MIT, Harvard Scientists Find AI Can Recognize Race from X-Rays – and Nobody Knows How
May 17th, 2022Via: Boston Globe:
A doctor can’t tell if somebody is Black, Asian, or white, just by looking at their X-rays. But a computer can, according to a surprising new paper by an international team of scientists, including researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School.
The study found that an artificial intelligence program trained to read X-rays and CT scans could predict a person’s race with 90 percent accuracy. But the scientists who conducted the study say they have no idea how the computer figures it out.
“When my graduate students showed me some of the results that were in this paper, I actually thought it must be a mistake,” said Marzyeh Ghassemi, an MIT assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and coauthor of the paper, which was published Wednesday in the medical journal The Lancet Digital Health. “I honestly thought my students were crazy when they told me.”
At a time when AI software is increasingly used to help doctors make diagnostic decisions, the research raises the unsettling prospect that AI-based diagnostic systems could unintentionally generate racially biased results. For example, an AI (with access to X-rays) could automatically recommend a particular course of treatment for all Black patients, whether or not it’s best for a specific person. Meanwhile, the patient’s human physician wouldn’t know that the AI based its diagnosis on racial data.
Congressional Hearing on UFOs
May 17th, 2022This is a huge waste of time, but possibly useful as #comedygold.
Via: cnet:
Pfizer COVID Vaccine Safety Varies from Lot to Lot
May 16th, 2022Via: Epoch Times:
When you search both national and international databases, you quickly see that most vaccine lots have maybe one or two adverse events associated with them. Usually these adverse events are mild: an upset stomach or sore shoulder may be reported, for example.
Not so with Pfizer’s EN6201, the lot that Tweedale was given. When McDunn first starting looking into it, in early January, he found that the lot number of Tweedale’s vaccine was associated with 90 deaths in the United States.
Since then, that number has grown. As of May 9, 2022, when The Epoch Times accessed it, Pfizer’s EN6201 was linked to 167 deaths and 3,349 adverse events. When we conducted a search a different way, we found an even higher number of deaths and side effects.
McDunn believes a single lot number associated with nearly 170 deaths should be cause for concern. At the same time, statistically speaking, we would need to know how many doses of that lot have been given.
“You would need to know the size of each COVID vaccine lot to make a meaningful reactivity comparison between lots, but the size of lots is not publicly available,” pointed out Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, a non-profit organization established in 1982 to promote vaccine safety through public education.
Russia Defeated In Months-Long Battle For Kharkiv
May 16th, 2022Via: The Warzone:
Ukrainian forces reportedly reached the Russian border in a successful counterattack on the now-abandoned Kharkiv frontline. Ukrainian units have spent the last week or more pushing north and east from the besieged city, working to knock the Russians out of artillery range to protect the city.
The Kharkiv front is the latest Russian attack axis to collapse after abandoning advances north of Kyiv, in Chernihiv, and Sumy in early April. Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv was a major Russian objective on Day 1 of the war and has endured near constant artillery, ground and air attack since Russian armor first advanced from across the border in Belgorod. The front’s collapse after having thrown the kitchen sink at the city is nothing short of stunning.
Finland AND Sweden Announce Plans to Join NATO
May 16th, 2022In other news, Russia moves nuclear missiles towards Finland:
Russia has started moving nuclear-capable missiles towards its border with Finland hours after Moscow vowed not to tolerate Helsinki’s plans to join Nato.
The Kremlin issued a chilling warning that plans for both Finland and Sweden to sign up to the Atlantic alliance were a ‘grave mistake with far reaching consequences’.
Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said: ‘They should have no illusions that we will simply put up with it,’ and insisted ‘the general level of military tension will rise’.
This morning a video believed to have been filmed on a road leading to Vyborg, around 24 miles from the Finnish border, shows the deployment of mobile Iskander missiles.
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Via: Bloomberg:
NATO members rallied around Finland and Sweden on Sunday after they announced plans to join the alliance, marking another dramatic change in Europe’s security architecture triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Gathering in Berlin over the weekend, most NATO foreign ministers embraced the bloc’s northern enlargement, a process that requires unanimity among the 30 allies.
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Governments in Helsinki and Stockholm are set to deliver their formal applications at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels later in the week once their respective parliaments have signed off.
British Military Intelligence Claims Russia Has Lost a Third of Ground Forces in Ukraine Invasion
May 15th, 2022Via: The Week:
United Kingdom military intelligence said Sunday that Russia has lost around one-third of the ground combat forces it deployed when the invasion began in February, Reuters and Al Jazeera report.
U.K. intelligence also concluded that Russia’s offensive in the Donbas had “lost momentum and fallen significantly behind schedule” and that units engaged in the offensive were suffering from “low morale and reduced combat effectiveness.”
Russian forces, the assessment concluded, are “unlikely to dramatically accelerate [their] rate of advance over the next 30 days.”
Lockdown Advocate Admits Negative Impacts Were Never Considered
May 13th, 2022Via: Summit News:
A professor who advocated for longer lockdowns in his role as a SAGE government advisor now admits that the negative impacts of lockdowns were never included in SAGE modeling and that they should have been.
Professor John Edmunds was part of the SAGE team that told the government there would be 6,000 Omicron deaths per day in the absence of another lockdown late last year.
In reality, the death toll never got anywhere near that number as the doomsayers were proven spectacularly wrong yet again.
Elon Musk says Twitter Deal Is “Temporarily on Hold”
May 13th, 2022Via: CBS:
Elon Musk said Friday that his planned $44 billion purchase of Twitter is “temporarily on hold” pending details on spam and fake accounts on the social media platform, another twist amid signs of internal turmoil over the proposed acquisition.
In a tweet, the Tesla billionaire linked to a Reuters story from May 2 citing a financial filing from Twitter that estimated false or spam accounts made up fewer than 5% of the company’s “monetizable daily active users” in the first quarter.
“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk said, indicating he’s skeptical that the number of inauthentic accounts is that low.
Bay Area Housing Crisis: Tiny Bunk Bed ‘Pods’ Offered for $800 a Month
May 12th, 2022Via: SFGate:
For $800 a month you could live in a tiny bunk bed-style pod with 13 other roommates in the Bay Area.
Eight-month-old startup Brownstone Shared Housing has come under the spotlight this week after an Insider profile on the company revealed what it looks like inside the Palo Alto home with 14 tenants each living in a “pod.”
While the $800-a-month rent may seem steep for a stacked bunk bed pod, the average rental rate for a studio apartment near Stanford University, where the pod-home sits, is currently around $2,400.
Baby Formula Shortages? Bill Gates Supported “BIOMILQ” Under Development
May 12th, 2022Via: Global News:
A North Carolina startup called BIOMILQ may have whipped up a nutritionally comparable alternative to human breast milk — except this milk isn’t produced in a mammary gland, but in a bioreactor.
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“Using the same techniques that we’ve used for decades to grow cells outside the body, we’re able to reproduce the behaviour these cells have evolved over millions of years, to produce components in quantities that match the baby’s needs,” Strickland said of her startup’s process.
The “women-owned, science-led and mother-centered” startup was founded in 2020 and has since garnered the attention of billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, who owns a US$3.5-million stake in the company.
