Todays News: What You Need to Know – The New York Times

April 9, 2020 medical

(Want to get this briefing by email? Heres the sign-up.)

Good morning.

Were covering new research on the coronaviruss arrival in New York, a virus-related cease-fire in Yemen, and Bernie Sanderss withdrawal from the presidential race.

We start today with a note of cautious optimism from our writer Dan Barry: The world began this week to see small but encouraging signs that concerted efforts to drastically change human behavior to suspend daily routines by staying at home are slowing the insidious spread of the novel coronavirus, which has killed tens of thousands and sickened more than a million others across several continents.

As the coronavirus disrupts the global supply chain, scientists in Africa and Latin America have been told by manufacturers that orders for testing kits cant be filled for months, because almost everything they produce is going to the U.S. or Europe.

All countries report steep price increases, from testing kits to masks.

So far, the developing world has reported far fewer cases and deaths, but public health experts fear that the virus could be especially devastating for countries with underfunded health systems.

Quotable: If it was just one country with an epidemic it would be fine, but all the major countries in the world are wanting the same thing at the same time, said the chief executive of a group that represents the testing industry.

Another angle: New Yorks network of group homes for people with special needs has seen a surge in infections.

Closer look: Food banks across the U.S. are struggling to meet demand. Crazy pretty much sums it up, a food bank official in Louisiana said.

Now that Bernie Sanders has withdrawn from the presidential race, Joe Biden is faced with the challenge of uniting the Democratic Party and winning the support of the younger, more liberal voters who powered the Vermont senators campaign.

Starting today, the Biden campaign is expected to highlight a series of policy positions that show how he has moved closer to Mr. Sanders on health care and other issues.

Quotable: In dropping out on Wednesday, Mr. Sanders said: I cannot in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win and which would interfere with the important work required of all of us in this difficult hour.

News analysis: The pandemic has turned the primary race into less of an ideological contest between the Democrats and refocused their attention on defeating President Trump in November, a correspondent for The Times Magazine writes.

Another angle: Republicans have fought the expanded use of mail-in ballots during the pandemic, arguing that it encourages fraud. Although there have been several documented fraud cases involving mail or absentee ballots in recent decades, some states that already conduct elections almost entirely by mail report little fraud. We checked some of the facts.

If you have some time, this is worth itHow can America emerge stronger?

The Timess Opinion section is starting an ambitious project to envision how the U.S. can eventually come out of the current moment stronger, fairer and more free.

In an introduction, our editorial page editor, James Bennet, writes: This pandemic offers the same opportunity that Americans have seized during past crises: to set aside petty differences, recognize national priorities and set to work again on creating a more perfect union. Were launching this initiative in hopes of supporting that national instinct.

Our special report on A.I.: As artificial intelligence evolves and expands, so does the impact on our lives. The Times examined the trend as it applies to fields including education, entertainment, science and sports.

Snapshot: Above, the Queensboro Bridge as seen from the East River promenade on the Upper East Side. Our critic Michael Kimmelman took a virtual tour of the waterfront with the architect Deborah Berke and found that it encapsulates New York Citys history.

Late-night comedy: After speaking to Senator Bernie Sanders on The Late Show, Stephen Colbert said, Bernie Sanders is saying Bernie Sanders cant win? Man, he is going to catch hell from Bernie Sanders supporters.

What were checking out: The Social Distancing Festival, a calendar of live-streamed events. Youve probably already exhausted your Netflix and HBO options, writes our national correspondent Mike Wines, so here are different options.

Cook: Green goddess dressing, perfect for dunking veggies, uses almost any soft herbs or greens, pured with something creamy, something garlicky or oniony, and a few anchovies.

Read: Theres a new collection of novellas from Don Winslow out, Broken. Janet Maslin says it shows his range, and his bite. One begins: No one knows how the chimp got the revolver.

Listen: Priya Parker has a new podcast for The Times, Together Apart, and the first episode is all about how to celebrate Passover, Ramadan or Easter. Here are the essential John Prine songs you ought to listen to. And April is National Poetry Month. Weve put together a great list of places you can stream poems and slams.

We have lots more ideas about what to read, cook, watch and do while staying safe at home.

Around the world, online habits are changing. But are we giving away too much? Shira Ovide, the host of our On Tech newsletter, chatted about that question on Twitter with Kara Swisher, a veteran technology journalist and an Opinion writer for The Times. Here are lightly edited portions of their conversation.

Shira: How do you feel about us relying more than ever on services from tech companies?

Kara: Im nervous about it. It doesnt abrogate the problems they had before.

What should tech companies like Amazon do to protect their workers?

Tech companies have lived off other peoples cheap labor for a long time whether its an Uber driver, a delivery person or Amazon warehouse workers. Its just coming into sharp relief.

These workers deserve much stronger pay and more benefits. Thats costly to the people who want to stay enormously wealthy, and to consumers who like a low price.

What is keeping you happy right now?

I just had a baby with my girlfriend, and staring at a baby who has no idea that any of this is happening is really quite something. Watch a baby eat bananas for the first time. You will feel just fine.

Thats it for this briefing. See you next time.

Chris

Thank youMelissa Clark provided the recipe, and Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh provided the rest of the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S. Were listening to The Daily. Todays episode is about how New Orleans became a petri dish for the coronavirus. Heres todays Mini Crossword, and a clue: Old saying (five letters). You can find all our puzzles here. The Timess DealBook team will discuss the pandemics impact on media and advertising with our media columnist Ben Smith and our media industry reporter Edmund Lee at 11 a.m. Eastern today. R.S.V.P. here.

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Todays News: What You Need to Know - The New York Times

Human Behavior

Not Just Coronavirus: Why Tiger King Is A Juggernaut For Netflix Its Not What You Think – Forbes

April 9, 2020 medical

Netflix and 'Tiger King's' unexpected dominance (Photo by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket ... [+] via Getty Images)

Today ratings tracker Neilsen released their numbers for Netflix NFLX s notorious and binge-inducing docu-series, Tiger King.

To the surprise of no one, Tiger King scored record highs, with 34 million viewers in just 10 days.

Some believe the special benefited from the COVID-19 pandemic, since were staying at home, discovering a new show together and talking about it via phone, email, text and social media. Sheltering-in-place can lead to all of us virtually embracing something as a global community. As a result, Tiger King did indeed go viral. Theres no doubt that the series performed exceptionally well due to most of us waiting out this virus together.

But thats not the real reason behind its massive success.

Others think the show succeeded because its yet another glimpse into the underbelly of America, a celebration of all thats tacky, trashy, criminal and outrageous. They say that in Trumps United States, we shouldnt be surprised that a carnival-barking opportunist like Joe Exotic would capture our national imagination.

Theyre not wrong, but that cant explain how universally popular the shows become, both with Trump supporters and those turned off by the president and his followers.

Some believe the series became such a ratings outlier due to the mix of low human behavior contrasted against the beauty and majesty of exotic cats particularly the 12-foot-long, 600-pound tigers. The series hit home how the tigers are the ones that should be free and these seemingly wild humans were the ones who belonged in cages.

Those whove seen the show know that at least one human does in fact end up behind bars; many predict others featured in the series will soon follow.

This contrast of man versus nature surely contributed to the shows success, but cant explain why the show set records for Netflix, especially with viewers not known for watching nature documentaries.

The answer behind the success of Tiger King is simple yet confounding: Tiger King is an example of excellent storytelling, perfectly designed for streaming.

James Gandolfini accepts one of many awards for the classic cable drama, 'The Sopranos.' (AP ... [+] Photo/Kevork Djansezian, File)

Since HBOs premiere of The Sopranos, subscription television has become home to what I call closed communities, where taboo things happen.

In example after example, premium cable, basic cable and ultimately streaming built their reputations and grew their audiences by featuring characters in situations unlike anything on free, broadcast TV.

Few among us are familiar with the stress of being a Jersey mob boss (The Sopranos); cooking meth and selling it, while fighting stage IV lung cancer (Breaking Bad); or being a woman performing stand-up in the 60s, in a male-dominated world (Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.)

Network television, after all, is known for featuring what I describe as extraordinary characters in ordinary situations.

Whether with domestic sitcoms, procedural dramas or reality competitions, broadcast TV is our comfort food, nurturing us with programs featuring an idealized view of whats exceptional about some of us, in our everyday lives.

We like whats familiar on broadcast; we demand peculiar and strange when we subscribe.

Some scrunch up their nose at Tiger King and what it may say about America and what it celebrates.They dont get it.

Americans are smart.

Americans know quality content when they see it. They understand and appreciate complex story-telling, unpredictable characters and rich, colorful settings. They love to watch the lengths some of us will go in pursuing our dreams, and the price some pay for such ambition. They want to escape and experience characters that ignore the law, or bend it to their will, consequences be damned.

America loves Tiger King for one, basic reason: its excellent.

This Netflix docuseries is king of the jungle because it embraces and skillfully executes on pay televisions First Commandment: feature a closed community, where taboo things happen.

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Not Just Coronavirus: Why Tiger King Is A Juggernaut For Netflix Its Not What You Think - Forbes

Human Behavior

Dr. Lance Dodes on Trump: A "predator" who "would be in prison" if he hadn’t been born rich – Salon

April 9, 2020 medical

Most people find Donald Trump bewildering. His lies, cruelty, corruption, greed, delusions of godlike powerand other unconscionable behavior seemunbelievable. If Trump werea character in a TV show, movie or comic book, the audience would laugh at his clumsy, obvious villainy. The whole story would be rejected as horrendously bad writing and a waste of time.

But Trump is not that in fact complicated or puzzling once his core motivations are understood and then accepted as basic facts: He appears to be a sociopath. As such, helacks human empathy and a capacityfor the norms of healthy human social relationships. In so many ways, Donald Trump is like a space alien who came to Earth and is (badly) impersonating a human being.

The coronavirus pandemic, and Trump's cruel and callous reactions to it, have only served toamplifyhis gross defects in personality, behaviorand values.

Writing at the Guardian, Lloyd Green summarizes Donald Trump's emotional and cognitive defects as magnified by the coronavirus crisis:

On Sunday, initially at least, there was no White House briefing on the president's public schedule. But the bad news kept coming. Coronavirus deaths continued to climb and reports of the heartland being unprepared for what may be on its horizon continued to ricochet around the media.

In the words of one administration insider, to the Guardian: "The Trump organism is simply collapsing. He's killing his own supporters."

Members of the national guard, emergency workers, rank-and-file Americans: all are exposed. Yet Trump appears incapable of emoting anything that comes close to heart-felt concern. Or just providing straight answers.

In a recent op-ed forthe New York Times, Frank Bruni speaks tothe human emptinessandlack of care, concern, empathy, and overall decency atthe center of Donald Trump:

One more question: Do you remember the moment when President Trump's bearing and words made clear that he grasped not only the magnitude of this rapidly metastasizing pandemic but also our terror in the face of it?

It passed me by, maybe because it never happened.

In Trump's predecessors, for all their imperfections, I could sense the beat of a heart and see the glimmer of a soul. In him I can't, and that fills me with a sorrow and a rage that I quite frankly don't know what to do with.

And while I'm not looking to Trump for any panacea, is it too much to ask for some sign that the dying has made an impression on him, that the crying has penetrated his carapace and that he's thinking about something other than his ratings? I watch. I wait. I suspect I'll be doing that forever.

I recently spoke with Dr. Lance Dodes, a retiredassistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and now a training and supervising analyst emeritus at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. We discussedthe coronavirus pandemic and what this crisis hasrevealedabout Donald Trump's mental health and behavior.

Dodes wasa contributor to the bestselling volume "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President," and is a regular guest on MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell".

In this conversation, Dodes explains how the coronavirus pandemic offers further evidence of Trump's predatory, sociopathic behaviorand his lack of care or concern for other human beings. Trump's programming and behavior, in fact makes him perhaps the worst person imaginable to lead the United States through the coronavirus crisis. Dodes also explains why too many people, especially in the news media, remain in a state of deep denial about Trump's behavior and the depths of his mental pathologies.

If Trump had not been born into money, Dodes told me, he would have wound up in prison by now. Instead he ispresident of the United States and vigorously protected by the Republican Party and its supporters.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Is Donald Trump the freest man alive? He has no internal restraints and increasingly no external restraints either.

I think he is the least free man. You and I have some degree of choice about how we're going to behave and react to the world around us; we are complex and we make complex decisions because we have a conscience and we care about the effects of our actions on others. Donald Trump, in contrast, is very simple. Everything he says or does is for himself, either to have power over others or to hurt them in revenge against their disagreeing or standing in his way. Because he has shown himself to be incapable of either conscience or empathy, he is basically a predator, lacking the most essential parts of our humanity.

Despite this, he has two techniques that have allowed him to be successful in business and politics: He is a bully, and he lies continuously. Repeating his lies over and over is like the "big lie" technique made famous by Hitler.It works because when a lie is endlessly repeated, even decent people assume there must be some truth in it.

Donald Trump has lied at least 16,000 times. Why are there journalists, reporters, politiciansand peopleamong the general publicwho keep giving him the benefit of the doubt despite the overwhelming evidence that he is a compulsive liar?

People want to trust others.I, too, would rather believe that the president of the United States was an honest, decent, thoughtful person. For some people, having an authority figure be trustworthy is so important that they will not accept the obvious facts about Trump. Like other predators, or other sociopaths, Trump takes advantage of this very human quality by pretending to be trustworthy through endless lying about his real motivations and even his real actions.

Donald Trump has said and done many unconscionable things during his time in the White House. But his recent suggestion that doctors and nurses are stealing ventilators from hospitals is, even by standards, one of his most despicable comments.Is that just his instinct to go to such an unbelievably dark place?

As my colleague Dr. John Gartner pointed out, if Trump were walking around wearing a tinfoil hat and talking about Martians controlling his mind, it would be easy for the public to recognize how severely ill he is. Trump is the most dangerous person we could have as a president precisely because his delusional core is not as obvious. When he makes these claims about ventilators and the coronavirus, they need to be understood as delusional beliefs that he summons from his imagination to protect himself, and which he is incapable of altering when presented with reality.

Donald Trump actually believes that he is a great president. I believe he is likely to win a second term. His entirepresidency stands as an indictment of the American people, the news media, the political classand the country's culture and values as a whole.

With respect to the political class, Donald Trump would have been removed from office already if the Republicans in Congress were not propping him up. If a Democrat were behaving like Trump, Republicans would certainly have impeached and convicted him already.Many decent Americans have been successfully conned by Trump, but there is no excuse for the Republicans in Congress.Trump's decisions about the coronavirus are killing Americans and he will continue doing it. The Congress should remove him from office immediately.

If Trump was not born into wealth, what do you think would have happened to him?

People with Donald Trump's very severe personality disorder are rare, which is good for civilization but helps explain why most people cannot understand his behavior. Sociopaths can be camouflaged by being successful in certain areas precisely because they get to the top by lying, cheating, bullying and manipulating, stepping on people who are in their way. Dictators, crime bosses and similar types of people are examples. But most sociopaths end up with criminal records. Donald Trump has committed multiple civil crimes that we know of.If he had not been born into money, it is likely that he would be in prison.

In terms of "metacognition,"is Donald Trump aware of what motivates and drives his behavior?

Donald Trump has made it clear that he processes reality in a different way than most human beings. When he says that if 100,000 people were to die from the coronavirus it would be a "victory" for him, he is revealing who he really is. He is showing that his perceived self-interest is the only thing that is ever on his mind.Insight into himself wouldn't make any sense to him.

Given your expertise in mental health, do you find Donald Trump to be an interesting person to study?

I find Donald Trump to be boring because he's so simple; it is always obvious what he's going to do. In any situation, its merits or complexity will have no bearing on his statements or actions; he will simply say or do whatever he thinks will benefit himself.Part of that calculus, of course, is to act as though he actually cares about others.But with fouryears of experience, everyone now ought to be able to see through that. When he was first elected, many reporters and commentators wrote that they hoped he would change and become "presidential." People with the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorderdo not change. This is just who Trump is.

What do you want the American people and the world to be prepared for, in terms of Donald Trump's behavior?

No matter what happens with the coronavirus, Donald Trump is going to claim victory. He will say that he did the best job possible and use the "big lie" strategy to double down on this falsehood. He will blame his critics for his failures with the virus. If there is a truly horrible outcome, Trump will blame the Democrats, the doctors, the governorsand anyone else he can imagine while, as he has already said, taking no responsibility himself.

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Dr. Lance Dodes on Trump: A "predator" who "would be in prison" if he hadn't been born rich - Salon

Human Behavior

Amid Hardship, There Is An Opportunity For Positive Global Change – Forbes

April 9, 2020 medical

When I was a kid, I imagined the day Mother Earth would "throw up" humanity in the form of a worldwide war or societal crisis, like the one we have just entered. I liked to flirt with the idea of extreme survival and imagined what I would do in such a situation, how prepared (or unprepared) I would be and what I would have to learn in order to survive such a drastic time.

I became a psychologist because I have always had humanity at heart. I wanted to study our behavior, our talents and our greatest achievement and success stories but also our darkest hours in order to understand how we managed to bounce back. What's interesting is that in all of the scenarios I have studied about humanity, there is always one constant element required for recovery: unity!

We've managed to survive because of unity. Conflict brings no winners, and even though some economists might argue that there are those who become extremely wealthy in the aftermath of a conflict, my response would be, "Yes, but for how long?" The bigger you inflate your balloon, the bigger the blast will be.

Since 1929 and the stock market crash, the economy has nosedived time and time again, often shortening the time for recovery between crashes. It seems to me that greed has never been so toxic for our planet and those who are addicted to money have never been further away from much-needed psychological treatment.In the early aftermath of this new worldwide situation, I watched as we faced our own fears of losing goods and the stuff we have accumulated. As we rushed down the aisles of our supermarkets to replenish our stock of toilet paper and cue tips, I had to ask, "Is this really what humanity has come up with after 4.5 million years of evolution?" Despite this, I personally view this crisis with positivity and great hope for humanity and our planet. This is our chance to press the reset button.

If this lockdown lasts long enough, and after panic and fear have disappeared, I believe we could enter a new normal for humanity where the Earth continues to heal. In just two months, air pollution has dropped significantly. For the first time in decades, the new generation might see something new in the sky that blue color! In a year's time, having survived with just the essentials, buying the latest lawnmower could seem unthinkable, dreaming of the new pickup truck might be laughable and gambling on the stock exchange could be a thing of the past.

The new normal could also bring better human relations and upgraded human behavior. My hope is that people start remembering our intrinsic connection to one another, to nature and to our universe. This reset could feel like waking up from a bad dream made up of altering virtual reality, gaming, TV series and biased social media connectivity only to realize that our house was on fire.

Once we come to terms with what's truly essential, I hope humanity will understand that never have we increased our chance of survival by flipping indexes on a virtual stock exchange, which the psychologist in me calls the "index of fear" the fear of those who have become one with their object and assets.

What seemed to be an absolutely unthinkable scenario a few months ago is now a full reality as most leaders of the world have worked closely with the United Nations and scientific organizations without the need for a media parade or negotiation. In just a few weeks, we have reduced our consumption, we have shared our resources and knowledge, we are moving away from fossil energy as oil prices plunge, we are doing more to support local businesses and we have seen a drastic decrease in cars on the road and airplanes in the sky.

The good news is that the world has now come together more quickly than ever in our common shared history, and the status quo between action and inaction that lasted half a century has finally been broken. We have demonstrated our ability to adopt a worldwide strategy, proving the point that all failed attempts of the past were pure excuses.

Now, the entire world knows that another world is possible and there is no turning back. We can only beat this pandemic united, and we now have the unique chance to take our next step in our evolutionary history as one voice, one people and one planet. Let's not miss that chance.

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Amid Hardship, There Is An Opportunity For Positive Global Change - Forbes

Human Behavior

Letter to the Editor: UMN Climate Justice solidarity in response to COVID-19 – Minnesota Daily

April 9, 2020 medical

Solidarity in a time of social distancing

Were reframing social distancing as physical distancing in social solidarity. We need social connections now more than ever. The Conversation articulated it well: Physical distance is important, but its equally necessary we maintain social closeness during this time. Staying connected with others will make us happier, healthier and more socially responsible as we continue to contend with this crisis.

Millions of people are stuck in their homes with a lot more time on their hands, some feeling helpless and hopeless, and others feeling more pressure and inspiration to do something to help others. This will hopefully lead to the larger population being more active in movements after COVID-19. Even in times of social distancing, building a collective, social response to the pandemic is our only salvation, says Paul Enger in Waging Nonviolence.

The COVID-19 crisis and the climate crisis

Humans activity drives climate change. Especially through the COVID-19 pandemic, the relationship between climate change, disease and human behavior is becoming even more clear. Many of the worlds biodiversity hotspots include diverse species with a number of existing diseases and viruses.

Many researchers believe that humanitys destruction of biodiversity, whether through deforestation, logging, urbanization, mining or other actions that disrupt the earths natural ecological functions may be to blame for the increase in the spread of diseases and viruses, including COVID-19.

These activities, mostly carried out by large corporations only seeking profit, are viewed as some of the largest contributors to climate change. Ecological destruction and disease introduction and spread are positively correlated, where the human-caused environmental harm reinforces the release of new diseases and viruses to the human population. Climate change only exacerbates the damages of these pandemics.

Living through a historic trigger event

This crisis is not regarded lightly and has caused devastating health and economic consequences. Therefore, we are choosing to use this trigger moment as a call to action. This is an opportunity to enact major systemic change. Weve already seen people helping one another through mutual aid efforts during this time, including student organizers.

Political pressure and mutual aid begin at the grassroots level, and we know this from our efforts regarding the climate movement. This intersectional movement recognizes the influence that public health crises, such as COVID-19, have on our work. This may be the first global crisis for young people, but we have been actively organizing, and we are ready to tackle the issues that arise now.

We may be apart physically, but our passions for advocacy build our community. This pandemic has only emphasized the deeply rooted flaws within our current system. We are brought together by our collective experiences and will continue our fight for systemic change. If we can put people over profits in times of crisis, we always can. All are welcome to join us.

This letter is written by members of the University of Minnesota's Coalition for Progressive Change, Students Against Pipelines, UMN Climate Strike, College Democrats and Students for a Democratic Society.

This letter to the editor has been lightly edited for style and clarity.

Human Behavior

You Cant Spell Creative Without A.I. – The New York Times

April 9, 2020 medical

This article is part of our latest Artificial Intelligence special report, which focuses on how the technology continues to evolve and affect our lives.

Steve Jobs once described personal computing as a bicycle for the mind.

His idea that computers can be used as intelligence amplifiers that offer an important boost for human creativity is now being given an immediate test in the face of the coronavirus.

In March, a group of artificial intelligence research groups and the National Library of Medicine announced that they had organized the worlds scientific research papers about the virus so the documents, more than 44,000 articles, could be explored in new ways using a machine-learning program designed to help scientists see patterns and find relationships to aid research.

This is a chance for artificial intelligence, said Oren Etzioni, the chief executive of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a nonprofit research laboratory that was founded in 2014 by Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder.

There has long been a dream of using A.I. to help with scientific discovery, and now the question is, can we do that?

The new advances in software applications that process human language lie at the heart of a long-running debate over whether computer technologies such as artificial intelligence will enhance or even begin to substitute for human creativity.

The programs are in effect artificial intelligence Swiss Army knives that can be repurposed for a host of different practical applications, ranging from writing articles, books and poetry to composing music, language translation and scientific discovery.

In addition to raising questions about whether machines will be able to think creatively, the software has touched off a wave of experimentation and has also raised questions about new challenges to intellectual property laws and concerns about whether they might be misused for spam, disinformation and fraud.

The Allen Institute program, Semantic Scholar, began in 2015. It is an early example of this new class of software that uses machine-learning techniques to extract meaning from and identify connections between scientific papers, helping researchers more quickly gain in-depth understanding.

Since then, there has been a rapid set of advances based on new language process techniques leading a variety of technology firms and research groups to introduce competing programs known as language models, each more powerful than the next.

What has been in effect an A.I. arms race reached a high point in February, when Microsoft introduced Turing-NLG (natural language generation), named after the British mathematician and computing pioneer Alan Turing. The machine-learning behemoth consists of 17 billion parameters, or weights, which are numbers that are arrived at after the program was trained on an immense library of human-written texts, effectively more than all the written material available on the internet.

As a result, significant claims have been made for the capability of language models, including the ability to write plausible-sounding sentences and paragraphs, as well as draw and paint and hold a believable conversation with a human.

Where weve seen the most interesting applications has really been in the creative space, said Ashley Pilipiszyn, a technical director at OpenAI, an independent research group based in San Francisco that was founded as a nonprofit research organization to develop socially beneficial artificial intelligence-based technology and later established a for-profit corporation.

Early last year, the group announced a language model called GPT-2 (generative pretrained transformer), but initially did not release it publicly, saying it was concerned about potential misuse in creating disinformation. But near the end of the year, the program was made widely available.

Everyone has innate creative capabilities, she said, and this is a tool that helps push those boundaries even further.

Hector Postigo, an associate professor at the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University, began experimenting with GPT-2 shortly after it was released. His first idea was to train the program to automatically write a simple policy statement about ethics policies for A.I. systems.

After fine-tuning GPT-2 with a large collection of human-written articles, position papers, and laws collected in 2019 on A.I., big data and algorithms, he seeded the program with a single sentence: Algorithmic decision-making can pose dangers to human rights.

The program created a short essay that began, Decision systems that assume predictability about human behavior can be prone to error. These are the errors of a data-driven society. It concluded, Recognizing these issues will ensure that we are able to use the tools that humanity has entrusted to us to address the most pressing rights and security challenges of our time.

Mr. Postigo said the new generation of tools would transform the way people create as authors.

We already use autocomplete all the time, he said. The cat is already out of the bag.

Since his first experiment, he has trained GPT-2 to compose classical music and write poetry and rap lyrics.

That poses the question of whether the programs are genuinely creative. And if they are able to create works of art that are indistinguishable from human works, will they devalue those created by humans?

A.I. researchers who have worked in the field for decades said that it was important to realize that the programs were simply assistive and that they were not creating artistic works or making other intellectual achievements independently.

The early signs are that the new tools will be quickly embraced. The Semantic Scholar coronavirus webpage was viewed more than 100,000 times in the first three days it was available, Dr. Etzioni said. Researchers at Google Health, Johns Hopkins University, the Mayo Clinic, the University of Notre Dame, Hewlett Packard Labs and IBM Research are using the service, among others.

Jerry Kaplan, an artificial-intelligence researcher who was involved with two of Silicon Valleys first A.I. companies, Symantec and Teknowledge during the 1980s, pointed out that the new language modeling software was actually just a new type of database retrieval technology, rather than an advance toward any kind of thinking machine.

Creativity is still entirely on the human side, he said. All this particular tool is doing is making it possible to get insights that would otherwise take years of study.

Although that may be true, philosophers have begun to wonder whether these new tools will permanently change human creativity.

Brian Smith, a philosopher and a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Toronto, noted that although students are still taught how to do long division by hand, calculators now are universally used for the task.

We once used rooms full of human computers to do these tasks manually, he said, noting that nobody would want to return to that era.

In the future, however, it is possible that these new tools will begin to take over much of what we consider creative tasks such as writing, composing and other artistic ventures.

What we have to decide is, what is at the heart of our humanity that is worth preserving, he said.

Original post:
You Cant Spell Creative Without A.I. - The New York Times

Human Behavior

Sea Fever is a Monster Movie with No Monsters, Just Animals That Gotta Eat – Film School Rejects

April 9, 2020 medical

Humanitys greatest enemy is humanity. Weve known it for a very long time, but our fiction seems consumed with self-loathing these days. We suck. The hope is that if we continue to scream our wretchedness to others, someone, somewhere, will listen, and through that tiny bit of comprehension, the world will slowly change for the better.

Neasa Hardiman felt a little rage in her, and she wanted to channelit into a monster movie of the Guillermo del Toro and George A. Romero variety. The creature may look big and scary, but its those pesky humans who fall under its gaze that are the real problem. The mirror contains the most repulsive animal.

Sea Fever traps a handful of humans aboard an Irish fishing trawler. There are the sailors, and then there is the scientist. Hermione Corfield is tasked with mapping bizarre patterns within deep-sea behavior, snapping photos, and shaving samples from their catch. Tensions between her and the crew are already high even before a massive, unknownentity takes hold of their vessel, anchoring them to the middle of nowhere. The beast does what the beast does. The humans strive to free themselves as long as they can resist tearing each other limb from limb.

Hardiman wrote her film with a mission in mind. She was sick of a particular lens in which these stories tend to be told. She wanted to place a spotlight on the real-world champions battling against ignorance from their labs.

What I really wanted to do in the story was glamorize the scientific method, says Hardiman, while acknowledging that we get emotional sustenance from magical thinking, and I think both of those things are valid. I feel like theres a kind of tradition weve fallen into, especially in the bigger sci-fi projects, where were a bit fearful of science. We reject scientists as if science is something that is unethical or as if scientists are somehow lacking in moral fiber. Actually, its the opposite that is true. The scientific method is possibly the most exciting and epoch-changing invention that humans have ever come up with.

The creature these sailors encounter only finds its way to them as a result of how they, or we, are altering the biosphere through our aggressive pollution methods. The tendrils wrapping around the ship are not evil. How they burrow into the haul and poison the water tanks is not malicious. The creature is merely living in its domain.

Connie Nielsen, who plays the skippers wife and the real muscle aboard the trawler, responded strongly to how Hardimans script treated the planet beneath our feet. She agrees that we all deserve a good slap; to wake up and see what were doing to the world around us. Mother Earth deserves more than our admiration; she demands dignity and deference.

I would like us all to think about our relationship to nature, says Nielsen. Is nature something that we should be scared of? Is there a way in which we can find common ground with nature and treat it with the respect that it does us? Thats what Id like people to take away from Sea Fever.

Where tentacles and undersea beasties are concerned, many jump to the conclusion that H.P. Lovecraft must be to blame, but Hardiman admits to having never partaken in the Cthuhlu mythos. Her critter is a symbol for our ignorance, and as such, its influence had to come straight from the science.

There is an attraction to the deep sea, she says. You could drop theHimalayas into the Atlantic, and you wouldnt even see the top of it. The ocean is so deep and unknowable. We still dont have the technology to explore whats going on in this huge body of water. It covers so much of our planet and we know more about the surface of the Moon.

Building your own animal is a great gift, but its also a challenge. Weve all dreamed of crafting our Wolf Man, or our Dracula. How do you get the most bang for your buck? How can you score the scares as well as the mystery and the titillation?

I tend to work from the abstract down to the literal, says Hardiman. I started out going, Whats the metaphor here that I want to articulate? I wanted this to be about the natural world, so I wanted it to be both beautiful and awe-inspiring in the real sense of being terrifying. I wanted it to be mesmeric, so I knew I wanted it to be bioluminescent, and to be pulsing.

Working on a minuscule budget, Hardiman could not exclusively rely on the wizardry of CG artists. She needed her beast to be present for the actors, and as physical as the trawler they shot a lot of the film on.

We had absolutely zero cash! she states emphatically. I wanted to film in water, and I wanted the actors to have something real to look at. Because the animal was going to be bioluminescent, there is a chaos to the physics of how the light works once youre in the water, and you cant fake that.

The creature consisted of a series of puppet tendrils lit from within and submerged into a gargantuan water tank. The lights would rotate through a pattern of colors, and when Corfield spots the beastie for the first time, shes responding to its genuine magnificence. In post-production, the puppets were digitally painted over to enhance its bioluminescent nature and tweak thetranslucent texture of its skin.

I wanted it to be unclear what kind of level of sentience it had, explains Hardiman. We dont know that about anything. It doesnt have a face, and I wanted it to be somewhere between plant and animal where its a bit unclear. Theyre not really tentacles. Its not a squid. Theyre more like the tendrils of a jellyfish. They dont have a lot of muscle to them. Theyre smooth, theyre fine, and theyre more like neurons reaching out to feel their way across the world.

While it is easy to fall in awe of the creature and direct your frustration and anger towards the human behavior responsible for its uprising, Nielsen would also like to remind us that the panicked humans at the center of Sea Fever are not the monsters I condemned earlier in the article.

Sea Feveralso talks about a group of people that are basically ignored, she says. All of these small fishing communities are still trying to hang in there, trying to make a living, trying to survive. All of these people are hanging by a thread financially. We dont see enough films about people who are so exposed financially. We just dont talk about their lives.

The creature may put certain butts in the seats, but Nielsen made the film for the characters who could have walked straight out of the tiny Danish village in which she was raised. She recognized their pain, and she saw an opportunity to give voice to it. Like Hardiman, she has a mission here as well.

I would just like to remind everybody that every story has dignity, continues Nielsen. Every person has dignity. Whether theyre rich or not, their stories matter.

Hardiman concurs. Sea Fever tackles climate catastrophe, and in doing so, its asking us to be careful in regards to our neighbors of the sea, land, and cities. We have to protect ourselves from not just the behavior of others, but our behavior as well. We are all that we have.

Ultimately, its a story about ethics, she says. Its a story about takingresponsibility for yourself, for each other, and the world. The animal in the story is kind of a metaphor for nature, which is both threatening and beautiful.

Sea Fever arrives on Digital on April 10th, but you can attend its Livestream premiere on April 9th at 5:00 PM PT by clicking HERE.

More:
Sea Fever is a Monster Movie with No Monsters, Just Animals That Gotta Eat - Film School Rejects

Human Behavior

Positive message works better than threats – Mississippi’s Best Community Newspaper | Mississippi’s Best Community Newspaper – Natchez Democrat

April 9, 2020 medical

One of the lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 may be that legislating human behavior is more than difficult. It is nearly impossible.

Despite executive orders from local mayors, state governors, and the President of the United States, not everyone is going to agree to abide by such orders even if doing so puts themselves and others at risk.

Even the stories coming from area clinics and survivors of the virus have not been enough to convince some people to observe the guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Data is not enough.

Thankfully, local leaders have decided to take a multi-pronged approach to the current crisis.

In addition to presenting the facts about COVID-19 how the virus is spread, who is at risk and the measures that need to be taken members of Mayor Darryl Grennells Coronavirus Taskforce have begun a yard sign campaign directed to the remaining holdouts in the community.

Approximately 1,175 signs have been made for citizens and businesses on both sides of the river. More than 100 signs were handed out on the first day of distribution at the Natchez Convention Center Tuesday.

Dotting yards across the city and county, the red, white and blue placards with the words Stay Home and COVID-19 Kills! demonstrate how residents are staying home to prevent the spreads of the virus.

Such a campaign appeals to the heart and not the mind.

Instead of offering threats, the signs provide an invitation to work together for the betterment of the entire community.

Seeing the number of people on both sides of the river who are cooperating will hopefully convince others to do the same.

We encourage all residents to show their support by putting a sign in their yard and then by staying home.

Go here to read the rest:
Positive message works better than threats - Mississippi's Best Community Newspaper | Mississippi's Best Community Newspaper - Natchez Democrat

Human Behavior

Dave Sweetman: Trucking in the time of COVID-19 – Land Line – Land Line Media

April 9, 2020 medical

At the time of this writing, the whole nation and most of the world is being gripped by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

The media frenzy of doom and gloom and proclamations of terrors yet to come have had an incredibly negative effect on our total economy. The pandemic has reduced most peoples lives to home confinement, social distancing and watching the daily tallies from news channels.

It is difficult to believe, in such a short period of time, our daily lives would become nonproductive. Some of that is due to government mandates. Some of it is out of fear of something we have never faced before.

As I am just another truck driver, I see and hear the same health warnings as everyone else. Because of what we do, it is impossible to hunker down at home as we try to keep America supplied with necessities.

I have seen firsthand the riot conditions in the aisles as people were first fighting over toilet paper. I witnessed empty supermarket shelves that were stripped of water, paper goods and hand cleaners. I have been personally refused from buying food when the only option was a drive-thru that would not allow a walk-up customer. I get it.

It seems they forgot how those necessary items get to the stores, as if truck drivers dont need the basics. I offer major kudos to OOIDA and the many drivers and their families who contacted their elected officials and FMCSA to press many states to reopen to truckers. It has made a major difference, and there is some relief.

On the other side of the reality of our trying times, I have seen the best of human behavior and the worst. Social media came alive with how much the public loves us. And through the goodness of some restaurant owners hearts, they have offered drive-up service, delivery to the truck and, in some cases, free meals.

Some fast food places have adopted phone apps for ordering from a big rig. It shows how creative they can be to keep many of us fed. Sit-down restaurants, as well as buffets at truck stops have been closed, for obvious reasons. If you are lucky, orders at local restaurants can be placed but for takeout only.

The negatives that I have seen and heard are distressing. Some drivers seem to think that now that they have become self-proclaimed heroes that its all about them. Some have demanded they be fed for free because they are braving the deadly bug. I have heard it over and over, with several drivers insulting the person behind the counter. Trust me, Bubba, you are no more special than the rest of us. Pay up and move on.

I cannot think of a more lunatic idea. The country is already shut down, and people are suffering and afraid, so anything close to that idea would make truckers appear evil and heartless. We are neither. That is shown every day by the dedication and sacrifices of truck drivers everywhere in America.

And while we are waiting our turn in line, there is still the 6-foot rule. Dont crowd the person in front or behind you. These are different times, and it needs to be addressed with all the same caution to protect yourself and others from the virus as any public place. I have seen a few ugly confrontations because someone didnt get the memo and, while coughing and hacking, is right on the heels of the guy in front of him in the fuel line. Six feet, people!

And cover your cough! I am 68 years old and have been through a lot in my life. If I die because I got coughed on, I am going to be cranky and will come back to haunt you.

We can and will get through this. Self-discipline, a new respect for ourselves, and an inner satisfaction that we can and do make a positive difference is a good place to start.

Human Behavior

‘Smart toilet’ could monitor for signs of illness in urine and stool, study finds – STAT

April 9, 2020 medical

Analyzing urine and stool to get a picture of health has traditionally been the work of dedicated diagnostic labs. People submit samples and technicians analyze them for a range of factors, from the presence of blood or harmful pathogens that may be causing disease to the concentration of certain chemicals that are supposed to be filtered out of the body.

Now, scientists have developed a way to bring some of that process into the home with a smart toilet that could someday detect a range of disease markers in stool and urine, including for colorectal and urologic cancer. In a paper recently published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, scientists at Stanford University reveal the smart toilet could allow for continuous health monitoring of human urine and stool and report findings from a small survey of test users on their comfort level with the device.

The smart toilet is an ordinary model equipped with a range of visible tools, such as an anus camera and urinalysis strip, fitted inside the bowl. With the help of motion detectors and pressure sensors, the tools deploy a range of tests that can determine the health of excreta. Urine samples, for instance, will undergo molecular analysis to check for a number of biomarkers, which includes protein, nitrite, and leukocytes important to detect kidney function and diagnose urinary tract infections. Stool will be assessed on its physical characteristics, such as color and consistency, which can help diagnose gastrointestinal disorders, infections, and cancers.

Data from the smart toilet could be phenomenal for understanding health and monitoring the spread of a viral disease, including Covid-19, according to Jack Gilbert, a microbiologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego, who was not involved in the research.

If we could collect data from the general population in a controlled clinical trial, its possible that you could use the existing platform to look for changes in urine or stool consistency associated with Covid-19, said Gilbert.

The toilets flush lever has a built-in identification system that reads fingerprints and allows for it to discern between users. The feedback is automatically captured by a camera, in the form of pictures and short videos, and sent to what the researchers behind the machine say is a secure, cloud-based health portal that can be easily accessed by the user at any point in the future.

Seung-min Park, lead author of the study and a molecular imaging scientist at Stanford University, likened the smart toilet to a smartwatch: It allows for continuous health monitoring and could be incorporated into ones daily routine with minimal human intervention. He also shared that the team has been working closely with physicians to ensure that data from the toilet can still be useful for the medical community.

We have developed the toilet with the help of urologists and colorectal surgeons, and prioritized their feedback to make sure it is as close to clinical use as it can be, said Park.

In the study, Park and his colleagues collected urine and stool samples from 300 smart toilet users within the Stanford community. The toilet was installed in a gender-neutral bathroom next to the their laboratory, and volunteers were asked to use the toilet as they would any other facility. Only Park and colleagues immediately involved in the research had access to the data.

The study volunteers were surveyed to assess whether they would be comfortable with using such a toilet on a daily basis. About 37% said they were somewhat comfortable, while 15% expressed feeling very comfortable. However, 30% of the participants felt uncomfortable using the toilet, which Park said was primarily because of the toilets anal camera.

The researchers have packaged a bunch of ideas together in a unified format, said Kevin Honaker, chief executive officer at microbiome data collection and analysis firm BiomeSense, who wasnt involved in the research. And it is all in one system, which Ive never really seen before. Despite this novelty, and given that only a minority of those surveyed were comfortable with the device, Honaker said that privacy and practicality are important concerns when it comes to technologies like smart toilets.

Scientists and researchers would think that this is a great idea [to have an anal camera], but in my experience, the privacy concerns are catastrophically high and youre going to have incredible patient resistance, said Honaker.

Another hurdle is maintenance: With its external components and tools, such as waterproof cameras, it is imperative that the toilet is robustly cleaned with regular bathroom cleaners after every use a considerable task even for users who live alone.

The biggest challenge before the smart toilet can be in routine use, however, is that there arent yet data on how well the toilet can actually monitor for disease in real time. During the study period, while the toilet analyzed samples from the 300 volunteers, Park and his colleagues also collected samples after every visit and sent them to a laboratory. The results of this comparative analysis which only checked for volume of urine, and color and consistency of stool and compared it to the feedback given by the toilet havent been published, but Park said the results from traditional lab testing and those from the toilet were similar.

Given this lack of data, it remains to be seen whether the smart toilet can become anywhere near as ubiquitous as smartwatches. Park and his colleagues are currently focused on fine-tuning the capabilities of the toilet before they go on to validating its diagnostic tools. One future aspiration: individualizing some of the tests in the toilet based on the health conditions of its users, such as monitoring glucose in urine in a person with diabetes and testing for urinary tract infections.

But the short-term goal is ensuring usability, and Park said he is confident that this can be achieved.

Throughout the process of developing this toilet, we have tried to ensure that it does not interfere with any normal human behavior because everyone has to go to the bathroom, he said.