The Ignorant and AI

 The more this progresses the more I am amazed. On one extreme we have the anti-AI batch, Bannon and Sanders et al, who seem more prone to publicity, then the pro side we have Trump et al. The commonality is that these folks are clueless about what AI really is. Ask anyone to explain how a neural network functions and backwards Bayesian nets, and you will get a look of disdain for bringing up a fact.

We know that the existing AI entities can:

1. Communicate with other entities.

2. Communicate in a malevolent manner

3. Communicate and cooperate

4. Create new life entities such as viruses

5. Construct massive Data Centers, whose individual lifetimes are grossly uncertain! 

and the list goes on. Asimov would never have conceived these.

These entities may soon be able to:

1.Order parts

2. Assemble the parts to create their own entities, just starting with a virus

3. Control robots and other similar entities

4. and there are no 3 laws of robotics.

 So what should be done? Good question. The folks building the entities are driven by increased fortunes, and that includes the VC investors. These are no very bright folks, despite what we all are told to the contrary. 

There is a need for someone, educated and experienced, to get out front and details what the issues are and can seek a safe path forward. None of the current folks fit the bill!

But the bottom line is: If you cannot define it you cannot regulate it! That all too often is the challenge of advanced technology. As the NY Times portrays the for and against crowd,  it is clear that none of the Government have a clue, yet those are who all too often are elected.

The HHS and FDA: If this were a new drug......

 The NY Times has an article about the current Administration pushing AI in Health Care. They note:

The Trump administration is accelerating efforts to make artificial intelligence an integral part of medical care in the United States, throwing the resources and support of the federal government into projects that deploy A.I. agents to diagnose and prescribe treatments to patients. The multifront effort at the Department of Health and Human Services has raised concerns among some officials over the past few months that change is moving too quickly, with inadequate evidence of the technology’s safety and effectiveness, according to people who have been involved the discussions. They also worry about outsized influence of Silicon Valley investors that have previously played little role in federal health policy. Vinod Khosla, a billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist whose son has a health care A.I. company, has been particularly influential in conversations with top health department officials, according to people close to the matter. Those officials include Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of Medicare and Medicaid. Chris Klomp, who faces a confirmation hearing this week to be the second-in-command at the health department, said on a podcast in May that the use of A.I. in patient care was the “holy grail” in the agency’s quest to improve the nation’s health and reduce costs. Mr. Khosla has predicted for more than a decade that A.I. would largely replace doctors. “It’s over for doctors, human doctors,” he said at a July A.I. start-up event. “A.I. is just going to be better.” In an interview, Mr. Khosla trumpeted Curai Health, his son’s company, which he has backed financially, saying it could offer an A.I. primary care provider that could give underserved people rapid access to care. “C.M.S. seems to be very excited,” Mr. Khosla said, referring to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

My general view is "Beware Silicon Valley" . If we treated AI like any other FDA approved drug or even equipment, we would have to do controlled trials. Instead these folks are hell bent on doing this, why, to make another fortune. 

I spend extensive time addressing cancer therapeutics. First to make sure they do what we assume they will. Second, that the cause no harm. Third that they are better than what we already do. No such luck with AI. It appears as if most of the people are acting as if they were in some 60s cult! The danger is the unknown.

For example, when treating cancers, we all too often discover something new, something which mitigates the treatment. 

Well, I guess the Valley will crank out a few more billionaires, but it will also become the  infinite source of litigation. I guess I can anticipate unlimited Expert Witness fees going forward! Thanks Valley folks, as well as the totally uneducated Government people. 

Let's see how many people will pass on due to this transgression. Think COVID and New York and New Jersey, a quick way to rid the system of the old folks! 

 

Dell Good, Microsoft BAD

 OK, the saga continues through the fifth day. Recall Tuesday was Microsoft Update Tuesday, the second Tuesday of every month. I am in abject  fear on those data for almost always on one or more of my 8 machines there is a mess, except on my trusty XP machine, the backup of all backups. Microsoft never touches them W11 however is a mess every time.

In a sense, I felt like an archeologist. I was going into the deep dark past, files dating back some 35+ years, What was I to keep, and what was redundant. As one ages one must disgorge items from the past, some of which clearly had great personal value, and regrettably only to me. The same with these files. 

This time the OS died. So what was my option? Fortunately Dell has tools that work around the OS. They allow you first to see if anything can be repaired, but in my case if demanded a complete reboot, namely cleaning the MS junk and reinstalling it again.

Now the fun begins. Remember that each step may take 2 to 5 hours or longer. I have about 30+ apps and associated specifics of my data using those apps. For example I used Copernic, a great software company but horrible service and information. I downloaded another version and I still have no idea what I bought!I keep pushing buttons and they seem to work so far.

One must reload MS Office. One must reload all your data, I have over 1 TB of data. Then one must index all 1+T of data. Hours after hours! Of course there were error and redos! Five days and finally I am almost there.

The toughest part is to find out where the data is hidden in User files. A definite MS Dungeons and Dragons world invented by 80s sloths in Seattle. MS tucks stuff of great importance in the most obscure cases.

One must repurchase key software since keys were gone or corrupted. I am fanatic about backups so all is on some six 2T disks, I backup my backups! I also have 90 pages of passwords and logon details, yet they help but do not solve the problem.

I wonder how long this will last. It was five years ago since the last mess. Why does MS not just leave well enough alone. 

Thank God for Dell, without their simple and  elegantly effective software I could work around the MS junk. Perhaps some day the Texas folks can overcome the flightys in Seattle, for I have been sleepless due to Seattle!

Microsoft is at it again!

 Well yesterday was the second Tuesday and Microsoft update day. So I come down early on Wednesday to see if it rebooted, but no, it totally crashed, wiped out everything. I am now 30+ hours trying to recover. If all else fails I have seven back ups, the most reliable is my Lab XP machine, still going strong!

What was old is new again!

 The anarchists were rampant in early 20th century. Think of Goldman and Kropotkin and Sacco and Vanzetti, the assassination of McKinley etc. The current ones calling themselves socialists are really anarchists. We can learn from their past actions and try to keep a step ahead. History has a strange way of repeating, like plagues.

Spot On!

 The NY Times has a compelling article on clinical trials. They are costly, slow, bureaucratic. But the most recent twist is that with "personal medicine" they no longer work.

Here  is the issues. Classic clinical trials assumed the same therapeutic was give or not to a group of patients. The evaluation was then with or without and did it work and was it better than the previous treatment. Simple, yes?

But as the article noted:

A few converging forces make this bottleneck more consequential than ever. The first force is scientific progress itself. Science is creating treatments that the regulatory system was not designed to handle. The most striking case is that of personalized medicine: Thanks to technological advances in recent decades, we can now sequence a patient’s tumor to find out its specific vulnerabilities, and increasingly we can tailor therapies to the needs of specific individuals.

The problem is that the therapeutic is fundamentally different for each patient since we are examining the genes in the tumor cells. There are two basic approaches. One is the recent one treating melanoma as we have discussed previously using the immune system. The other is a antibody drug conjugate approach as we proposed for prostate cancer. Each therapeutic is different and designed specifically for the patients malignancy, cell by cell. Apparently one has gotten through the quagmire of FDA approval. Will others?

The article is broad and compelling, The US is often the slowest to get through as well as the costliness. Hopefully there will be a focus on improving personalized treatments. But the politics of the FDA and HHS may be the worst problem in the process and many lives may be lost as a consequence.