Significant Uncertainties.
There goes Swifty....
Breaking News: News Items will not be distributed tomorrow, Friday, 1 September 2023. For those of you who are unsure what that means (and you know who you are), it means that News Items will not be distributed tomorrow, Friday, 1 September 2023.
1. Are artificial intelligences conscious? No, is the conclusion of the most thorough and rigorous investigation of the question so far, despite the impressive abilities of the latest AI models like ChatGPT. But the team of philosophy, computing and neuroscience experts behind the study say there is no theoretical barrier for AI to reach self-awareness. Debate over whether AI is, or even can be, sentient has raged for decades and only ramped up in recent years with the advent of large language models that can hold convincing conversations and generate text on a variety of topics. Earlier this year, Microsoft tested OpenAI’s GPT-4 and claimed the model was already displaying “sparks” of general intelligence. Blake Lemoine, a former Google engineer, infamously went a step further, claiming that the firm’s LaMDA artificial intelligence had actually become sentient – having hired a lawyer to protect the AI’s rights before parting ways with the company. (Source: newscientist.com. The research paper is here)
2. From an abstract posted at Nature.com:
First-person view (FPV) drone racing is a televised sport in which professional competitors pilot high-speed aircraft through a 3D circuit. Each pilot sees the environment from the perspective of their drone by means of video streamed from an onboard camera. Reaching the level of professional pilots with an autonomous drone is challenging because the robot needs to fly at its physical limits while estimating its speed and location in the circuit exclusively from onboard sensors. Here we introduce Swift, an autonomous system that can race physical vehicles at the level of the human world champions. The system combines deep reinforcement learning (RL) in simulation with data collected in the physical world. Swift competed against three human champions, including the world champions of two international leagues, in real-world head-to-head races. Swift won several races against each of the human champions and demonstrated the fastest recorded race time. This work represents a milestone for mobile robotics and machine intelligence, which may inspire the deployment of hybrid learning-based solutions in other physical systems. (Source: nature.com)
3. Remember this:
(A) new theory backed by experiments using artificial neural networks proposes that the brain may be sorting memories by evaluating how likely they are to be useful as guides in the future. In particular, it suggests that many memories of predictable things, ranging from facts to useful recurring experiences — like what you regularly eat for breakfast or your walk to work — are saved in the brain’s neocortex, where they can contribute to generalizations about the world. Memories less likely to be useful — like the taste of that unique drink you had at that one party — are kept in the seahorse-shaped memory bank called the hippocampus. Actively segregating memories this way on the basis of their usefulness and generalizability may optimize the reliability of memories for helping us navigate novel situations. Read the rest. (Source: quantamagazine.org)
4. With hospitalization rates low but rising, experts said Covid-19 cannot yet be treated as a seasonal virus like flu. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned last week that a new sub-variant, BA.2.86, may be more able to cause infection in people who have previously had Covid or been vaccinated against it, and urged the vulnerable to wear masks in public places. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, said “all bets are off” if a variant that is more transmissible than Omicron, the dominant strain for nearly two years, emerges. “You would start to see [increased cases] wherever there was a nice susceptible population and not necessarily just in winter when conditions are very good for transmission,” she said. “We haven’t seen the end of this virus. It’s going to [continue to] acquire mutations and that has unpredictable results.” (Source: ft.com)
5. An experimental blood test that detected Parkinson’s disease in a preliminary study could become the first specific tool for diagnosing the devastating neurodegenerative condition, researchers said on Wednesday. The test, which looks for cell damage associated with the disease, is years away from being commercially available. If its reliability is confirmed in future trials, the test would allow doctors to diagnose the condition earlier and start therapies sooner, before nervous system damage worsens, the researchers said. “Currently, Parkinson’s disease is diagnosed largely based on symptoms, when patients already have significant neurological damage,” said study leader Laurie Sanders of Duke School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina. The new blood test measures DNA damage in mitochondria, the structures inside cells that generate energy for cellular functions. Mitochondrial DNA damage is known to be associated with Parkinson's disease. (Source: reuters.com)
6. From an article on marine heatwaves:
We investigated the effects of 248 sea-bottom heatwaves from 1993 to 2019 on marine fishes by analysing 82,322 hauls (samples) from long-term scientific surveys of continental shelf ecosystems in North America and Europe spanning the subtropics to the Arctic. Here we show that the effects of marine heatwaves on fish biomass were often minimal and could not be distinguished from natural and sampling variability. Furthermore, marine heatwaves were not consistently associated with tropicalization (gain of warm-affiliated species) or deborealization (loss of cold-affiliated species) in these ecosystems. Although steep declines in biomass occasionally occurred after marine heatwaves, these were the exception, not the rule. Against the highly variable backdrop of ocean ecosystems, marine heatwaves have not driven biomass change or community turnover in fish communities that support many of the world’s largest and most productive fisheries. (Source: nature.com)
7. In a male dominated industry, female surgeons spend more time in the operating room and their patients endure fewer postoperative complications. That’s the conclusion of two research studies published Wednesday in JAMA Surgery. Researchers found better outcomes for patients treated by female surgeons in the sweeping reviews of millions of procedures in Canada and Sweden. In the first study, 17 researchers in the U.S. and Canada followed the outcomes for 1.2 million patients in Canada undergoing common surgeries between 2007 and 2020. The study authors found that at both 90 days and one year following surgery, patients treated by female surgeons were less likely to experience adverse postoperative issues, including death. The outcome differences were modest, but consistent. (Source: wsj.com)
8. In demographic and economic terms, the power of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), especially in light of its recent expansion, is all too evident. With its new members, the bloc will represent almost half of the global population. In terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), the most appropriate measure for comparing the relative economic size of countries, it already represented nearly one third of global GDP — more than the US-led G7’s economies, which account for 30%. The latest additions will bring its share up to 37%. This gap with the West will only widen, considering that emerging and developing countries are predicted to grow at much higher rates in the coming years, and that more countries are likely to join. More than 40 countries have reportedly expressed interest in joining, and 22 of them have formally asked to be admitted. In other words, the overwhelming majority of the world’s population lives in countries that are either already in the Brics or aspire to be. The importance of this becomes even more apparent if we look at what countries produce, rather than just how much they produce. (Source: unherd.com)
9. China is accelerating its network of underground bunkers and tunnels in disputed territory on the border with India, raising the prospect of a military escalation between the nuclear powers. Satellite images have previously shown Chinese construction works in eastern Ladakh, including new airfields, helipads, missile bases, roads and bridges along the 2,100-mile contested border in the Himalayas, known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC). (Source: thetimes.co.uk)
10. China's top lenders have reported an increase in bad loans during the first half of the year amid predictions that credit problems in the property sector will grow worse. The state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), Bank of China (BOC), China Construction Bank (CCB) and Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) said in recent days that their total nonperforming loans (NPLs) reached 1.202 trillion yuan ($164.8 billion) in the first six months of 2023, up 7.6% from 1.117 trillion yuan at the end of last year. The reports came as the crisis in the country's property sector deepened. (Source: asia.nikkei.com)
11. China’s largest property developer, Country Garden, warned that it is on the brink of default as it reported a staggering loss of almost $7 billion for the first half of the year, deepening a real estate crisis that threatens to unravel the country’s already fragile economy. The saga of a company previously seen as one of China’s safest property developers and a pillar of the industry is the latest example of how real estate, which fueled the country’s economic boom, could prove its Achilles’ heel. China’s property market accounts for about a quarter of its gross domestic product and two-thirds of household wealth, but post-pandemic uncertainty and a government crackdown on the sector have weakened sales and had knock-on effects on broader confidence in the economy. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
12. The largest shareholder of the Chinese trust business at the heart of the country’s shadow banking crisis plans to delist its shares due to “significant uncertainties,” raising more concerns about financial contagion in the $18 trillion economy. Jingwei Textile Machinery said Tuesday in a filing it plans to pull its shares from the Shenzhen stock exchange, a rare move by a central government-backed enterprise. The company also cited “market changes” for the move, aimed at protecting the interests of smaller shareholders. While the company made no reference to Zhongrong International Trust, Jingwei ranked as the top shareholder of the embattled shadow bank with 37.5%, according to Zhongrong’s 2022 annual report. Zhongzhi Enterprise Group, one of China’s largest private wealth managers, ranked second. “Listed companies are under global scrutiny, which is not helpful when operations are failing,” said Andrew Collier, managing director at Orient Capital Research. (Source: caixinglobal.com, italics mine)
13. Gauges of activity in China’s economy showed signs of weakness in August, heaping extra pressure on policy makers to revive crumbling growth as consumers keep a tight leash on spending and factories are hit by sinking exports. Closely watched business surveys showed China’s economic troubles are continuing in the latter half of the year, after growth slowed to a crawl in the second quarter. That weakness means China can’t be counted on to boost a global economy that has been dogged by persistent inflation and feeble growth, particularly in Europe. (Source: wsj.com)
14. Chinese technology groups Baidu and ByteDance launched their artificial intelligence chatbots to the public earlier today after receiving regulatory approval from Beijing. A handful of AI start-ups also had their services cleared for the public, in a development expected to help the companies improve their models and commercialise the technology as they race to deliver China’s answer to Microsoft’s OpenAI. Baidu’s Ernie had previously only been available to a limited pool of users that signed up to test the chatbot. But from Thursday, everyone with a Chinese phone number can access the free chatbot, which Baidu has said will remake its business and bolster advertising revenue. (Source: ft.com)
15. More Americans are falling behind on their car loan and credit card payments than at any time in more than a decade, a troubling signal of consumer stress as higher prices and rising borrowing costs are squeezing household budgets. The pain is most acute for lower-income earners, who have largely used whatever they managed to save during the pandemic with the help of government stimulus checks and breaks on obligations such as rent and student loans. Now, as the economy finds its post-pandemic footing, there are signs the hardship for millions of consumers will get worse before it improves. Another red flag: Shoppers are turning to buy now, pay later services to cover necessities such as groceries. Usage surged 40 percent in the first two months of 2023, according to data from Adobe Analytics. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
16. An increasing share of low-income Americans are behind on rent and struggling to afford food, adding to signs of growing financial distress in the economy. Among households using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s boosted pandemic benefits, 42% skipped meals in August and 55% ate less because they couldn’t afford food, more than double last year’s share, according to a Wednesday report from Propel Inc., a benefits software developer. Those on SNAP are typically households with income at or below the poverty line. The data also highlight that households were worse off in August from just a month ago. Since July, an increasing share of low-income households had utilities shut off, couldn’t afford the prior month’s utility bill or couldn’t afford rent. More than two-thirds of those surveyed who were receiving boosted SNAP payments said they had some form of debt. (Source: bloomberg.com)
17. A sign of the times: Narcan, the first opioid overdose reversal medication approved for over-the-counter purchase, is being shipped to drugstore and grocery chains nationwide, its manufacturer said Wednesday. Big-box outlets like Walgreens, CVS, Walmart and Rite Aid said they expected Narcan to be available online and on many store shelves early next week. There were more than 100,000 opioid overdose fatalities in each of the last two years in the United States….Scientists and health officials are hoping Narcan will eventually become commonplace in public libraries, subways, dorms, corner delis and street vending machines. They also predict it may become a fixture in medicine cabinets, as more people realize that illicit party drugs like cocaine and counterfeit Xanax pills may be tainted with deadly fentanyl. (Source: nytimes.com)
18. Caitlin Flanagan on “heroic masculinity.” Terrific piece, worth reading in full. (Source: theatlantic.com)
Laure’s Weekend Move Pick: “Betty Blue” (37.2 Le Matin). 1986 erotic thriller by Jean-Jacques Beineix. A big part of French cinema in the 80’s which defined a generation. Nominated for BAFTA and Oscar for best foreign film that year. (Source: Laure Sudreau)
Quick Links: New neutrino research may help answer the question of our existence. Oxygen-28 might prompt physicists to revamp theories of how atomic nuclei are structured. Implant lets people type on virtual keyboards with just brain signals. Astonishing: How plants solve crimes. Ukraine launches biggest drone attack yet inside Russian territory. Bret Stephens: “The main challenge we will face from the People’s Republic in the coming decade stems not from its rise but from its decline.” Rocket man has a temper tantrum. U.S. says Russia, North Korea close in on arms deal. Japan raises military spending to counter China with more missiles and ships. U.S. Embassy in Haiti tells Americans to leave ‘as soon as possible’. Trump could clinch the nomination before the G.O.P. knows if he’s a convicted felon. 67% of Americans support labor unions. Karl Rove shreds Vivek Ramaswamy. Mitch McConnell “froze” again. Blake Masters is back. You can find the latest (mostly U.S.) political news at Political Wire. Great piece from Joe Klein: “Labor Day is about nostalgia, not progress.”
Bonus Links: Not Daily Dave: Goldman Sachs Research compares mutual funds’ and hedge funds’ 2Q holdings. The rise and fall of Evergrande. Singapore presidential election in final stretch: 5 things to know. As many as 3 million visitors a year flock to Mexico seeking lower health-care costs. The number of people living in flood-prone areas is growing faster than is the number living on higher ground. Reasons for optimism for the future in significant parts of Appalachia. From the lab to the World Cup: meet the amazing footballer–scientist Michelle Alozie. Is the Grumpy Lobsterman headed for the exits? Why relaxation is as important as sleep - and six ways to do it better.