DON’T TRUST BIG TECH: Major tax-filing sites routinely shared users’ financial info with Facebook.

NOW OUT FROM ANDREW WAREHAM: The Africa Hand.

FASTER, PLEASE: New study brings personalized immunotherapy prescriptions a step closer.

WE KEPT KIDS IN A BUBBLE FOR A YEAR AND THEY NEVER BUILT UP NATURAL IMMUNITIES TO LOTS OF THINGS: ‘I’ve never seen anything like this’: Doctors warn America is running out of FOUR child antibiotics and flu drugs as kids bear brunt of ‘tripledemic.’

ALONG WITH NUCLEAR, IT’S THE MOST CARBON-FRIENDLY SOURCE OF POWER: Europe’s space agency reviewing space-based solar power.

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Will the Left Ever Learn to Wait Before Blaming the Right for a Mass Shooting?

MISINFORMATION FROM THE FEDS: Dr. Jha: “We can prevent every covid death in America” if everyone gets their updated booster.

Saying things that are obviously and literally false is a good way to lose trust, which is what the CDC, NIH, FDA, etc. have done.

SCIENCE, UNSETTLED: Study raises doubts about role of ‘good’ cholesterol in heart health.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (COMMUNIST CHINA EDITION): Hundreds riot at Foxconn iPhone plant over terrible conditions. “The various videos reportedly show workers complaining about not getting meals while in COVID lockdown. They also say that China and Foxconn’s ‘closed-loop production’ health measures — where staff live and work on-site — do not work.”

FAIL, BRITANNIA: More Than a Third of UK Restaurants Could Close by Early 2023.

FROZEN: Newborn twins born from embryos frozen 30 years ago.

THIS IS BOTH IMPRESSIVE AND DISTURBING: Meta researchers create AI that masters Diplomacy, tricking human players.

I’ve been playing Diplomacy since middle school, and there are no random elements like dice or cards — it’s all human interaction.

Even before Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997, board games were a useful measure of AI achievement. In 2015, another barrier fell when AlphaGo defeated Go master Lee Sedol. Both of those games follow a relatively clear set of analytical rules (although Go’s rules are typically simplified for computer AI).

But with Diplomacy, a large portion of the gameplay involves social skills. Players must show empathy, use natural language, and build relationships to win—a difficult task for a computer player. With this in mind, Meta asked, “Can we build more effective and flexible agents that can use language to negotiate, persuade, and work with people to achieve strategic goals similar to the way humans do?”
…
The resulting model mastered the intricacies of a complex game. “Cicero can deduce, for example, that later in the game it will need the support of one particular player,” says Meta, “and then craft a strategy to win that person’s favor—and even recognize the risks and opportunities that that player sees from their particular point of view.”
…
At the same time, this technology could be used to manipulate humans by impersonating people and tricking them in potentially dangerous ways, depending on the context. Along those lines, Meta hopes other researchers can build on its code “in a responsible manner.”

Meta claims to have taken steps to prevent Cicero from being abused (or from becoming abusive, I suppose), but the source code is also open-sourced on GitHub.

From the comments at Ars: “Unbelievable. Training a non-conscious AI to ruthlessly deceive, manipulate and enlist humans towards the achievement of an arbitrary value function no matter the cost, as one of the first AI functions to develop. It’s like these guys want a paperclip-optimising singularity apocalypse.”

And yet: META WORKS ON AN AI, INSTEAD PRODUCES a “random bullshit generator.”

Similar programs, totally different results.

MORE ON COLORADO SPRINGS SHOOTING SUSPECT:  The New York Post details “their” [non-binary pronouns preferred] problems.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Four Mass Shooting Truths to Shut Down Your Liberal Family Members at Thanksgiving Dinner.

BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: Ray-Ban Rb3025 Classic Polarized Aviator Sunglasses. #CommissionEarned

SPOILER: THE ADMINISTRATION IS SIGNALING WILLINGNESS TO ACCEPT IT. Rail shutdown is ‘not acceptable.’ “With a potential rail strike less than two weeks away, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told NewsNation’s Leland Vittert that a shutdown ‘is not acceptable’ but declined to say whether President Joe Biden’s administration would support rail workers if they strike.”

WHY SHOULD TAXPAYERS SUPPORT RACIAL BIGOTRY? 12 Okla. universities discriminate against white and Asian students: federal complaint.

CRISIS BY DESIGN: International Criminals Get Waved Across the Southern Border With ‘Squeaky Clean’ Records.

“SYSTEMIC RACISM” IN STEM FIELDS AND STATISTICAL ILLITERACY. They go together like peanut butter and jelly.

Here’s a suggestion: stop trying to get every high school student into calculus, about which 99% of the kids are right when they complain “I’ll never use this!,” and make the default last year of math a course in basic statistics, which 99% of them will need in order to avoid being bamboozled every day of their lives.

JETTISONING OBJECTIVE TESTS WILL MAKE RACIAL DISCRIMINATION HARDER TO PROVE: Accreditation council votes to eliminate LSAT for 2025 application cycle: The change, approved by the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, would no longer require that law schools ‘have a ‘valid and reliable’ test.’

The ABA, as a partisan political organization, should have no role in accreditation at all.