“Unless you take this issue very seriously and form alliances with those concerned about improving health outcomes, this technology will improve profits at the cost of continued deterioration in our overall health status.”
- Robert Cardiff, Commissioner FDA
The issue is generative AI, and here is a summary of those thoughts after the first meeting of the FDA’s digital health advisory committee. Spoiler alert: It is all about pre and post-marketing testing and surveillance. Maybe they need a bit of generative AI, too. From Stat, Regulating generative AI: FDA’s challenges laid bare by digital health advisory committee
I use AI daily but fear its longer-term implications and unintended consequences. Could it be an alignment problem in my views and goals?
“When laypeople imagine AI going wrong, they often imagine the Terminator movies, but I think the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” short from the 1940 Disney film Fantasia is a much better fictional illustration. The problem Mickey faces when he enchants a broom to help him fill a cauldron isn’t that the broom rebels or acquires a will of its own, but that it fulfills the task it was given all too well.1 The task is in a complex physical environment that makes it hard to fully specify everything Mickey really cares about. He wants the cauldron full, and overflowing the workshop is a great way to be extra confident that the cauldron is full (and stays full). Mickey successfully “aimed” his AI system but things still went poorly for Mickey.”
From Nautil.us, Scary AI Is More “Fantasia” Than “Terminator”
There is always that back and forth about free will vs. determinism. But consider this,
“What is the source of what we call order? Why do many things look too complex, too perfectly organized to arise unintentionally from chaos? How can something as special as a star or a flower even happen? And, for that matter, why do some natural phenomena seem designed for a purpose?
We live in a universe of forces eternally straining to crush things together or tear them apart. There is no physical law for “forming shapes,” no law for being separated from other things, no law for staying still.”
A possible solution lies in recursion, from Plankton Valhalla, Recursion, Tidy Stars, and Water Lilies
While I must admit a soft spot in my heart and plaque in my coronary arteries over chopped liver, my feelings about Foie gras are a bit more complicated (?).
“Conventional foie gras is made by force-feeding ducks or geese until their livers swell with fatty deposits. Production is banned in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and California among other places.”
But what about a lab-grown version that bypasses the ducks and geese entirely? From Wired, You Can Now Buy Lab-Grown Foie Gras
Chuck Dinerstein, MD, MBA
Director of Medicine
Dr. Charles Dinerstein, M.D., MBA, FACS is Director of Medicine at the American Council on Science and Health. He has over 25 years of experience as a vascular surgeon.
