Thinking Allowed

medical / technology / education / art / flub

Deciphering ancient charred texts - the power of a prize.

blog post image The Vesuvius Prize reward has encouraged work on deciphering scans of ancient charred scrolls from Herculaneum. "First passages of rolled-up Herculaneum scroll revealed Marchant, Jo. Nature 2024. ... Researchers used artificial intelligence to decipher the text of 2,000-year-old charred papyrus scripts,...
Source: nature.com

65 Reasons To Celebrate The 6502

blog post image "The legendary chip from 1975 that helped start the home computer revolution." I can remember sharing the manual for the 6502 with my school friend, Chris. He had a BBC micro computer and I had a Commodore Vic 20. To do the machine code I remember you had to: compile into 6502 instructions what you...
Source: substack.com

AI Watermarking Won't Curb Disinformation

blog post image "Generative AI allows people to produce piles upon piles of images and words very quickly. It would be nice if there were some way to reliably distinguish AI-generated content from human-generated content. It would help people avoid endlessly arguing with bots online, or believing what a fake image purports...
Source: eff.org

Nightshade, the free tool that ‘poisons’ AI models, is now available for artists to use

blog post image "The tool's creators are seeking to make it so that AI model developers must pay artists to train on data from them that is uncorrupted." Artists can now use this software to modify their art and influence the big tech owners of AI tools to properly recognise the original works. Growing the poisonous...
Source: venturebeat.com

Kenya's push to make 'boda-boda' motorbike taxis go electric

blog post image "The government wants Kenya's three million motorbike taxi riders to go green but only a few have done so." I last went to Kenya over 10 years ago and I got around Kitale on the back of push bikes by local riders. Motorised bikes 'boda-boda' were only just being introduced at the time. Apparently there...
Source: bbc.com

Predicting students’ academic progress and related attributes in first-year medical students: an analysis with artificial

"Background Dropout and poor academic performance are persistent problems in medical schools in emerging economies. Identifying at-risk students early and knowing the factors that contribute to their success would be useful for designing educational interventions. Educational Data Mining (EDM) methods...
Source: biomedcentral.com

Integrating basic sciences into clerkship rotation utilizing Kern’s six-step model of instructional design: lessons learned

Worked example of curriculum design using Kern's six-step approach. "Background It is generally agreed that basic and clinical sciences should be integrated throughout the undergraduate medical education, however, there is still need for continued formal integration of basic sciences into clinical...
Source: biomedcentral.com

OpenAI announces first partnership with a university

blog post image "Starting in February, Arizona State University will have full access to OpenAI's ChatGPT Enterprise." "With the OpenAI partnership, ASU plans to build a personalized AI tutor for students, not only for certain courses, but also for study topics. STEM subjects are a focus and are “the make-or-break...
Source: cnbc.com

Microsoft Cloud AI Accelerates Search for New Battery Materials

Extremetech report that "Microsoft and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory used AI to narrow a list of 32 million candidate materials down to 18 in hours instead of years."
Source: extremetech.com

Three Epochs of Artificial Intelligence in Health Care Michael D. Howell. Greg S. Corrado. Karen B. DeSalvo. JAMA.

This Special Communication examines the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) over the years, and how developments with AI can help decision-makers improve health care while also recognizing its risks.
Source: jamanetwork.com

A checklist for reporting, reading and evaluating Artificial Intelligence Technology Enhanced Learning (AITEL) research

blog post image "This paper proposes a checklist for reporting on AI systems, and covers the initial protocols and scoping, modelling and code, algorithm design, training data, testing and validation, usage, comparisons, real-world requirements, results and limitations, and ethical considerations. The aim is to have...
Source: tandfonline.com

Apple knew AirDrop users could be identified and tracked as early as 2019, researchers say | CNN Business

Security researchers warned Apple as early as 2019 about vulnerabilities in its AirDrop wireless sharing function that Chinese authorities claim they recently used to track down users of the feature, the researchers told CNN, in a case that experts say has sweeping implications for global privacy.
Source: cnn.com

Scientists identify first known prehistoric person with Turner syndrome

Studying skeletons could provide further insight into the past's gender variability.
Source: arstechnica.com

A 2024 Discussion Whether To Convert The Linux Kernel From C To Modern C++ - Slashdot

serviscope_minor shares a Phoronix post: A six year old Linux kernel mailing list discussion has been reignited over the prospects of converting the Linux kernel to supporting modern C++ code. The Linux kernel is predominantly made up of C code with various hand-written Assembly plus the growing wo...
Source: slashdot.org

Guest Post - Beyond Generative AI: The Indispensable Role of BERT in Scholarly Publishing - The Scholarly Kitchen

ChatGPT has popularized generative AI, but interpretive AI has quietly remained in the shadows. Interpretive AI offers profound insights into content and audience engagement, a critical tool for publishers aiming to harness the full potential of AI.
Source: sspnet.org

Project Wayward: A wearable for the elderly and those with Dementia.

Get an instant alert for help if the elder falls down, wanders away outside, or in case of an accident. "Hemesh's grandmother was one of many, who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. She had severe cases of wandering, where she would walk away without the caregiver noticing, resulting in a number...
Source: projectwayward.com

Bluesky has launched RSS feeds

Now that Bluesky's got its own RSS feeds, here's what you should know
Source: openrss.org

Evidence grows of air pollution link with dementia and stroke risk

Long-term UK study adds to body of research associating pollutants with declining brain health
Source: theguardian.com

'It hasn't delivered': The spectacular failure of self-checkout technology Sam Becker.

Unstaffed tills were supposed to revolutionise shopping. Now, both retailers and customers are bagging many self-checkout kiosks.
Source: bbc.com

AI beats real doctors on 149 remote OSCE-style tests

blog post image "We tested performance in consultations with simulated patients (played by trained actors), compared to those performed by 20 real PCPs using the randomized approach described above. AMIE and PCPs were assessed from the perspectives of both specialist attending physicians and our simulated patients in...
Source: research.google