Joe @twitskeptic@qoto.org

I'm glad on not on the birdsite to read the hot takes, accusations, rejoinders, recriminations, and general nonsense around the DOE's lab leak announcement.

Because people are asking, a few brief thoughts.

First, there is obviously a political element to this. Announcing "I think X with low confidence" is not your usual strategy where communicating new science is concerned.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/us/politics/china-lab-leak-coronavirus-pandemic.html?unlocked_article_code=UB3qqTsa4T9nz8csgzHjJVbZD-BfPfK5uFXw6kSxjgFdqG6GGx7-UIGK7rl8ufigdr_lHDcGmLeQz0IpsFTsJicn0eCtfOHvDs6jZnoLktOoOFQeW2BTGubne3k0sgO6THsv7ZWEGC9mCMXW1JESFdIIkVxht471x_UNPn_iya_evf8NTZ4BE_9sjGjEOrHB0ry94cLVWwMXlmzMThrAJIuwDyPY7uv22CBXWjd-XtfgjLVl4zhRQlPDRRgTFP0t1jLZ3vhpKKCz9EZ0Fe7pI4yrF5kTyC1kJG9tfnyck-wcOGT_3Be0d70CMcnlsHaONOex-DTJgwETgFd3mcfIzuk_ukDI-ULE2J4wP0IfhK6M&smid=url-share

Tempted to go back to twitter rather than miss Nate Silver's insights on the DOE announcement.

Via @HelenBranswell, it appears that these two cases were infected with an older strain (2.3.2.1c) of H5N1, rather than the strain of current concern that is sweeping the globe. This, coupled with the absence of further reports of human cases, makes it likely that daughter and father both contracted H5N1 directly from their flock of birds and that there was no human-to-human transmission involved.

We wrote a blog post about our on-going nightmare: ChatGPT recommends us for a service we don't provide.

Dozens of people are signing up to our site every day and then getting frustrated when "it doesn't work". Hugely frustrating.

https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/dont-believe-chatgpt

Please do NOT trust the nonsense ChatGPT spits out.

Some good news:
WHO says only 1 of 12 samples taken from contacts of the 11-yo girl who died earlier this week from #H5N1 has tested positive for the virus. It was from the girl's father.
WHO is providing flu antivirals & helping with the field investigation.

Anybody know of any good articles considering the possibilities of the resonant effects of AI training (for both predictive and generative tasks) on inputs increasingly produced by generative AI? And/or where strategic manipulation of AI might occur (through intentionally crafted content that ends up as training data)?

Wait for it!! Phrynosoma solare, a very common horned lizard in the Sonoran Desert. Like most horned lizards they are primarily ant eaters.

Also like most horned lizards, they can squirt blood from their eyes when threatened (known as a "deimatic" or "startle" defense). I'm told by those who study them that they can aim!

This species lays eggs, but some species give birth to live young.

They are hella cool critters!

#HornedLizard #HornyToad #herpetology #CoolShitYouSeeWanderingInTheDesert

This is like the most American thing ever: University uses ChatGPT to write an outreach letter after a mass shooting.

https://vanderbilthustler.com/2023/02/17/peabody-edi-office-responds-to-msu-shooting-with-email-written-using-chatgpt/

Spotify has been secretly letting Apple train audio generation models on voice narrators

https://www.wired.com/story/apple-spotify-audiobook-narrators-ai-contract/

So, the National Weather Service alone launches a thousand balloons a WEEK toward the stratosphere. Someone better tell the Air Force. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/science/weather-balloons-stratosphere.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Hi #epitwitter #epiverse, how many #COVID deaths are we willing to accept per year? As the third year of the #pandemic comes to a close, 190,000 Americans will have died of COVID by Feb 28 2023. That's more than for all other infectious disease combined. 1/

The Onion is perfect as usual

"ChatGPT Forced To Take Bar Exam Even Though Dream Was To Be AI Art Bot"

https://www.theonion.com/chatgpt-forced-to-take-bar-exam-even-though-dream-was-t-1850036337

Wharton professor Ethan Mollick has an interesting piece on how easy it was for him to create an entirely-synthetic video of him lecturing, using AI text, voice, and video generation tools.

https://oneusefulthing.substack.com/p/a-quick-and-sobering-guide-to-cloning?utm_source=direct&r=i5f7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web