Medical Research

 Medical Research has been highly productive over the past fifty years. Much focus has been on cancers, and rightly so, since these diseases are often brutal as well as highly costly to deal with. Yet there are many other diseases that debilitate and are costly, namely those due to what is termed sterile inflammation. An example is osteoarthritis, the breakdown of bone joints inflicting pain and loss of function. In many of these disorders the solution is at best the "grin and bear it" approach.

Now research has found linkages between cancers and sterile inflammations, and as we learn more we see we often know less. The current assault on medical research seems to be highly counter intuitive. In fact it may set us back generations. However a factor in this process often is the researchers themselves. Their work may be highly laudable but the generational sense of entitlement should be mollified. Funding is often done in a closed cadre of associates which breeds a sense of being a protected class. 

I suspect much of the current attack on the research community is as much an attack on attitudes as it is an intent to reduce Government expenditures.  

AI vs The Reference Librarian

 In an old movie with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn called the Desk Set, Hepburn plays a 1940ish Reference Librarian. Namely some one in the company asked a question and she and her team came up with the answer. Segue to 1970s at MIT. We had Reference Librarians. They were well educated and specialists. Thus if I had a question about some progress in the nascent field on DNA, just about twenty years old by then, I would meet the Reference Librarian and we would have an interrogatory and some brief time later, days usually, I would be gotten back by them and would have my answers and a details list of reference back up. 

My interactions were in a dialog form and my backup was both a list of references and hard copies of the most important ones. No computers, good interrogatories  and detailed results.

The Librarian did not generate anything new, just collected and summarized the data available. 

So what is AI? A computerized Reference Librarian who consumes massive amount of electricity for which the consumer is bearing the costs. My old Reference Librarian consumer de minimis electricity. Also she was quite pleasant and thorough. 

So what is AI?  

Hiroshima vs Manilla

 

Manilla, late 1944, after US landed and took over. Most of the damage was caused by Japanese. This is what the US was looking for if they tried to invade Japan a year later. It was often worse than Dresden. Just an observation.