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Brian gets questioned while giving blood.

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By matching uterine contractions up with the body’s natural circadian rhythms, inducing labour in the early morning is linked to shorter labour and fewer emergency C-sections

My YouTube channel is a reliable history of the pandemic. The NY Times is not.

The post Pandemic Revisionism Is a Pretext for MAHA Vandalism first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Scientists have cracked a key mystery behind spider silk’s legendary strength and flexibility. They discovered that tiny molecular interactions act like natural glue, holding silk proteins together as they transform from liquid into incredibly tough fibers. This same process helps create silk that’s stronger than steel by weight and tougher than Kevlar.

Scientists have found that ancient Martian lakes could have survived for decades despite freezing air temperatures. Using a newly adapted climate model, researchers showed that thin, seasonal ice could trap heat and protect liquid water beneath. These lakes may have gently melted and refrozen each year without ever freezing solid. The idea helps solve a long-standing mystery about how Mars shows so much evidence of water without signs of a warm climate.

Researchers have built a paper-thin chip that converts infrared light into visible light and directs it precisely, all without mechanical motion. The design overcomes a long-standing efficiency-versus-control problem in light-shaping materials. This opens the door to tiny, highly efficient light sources integrated directly onto chips.

Physicists have watched a quantum fluid do something once thought almost impossible: stop moving. In experiments with ultra-thin graphene, researchers observed a superfluid—normally defined by its endless, frictionless flow—freeze into a strange new state that looks solid yet still belongs to the quantum world. This long-sought phase, known as a supersolid, blends crystal-like order with superfluid behavior and has puzzled scientists for decades.

A review of the evidence suggests that statins are no more likely than a placebo to cause most of the side effects listed on their labels

The discovery by JWST of a substantial population of compact "Little Red Dots" (LRDs) presented astronomers with a major mystery. By reproducing their spectra with simulations, a team argued that they were Direct Collapse Black Holes (DCBHs).

The FLRW metric is a model. And you know the saying, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

In 2023, a subatomic particle called a neutrino crashed into Earth with such a high amount of energy that it should have been impossible. In fact, there are no known sources anywhere in the universe capable of producing such energy—100,000 times more than the highest-energy particle ever produced by the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator. However, a team of physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently hypothesized that something like this could happen when a special kind of black hole, called a "quasi-extremal primordial black hole," explodes.

An otherworldly coral, a very cute moth and an intricately beautiful mushroom are among the winners in the prize this year

Pesticides are becoming more toxic and just about every country is using more of them year after year, despite a UN target to halve the overall risk by 2030

A change in atmospheric chemistry during the covid pandemic resulted in methane concentrations spiking, raising concerns that cleaning up pollution could have similar knock-on effects in the future

Kanzi, a bonobo with exceptional language skills, took part in a make-believe tea party that demonstrated cognitive abilities never seen before in non-human primates

An experiment with superconducting qubits opens the door to determining whether quantum devices could be less energetically costly if they are powered by quantum batteries

Two-year-olds raised in vegan or vegetarian households don't necessarily have restricted growth, according to a study of 1.2 million children

There are a fair number of newbies coming on to the site, which is great, but a couple of them are hateful, like the one who tried to refer to your host yesterday as a “kike faggot who runs this site” with “a fine hooked nose as any other degenerate kike”. Needless to say, that person has been vanquished to the hinterland for antisemites for committing a big-time Roolz violation. But I wanted to let other new readers/commenters know that there are guidelines for commenting here, called, in Chicago argot, “Da Roolz“. You can find them on the left sidebar or at the preceding link. They may seem long, but I find them useful for ensuring civility and reasonable discussion on this website. If you haven’t read them, please do before posting.

And if you want to send me wildlife photos (I welcome good ones), read the sidebar post “How to send me wildlife photos.”

Thanks!

Telescopes are getting smaller. It’s strange to think: smartscopes have been with us for over half a decade now. Since 2020, we’ve tested units from Vaonis, Unistellar and more. In a short time, these smartscopes have revolutionized amateur astronomy, putting deep-sky imaging within reach of causal users. Recently, we had a chance to put Dwarf Lab’s latest unit the Dwarf Mini through its paces.

Mark Zuckerberg said a few months ago that AI is ushering in a third phase of social media. First social media was used to connect with family and friends, then it became a platform for content creators, and now creativity is being further unleashed with new AI-powered tools. That’s a pretty rosy view, and unsurprising coming from the creator of Facebook. Many people, however, are becoming increasing concerned about what the net effect of AI-generated content will be, especially low-grade content (now colloquially referred to as AI slop).

One thing is clear – AI-generated content, because it is so easy and fast, is increasingly flooding social media. AI’s influence takes two basic forms, AI-generated content, and recommendations driven by AI-powered algorithms. So an AI might be telling you to watch an AI-generated video. Recent studies show that about 70% of images on Facebook are now AI-generated, with 80% of the recommendations being AI-powered. This is a fast-moving target, but across social media AI-generated content is somewhere between 20 and 40%. This is not evenly distributed, with some sites being overwhelmed. The arts and crafts site Etsy has been overrun by AI slop, causing some users to abandon the platform.

We are already seeing a backlash and crackdown, but this is sporadic and of questionable effectiveness. Etsy, for example, has tried to limit AI slop on its site, but with limited success. So where is all this headed?

We need to consider the different types of content separately. Much of AI-slop is obviously fake and for entertainment purposes only. They may be cartoony or obviously humorous, with no intent to pass as real or deceive. Some content is meant to entertain (i.e., drive clicks and engagement), but is not obviously fake. Part of the appeal, in fact, may be the question of whether or not the content is real. Other content is meant to deceive, to influence public opinion or the behavior of the content consumer. This latter type of content is obviously the most concerning.

There are also different types of concerns or potential negative outcomes. One of the biggest concerns is that AI-generated content can be used to spread misinformation. This has both direct and indirect negative effects – it can spread false information and influence public opinion, but it also degrades trust in accurate information or responsible sources. So true information can be dismissed as possibly fake. The combined effect is that we no longer know what is true and what is not. Without any way to objectively referee which facts are reliable and which are likely fake (and yes, it’s a continuum, not a dichotomy), people will tend to just hunker down with their social tribe. Each group has their own reality, with no shared reality to bridge the gap.

There is also the Etsy problem – low-quality content is crowding out anything of value, and consumers are buried in slop. I use Etsy, and so have encountered this myself. It takes a lot of cognitive work to separate out real work, especially art, from the flood of AI content. Highly cognitively demanding work is unsustainable – most people will not do it for long and will look for the less work-intensive path. This may mean abandoning a platform, or throwing up their arms and saying it’s hopeless to tell the difference, or just giving in and not worrying if something is AI or not. This is a problem for non-AI content creators, and also a problem across the board. Mental AI-fatigue will affect everything, not just low-grade AI artwork. Etsy-fatigue can also influence how much mental energy we have for political AI content (studies do show that mental energy is fungible in this way).

There is also the middle ground, not low-grade AI slop or deliberate deception, but AI used as a legitimate tool to create high-quality art or other content. This is the use I think can be valuable, making content creation better or more efficient. The problem with this content is not really for the end-user but the issues of ownership and displacing human artists. For me, this is where the real dilemma is. I would love for the big video game companies to be able to double their output because of efficiencies gained through AI, and I also want to see how the latest AI can enhance certain game features (like interacting with AI-driven characters, or open-ended generative content). But these advances are being held back by the other concerns with AI, many of which are legitimate.

There are several approaches to the issue that I can see. One is to simply let the free market sort it all out. Users are having somewhat of a backlash against AI slop, and companies are responding. We will see how well they can manage the issue, but if the last few decades are any guide I don’t have a lot of hope that big tech companies will do what’s best for the end-user, rather than their own bottom line. Likely some individual platforms will push back heavily against AI, perhaps even creating AI-free social media platforms or websites.

A second approach is to craft some thoughtful legislation to try to wrangle this beast. The most important fix would simply be transparency – if AI-generated content had to be labeled as such, with heavy penalties for passing off AI content as real, this could significantly help. I would also like to see a conversation about how algorithms recommend content. It may also be feasible to make the use of AI-generated fakes for political persuasion illegal.

Both of these approaches, however, require a third approach – developing the technology to detect, label, and filter AI-generated content. A truly effective app to do this could be massively useful, and I think highly popular.

My biggest concern is that governments will use AI to enhance their ability to control their populations. This is part of the “information autocracy” problem. If you control what information your population sees, you can control what they think, and you can control what they do. This is already a problem, but AI-generated content and AI-driven algorithms can make it orders of magnitude more effective. Even without authoritarian governments, large corporations can use the same technology to influence their consumers. Or they can use it to promote their political views. A populace, both entertained and overwhelmed by AI slop, would be especially compliant.

The post The AI Slop Problem first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.