said, weren’t included in official fatality counts. He knows of at least 62 people and that doesn’t include others who got swept away by water in the tunnels.

This year the heat was worse – and while the numbers haven’t been released yet, many fear this July, too, will be brutal.

Emergencies on the rise as development rolls ahead

With impacts only expected to intensify in the coming years, the city and county are working to implement strategies to keep people safe.

There are 39 cooling stations across Clark county, but almost all are operated by unpaid volunteering organizations and typically close in the late afternoons. Only one city-run shelter is open during nights, weekends and holidays.

Jace Radke, a spokesperson for the city of Las Vegas, acknowledged by email that there were challenges with heat safety but cited wide-scale reliance on air conditioning as a protective measure.

He also said the city planned to plant 60,000 trees by 2050, part of a program that has already planted 3,000 since 2020. The county has also laid out ambitious sustainability plans focused on expanding affordable housing, reducing emissions, and addressing the worsening effects of the climate crisis such as drought, heat and water shortages.

But there’s still a long way to go and lawmakers have lagged on implementing important mitigations, including heat protections for workers. Emergencies, meanwhile, have continued to surge in frequency.

Jordan Moore, a spokesperson for Las Vegas Fire & Rescue, said there has been a “significant increase in heat-related emergencies” in the past month. Meanwhile in Henderson, a Clark county city south-east of Las Vegas, heat-related emergencies are up 53%, according to the deputy fire chief Scott Vivier.

Delivery drivers, warehouse operators, our construction trades – basically anyone who has to work outside – we have seen emergencies from them

Scott Vivier, Las Vegas Fire & Rescue

Populations including elderly people, unhoused people, those with underlying health conditions, and children are among the most at-risk. But this year the department is also getting numerous calls from people on the job.

“Delivery drivers, warehouse operators, our construction trades – basically anyone who has to work outside – we have seen emergencies from them and people with regular medical emergencies and during a normal day the heat causes them to succumb,” Vivier said. Heat-related complaints filed with the Nevada occupational safety and health administration (Osha) jumped 172% last July compared with a year earlier.

Vivier’s department is among the first in the region to use a new tool called the polar pod, which enables emergency responders to pack someone in ice and water while they transport them to the hospital. They have even trained to use the pods to revive overheated pets, Vivier added.

But Vivier is still worried about what the future will bring. “Heat is the No 1 weather-related cause of death for people around the world,” he said. “It’s a major, major issue we should all be concerned about.”

Even with the rising toll, the county’s hopes to grow deeper into the desert haven’t slowed.

Far from the din of the city and the suburbs, the hum of churning traffic fades into the background, replaced by soft breeze and silence. If the plan is enacted, these desert hillsides dotted in yucca trees and creosote could soon be covered in homes and strip malls.

Questions remain about whether building out the desert floor, proposed as a fix for the housing crisis in Clark county, will only perpetuate the dangers already alive in the city and suburbs.

“The desert is not a place for people who are living on the margins to begin with,” said Kyle Roerink, the executive director of the Great Basin Water Nework, an environmental advocacy organization. Roerink and others are also concerned about Joshua trees and wild desert tortoises, along with a host of other plants and animals, who would be sacrificed to satisfy continued sprawl.

“We are raised to believe that what is behind us right now is just normal and is doable, and fine, and that everything will be OK,” he said, waving toward the scorching cityscape where the history of rapid expansion in Las Vegas is already on full display. When many of those homes were built, water was much more freely available and the summers were far less lethal. “But these are radically transformed landscapes – and that comes with consequences.”

Back in east Las Vegas, Louis Lacey is wrapping up an afternoon of administering aid. The housing crisis and those impacted by it are all that is keeping him here. He dreams of the small town he will move to when he is finally ready to hang up his hat.

“I have been living in this hell for so long and I feel like this is my mission … But when I am done I want to move to a town where it rains and has four seasons. I don’t want to be in this,” he said, gesturing to the gridlocked traffic.

That doesn’t mean he’ll stop worrying about the city’s future and where the 800 people his organization helped get shelter will wind up. “When I moved here, there were 200,000 people – now there are almost 3 million,” he said.

“The only question I have is: is the growth sustainable?” Lacey sighed deeply, his expression pained. “We have the land,” he said, “but do we have the resources?”

Here is the link:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/25/las-vegas-extreme-heat

This is a truly dystopian vision of what climate change is going to bring to the west of Sydeny and Melbourne in 20 to 30 years. I wonder will  the population of Western Sydney be ready for it – I fear not!

This is another of those blogs where I think mortality may save me as I am not anticipating seeing my 105^th birthday!

While no one says it much it is clear that Climate Change is chasing us and not too many years from now will catch us! Having grown up in Cowra (Western NSW) in the 1960’s when 100’s were usual in summer and air conditioning had yet to be invented (It was awful!) I suspect Sydney has seen nothing yet. It will be interesting to see how we all cope over the next 20 years of so!

David.

It Really Does Defy Belief That Australia Could Run Out Of, Or Be Short Of, IV Saline!

I was just left totally aghast at this incredible headline!

Health

Explainer

Australia is facing a shortage of ‘crucial’ IV fluids. What does it mean and who will be affected?

Intravenous fluids have a ‘myriad of uses’ in the health system, but supply is expected to be constrained throughout 2024

Natasha May

Sat 27 Jul 2024 16.47 AESTLast modified on Sun 28 Jul 2024 09.32 AEST

The peak doctors’ body is warning the health system could come to a
grinding halt next week if an unprecedented shortage of intravenous (IV) fluid isn’t resolved.

The medicines regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), issued a shortage alert on Friday for intravenous (IV) fluid products expected to be constrained throughout 2024, due to global manufacturing issues and an unexpected increase in demand.

The assistant minister for health, Ged Kearney, who is a former nurse, says IV fluids are “crucial” with “a myriad of uses” in the health system. So what are they, how are they used in hospitals and what’s being done about the shortage?

---

What are IV fluids?

IV fluids contain a saline solution – salt in water at a concentration which is similar to that of the plasma in our bodies. They are made under highly specialised manufacturing conditions using purified, sterile water with sterile electrolyte components. They also have highly specialised packaging and are designed to be compatible with intravenous giving sets to allow the fluids to be injected into a person’s veins.

---

What are they used for?

They are used to administer medications directly into the bloodstream, including chemotherapy and anaesthesia.

But the fluids can be crucial medicine in themselves to support kidney function in patients who are dehydrated and keeping the blood pressure up of patients with sepsis as well as blood loss.

As a result, the IV fluids are crucial for patients undergoing surgery with open wounds and haemorrhaging in emergency settings.

An artery is filled with one-third red blood cells and two-thirds plasma, which IV fluids replace with similar concentrations of sodium and chloride.

Prof David Story, the president of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists and head of the University of Melbourne’s department of critical care, says “while it’s physiologically OK for the red cell blood count to drop, it is essential to replace the blood volume”.

Organ injury, including to the heart, kidneys and brains, can occur if people become hypovolemic, where the loss of blood volume makes the heart unable to pump enough blood to the body, Story says.

---

How will patients be affected?

The president of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, Prof Jennifer Martin, says there are workarounds when it comes to the use of IV fluids to administer other medications. “There are other ways to deliver medication besides diluting them in a bag of saline – such as oral fluids, or giving medicines as a slow push intravenous injection.” However, Martin says the IV fluid bags can be safer, and enable hospital staff to get on with other jobs.

There are not the same workarounds for surgery, Martin says, where the patient is not conscious and cannot drink, but is losing much more fluids from their open surgical site “because you’ve got, say the abdomen open, then you lose a lot of fluid that way”. However, the IV fluids are needed to deliver anaesthetics, and to keep patient blood pressure up during surgery as well as after an operation, she says.

As a result, the Australian Medical Association has warned some surgery may need to be cancelled. Non-cancer elective surgeries would probably be the first to be delayed in the event there was not enough IV fluid, Story says.

---

Is it just human health that’s affected?

Like humans, animals undergoing proceedures also require IV fluids. The president of the Australian Veterinary Association, Dr Sally Colgan, told the ABC the shortage was “very concerning” for vets, who have been facing supply issues in clinics.

---

What’s being done to address the shortage?

Kearney says the medicines regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), is working hard to make sure there are alternatives.

In an effort to address the shortage the TGA has allowed multiple overseas-registered alternative saline fluids to be imported, and is considering more applications for supply.

State and territory health departments directly manage supply in public hospitals, and the TGA says it is advising them when new suppliers are approved.

The TGA says it is also liaising with the three Australian suppliers to address any regulatory barriers.

Here is the link:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jul/27/australia-is-facing-a-shortage-of-crucial-intravenous-iv-fluids-what-does-it-mean-and-who-will-be-affected

I read this with a sense of total incredulity! If I was reading about Zambia or Namibia I could have just about believed what I read, but Australia?

I wonder who are the grossly overpaid drones who have let this situation and how many of them still have a job? Zero I would hope!

Seriously though there is not enough thought given to things like sovereign capability. We are an isolated island continent which could face all sorts of supply chain disruptions, and we should be properly prepared.

The WHO has even created a list of essential medicines to give us a head start on knowing what we need to stockpile for say a 1-3 month period. Here is the link updated every 2 years.

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-MHP-HPS-EML-2023.02

Keeping people safe and healthy is a core Government responsibility for heaven’s sake!

Frankly I reckon is betrays spectacular Government incompetence that this issue has emerged. I look forward to the list of those who have been fired! (0 I bet!) There is no such thing as accountability these days I fear....

What do you think?

David.

AusHealthIT Poll Number 757 – Results – 28 July 2024.

Here are the results of the poll.

In The Light Of "The Outage" Do We Need To Rethink Just How We Prepare For Such Events Or Should We Be Pleased Just How Well It Was Handled?

Yes - It Was Not Ideally Handled!                   21 (64%)

No                                                                        12 (36%)

I Have No Idea                                                      0 (0%)

Total No. Of Votes: 33

A pretty clear cut vote suggesting a touch more preparedness might not go astray! It was amazing that the failure could last for so long!

Any insights on the poll are welcome, as a comment, as usual!

A very good voting turnout. 

0 of 33 who answered the poll admitted to not being sure about the answer to the question!

Again, many, many thanks to all those who voted! 

David.

Surely It Is The Height Of Mis-Management That The Country Is Apparently Short Of IV Saline?

 Heads should roll I reckon for total incompetence! What idiots are running this show?

David.

I Really Wonder If The Author Is Not Being Too Cautious?

This appeared a few days ago”

Here’s a brain teaser: Will AI ever reach consciousness?

Paul Davies

Physicist, writer

July 20, 2024 — 5.00am

Consciousness is the most basic aspect of human experience, and yet it remains deeply mysterious. Centuries of deliberation by philosophers, theologians and scientists have made little headway in explaining its origin.

Now there is a new twist to this age-old conundrum. The rapid advance in artificial intelligence, or AI, has reignited the question of whether a machine can truly think and feel and possess a sense of self, or whether there is some special form of magic going on inside biological brains that isn’t captured by the world’s most powerful computer systems.

There is no doubt that products such as ChatGPT are dazzling in their capabilities, such as writing essays and even producing computer code. Superficially, they seem to “know what they are doing”. But that is an illusion: these systems are trained to trawl vast amounts of data and organise it in humanly useful ways. That doesn’t make them conscious, though.

Speculation about AI consciousness is based on the popular misconception that the human brain is a type of digital supercomputer. To be sure, both brains and computers process information with extraordinary efficiency, but they do so in very different ways. The pertinent question is not whether digital computers as we know them can be conscious, but whether we can build systems of some sort in the lab that mimic the way our brains work.

One idea is to use neurons as circuit components to perform basic information-processing tasks. Presumably, conscious experiences are generated by complex electrochemical patterns swirling inside our heads. Perhaps proto-consciousness can be conjured up in the lab by recreating such patterns?

Philosophers, following Thomas Nagel, often express the essence of consciousness as “what it is like” to be, say, a human or a bat or a bee. Well, is it “like” anything at all to be a jumble of wires, neurons and gel sloshing about in a dish? And how would such a conscious entity let us know the answer anyway?

Artificial mini-brains in a dish offer a bottom-up way to probe consciousness. But there is also a top-down approach, which is to augment human brains with hi-tech electronic gizmos. Elon Musk’s Neurolink company claims to have implanted microscopic needles into a human subject to enable a person to operate external smart devices by the power of thought alone. It could be the first step on the way to merging brains and supercomputers.

Eventually, electronic augmentation of brains may noticeably affect “what it is like” to be human. Unlike humble dish-brains, these “transhumans” could report on their enhanced subjective experiences.

Any attempt to unravel, mimic or enhance consciousness is an ethical minefield. If an artificial system is conscious, does it have rights and responsibilities, emotions, a sense of free will? Would humans have the right to switch off or kill such a sentient being if we felt threatened?

Running through these troubling questions is an assumption that consciousness isn’t an all-or-nothing phenomenon but comes in degrees. We feel far more remorse killing a dog than a cockroach because we suppose that a cockroach isn’t all that conscious anyway and probably has no sense of self or emotions.

But how can we be sure? And in the highly charged debates about abortion, euthanasia and locked-in syndrome, the actual level of consciousness is usually the critical criterion.

Without a theory of consciousness, however, it’s impossible to quantify it. Scientists haven’t a clue what exactly is the defining feature of neural activity that supports conscious experience.

Why do the electrical patterns in my head generate sentience and agency, whereas the electrical patterns in Ausgrid NSW don’t? (At least, I don’t think they do.) And we all accept that when we fall asleep, our consciousness is diminished, and may fade away completely.

A few years ago, the neuroscientist and sleep researcher Giulio Tononi at the University of Wisconsin proposed a mathematical theory of consciousness based on the way information flow is organised, roughly, the arrangement of feedback loops, which in theory enables a specific quantity of consciousness to be assigned to various physical states and systems.

Is a thermostat conscious? A dish-brain? ChatGPT? A lobster in a boiling pot? A month-old embryo? A “brain-dead” road accident victim? These vexatious examples might be easier to confront, and to legislate about, if we really understood the physical basis of consciousness.

The foregoing advances, while promising, tell us little about the subjective experiences that attend conscious events, such as the redness of red, the sound of a bell, or the roughness of sandpaper, sensations that philosophers call qualia.

How can we tell if an agent really has an inner life experiencing such qualia, or is just an automaton, a zombie, programmed to respond appropriately to sensory input, for example, by stopping at a red traffic light without actually “seeing red”?

And if one cannot tell from the outside what is going on inside, why does this inner subjective realm exist in the first place? What advantage does it confer in that great genetic lottery called Darwinian evolution? Even if we create a truly conscious AI, that final problem may lay forever beyond our ken.

Paul Davies is Regents’ Professor of Physics at Arizona State University and author of over 30 books, including The Demon in the Machine. He will be speaking at the Sydney Opera House as part of the Your Brain on AI event on August 17. Tickets: sydneyoperahouse.com

Here is the link:

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/here-s-a-brain-teaser-will-ai-ever-reach-consciousness-20240718-p5jutz.html

I have to say I think that we will see effective machine conscious in the next 20-30 years and that there will be pretty parallel development of machine intelligence over a like period. No proof but it is hard to imagine it will take much longer than that.

What is really above my pay grade are the implications of such progress and how society at large will respond to such a reality.

What do you think – will generally smart machine emerge in the next decade or two and what will it mean for us humans?

David.

This Is Probably An Important Application Of AI In The Health Sector.

 This appeared last week:

Using AI, this app may tell if you have an STI

By Mary Ward

July 21, 2024 — 5.00am

An app developed by Australian researchers is showing promise in diagnosing sexually transmitted infections (STIs) using artificial intelligence, amid a surge of people testing positive to the diseases.

There has been a post-pandemic upswing in cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, a trend attributed to increased testing but also a decline in condom use.

Australia is also in the midst of an outbreak of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, with 28 cases reported in the fortnight ending June 23. The outbreak is being driven by local transmission rather than people bringing the disease from overseas, say federal health authorities. Most cases were recorded in Victoria, followed by Queensland.

Researchers at Monash University and Alfred Health’s Melbourne Sexual Health Centre hope their new app will give patients an embarrassment-free way to learn whether their bumps or rashes are a possible STI.

The app compares photos of a patient’s lesions to a database of hundreds of thousands of anonymised photos of rashes and lesions in people diagnosed with HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia, taken with patients’ consent from more than a decade of consultations data.

A trial of the app across more than 1300 consultations at the clinic, led by PhD candidate Nyi Nyi Soe and published in the Journal of Infection, found it correctly identified cases of mpox with 80 to 90 per cent accuracy when used by clinicians with patients at the centre.

“It is a quite reasonable result,” said Professor Lei Zhang, from the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre and head of the team creating the app. “Clinically, we would like the accuracy to reach 95 per cent, but we haven’t arrived there yet because we haven’t got enough images.”

The research team next plans to run the same trial on seven other STIs. Ideally, the app would be able to be used for both STIs and other skin lesions in the future.

But Zhang said he did not think the app would, or should, replace the role of doctors and pathology in diagnosing an STI. Any suspected STI identified by the app would still need to be confirmed through lab testing.

The major benefit, he said, would be saving people from coming into a sexual health clinic if they clearly did not have an STI.

“More than half of the people who come into our clinic are fine; they have a lesion but it is not an STI,” Zhang said.

“We don’t want to replace lab diagnosis. We want to demonstrate that the concept actually works, and the tool is benefiting both patients and doctors.”

A similar app, HeHealth, is on the market in Singapore. However, this app’s model has only been trained on pictures of men’s genitals.

“Our app can be used by men and women, and on different parts of the body,” Zhang said.

Data from the federal government’s National Communicable Diseases Surveillance Report shows there have been 10,000 more chlamydia notifications and 11,000 more gonorrhea infections in the past year than the five-year average.

Dr Sara Whitburn, chair of sexual health medicine at the Royal Australian College of GPs, said the increase was not necessarily a bad thing.

“People are coming in and getting tested, and that is a good thing,” she said.

“But we also know that, post-pandemic, people are engaging in sexual activity with a broader range of partners.”

Whitburn said condom use was also declining for multiple groups, particularly men who have sex with men and now have access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medication to prevent HIV transmission.

“That is also, in part, a good news story, but the message that you still need safer sex with condoms to protect against gonorrhea or syphilis may not be as strong as a result,” she said.

Young women are also choosing contraceptive methods such as IUD and the pill instead of condoms, and disrupted sex education in the pandemic may mean they do not understand the importance of barrier protection to prevent STIs.

“Then we also have people who are older and are repartnering after a long-term relationship, and the sexual health that worked for them in a relationship may not be what they need now,” Whitburn added.

Whitburn said, while she agreed the app would not be able to be used to diagnose STIs, introducing an anonymous, easy step to identifying whether a rash is a potential STI could be useful.

“If it lets someone know there is a strong possibility that their rash is an STI, they can go and take that step to get testing, especially if the app contains information showing people that there are treatments,” she said.

“Sometimes people feel that, if they get tested, it will impact their sexual health long-term. But actually, testing and treating is the pathway to good sexual health.”

Make the most of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox every Monday.

Here is the link:

https://www.smh.com.au/national/using-ai-this-app-may-tell-if-you-have-an-sti-20240716-p5ju4s.html

As the article explains it seems awareness and risk-avoidance of STI exposure has rather fallen away in the past few years for a number of reasons so a little AI help can only make sense.

I hope the wowsers don’t get all hot and bothered and try to block such a sensible initiative!

David.