ChatGPT owner launches 'imperfect' tool to detect AI-generated text

 OpenAI, the creator of the popular chatbot ChatGTP, has released a software tool to identify text generated by artificial intelligence, the company said in a blog post on Wednesday.

ChatGPT is a free program that generates textin response to a prompt, including articles, essays, jokes and even poetry, which has gained wide popularity since its debut in November, while raising concerns about copyright and plagiarism.

The AI classifier, a language model trained on the dataset of pairs of human-written and AI-written text on the same topic, aims to distinguish text that is written by AI. It uses a variety of providers to address issues such as automated misinformation campaigns and academic dishonesty, the company said.

In its public beta mode, OpenAI acknowledges the detection tool is very unreliable on texts under 1,000 characters, and AI-written text can be edited to trick the classifier.

"We’re making this classifier publicly available to get feedback on whether imperfect tools like this one are useful," OpenAI said.

“We recognize that identifying AI-written text has been an important point of discussion among educators, and equally important is recognizing the limits and impacts of AI generated text classifiers in the classroom."

Since ChatGPT debuted in November and gained wide popularity among millions of users, some of the largest U.S. school districts, including New York City, have banned the AI chatbot over concerns that students will use the text generator to cheat or plagiarize.

Others have created third-party detection tools including GPTZeroX to help educators detect AI-generated text.

OpenAI said it is engaging with educators to discuss ChatGPT's capabilities and limitations, and will continue to work on the detection of AI-generated text.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chatgpt-owner-launches-imperfect-tool-222639232.html

Canadian province tries decriminalizing drugs to fight overdose crisis

 The western Canadian province of British Columbia on Tuesday began a three-year pilot program to stop prosecuting people for carrying small amounts of heroin, meth, ecstasy, or crack cocaine, as part of an effort to fight a drug overdose crisis.

B.C. accounts for about a third of the 32,000 deaths due to overdose and trafficking nationally since 2016, according to official data. The province declared drug overdose a public health emergency that year.

The problem worsened with the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted illicit drug supply chains as well support services, leaving people with more toxic drugs that they used alone.

Preliminary data released Tuesday by the province showed there were 2,272 suspected illicit drug toxicity deaths in 2022, the second largest annual number ever recorded, behind 2021, which had 34 more deaths.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government said in May it would let B.C. decriminalize the drugs in a first-of-its-kind exemption in Canada. By not prosecuting people carrying small amounts of drugs, the B.C. government hopes to tackle the issue as a health problem rather than through the criminal justice system.

The province says the exemption is intended to reduce the stigma associated with substance use and to make it easier for people to approach authorities for guidance.

Robert Schwartz, a professor at the University of Toronto, said the measure was commendable as a first step, but that more needed to be done to tackle the drug problem.

"The problem that we have with these substances is that we have a huge, illicit supply that's causing great harm," Schwartz said. "To really deal with this, we need a comprehensive public health approach. This decriminalization, it's a first step."

The drugs on the exemption list, which also includes fentanyl and other opioids, remain illegal and the exemption from arrest is only for possession of up to 2.5 grams for personal use.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/canadian-province-tries-decriminalizing-drugs-184037306.html

South Korea slides toward recession as Jan exports plunge

 South Korea's economy inched toward its first recession in three years as data on Wednesday showed its January trade deficit soared to a record thanks to a plunge in exports caused by a combination of long holidays and cooling global demand.

Asia's fourth-largest economy, which relies heavily on trade for growth, shrank by 0.4% in the October-December quarter and is now on the brink of falling into what would be its first recession since the middle of 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Exports fell 16.6% in January from a year earlier, trade ministry data showed, worse than an 11.3% decline predicted in a Reuters survey and the fastest drop in exports since May 2020.

Imports fell 2.6% compared with a year earlier, less than a 3.6% drop predicted in the survey. As a result, the country posted a monthly trade deficit of $12.69 billion, setting a record amount for any month.

"I have a zero percent forecast for the first-quarter growth but today's trade figures are definitely a minus to that," said Park Sang-hyun, economist at HI Investment and Securities.

The increasing chances of recession - two consecutive quarters of decline in gross domestic product - also underscore growing bets in markets that the central bank's campaign of raising interest rates since late 2021 has run its course.

Leading the sluggish trade performance in January were a 44.5% dive in semiconductor exports and a whopping 31.4% plunge in sales to China, the trade ministry data showed.

Both were the worst rates of decline since the 2008/2009 global financial crisis.

South Korean bond yields fell across the board on the growing bets for a less restrictive monetary policy ahead, while stock and currency investors largely shrugged off the monthly figures.

Finance Minister Choo Kyung-ho blamed long lunar New Year holidays in China and a steep fall in computer chip prices versus a year ago for the sharp declines in export values, adding China's reopening would help ease the situation over time.

"The government will mobilise all available policy resources to help support a drive to boost exports so that the timing of improvement in trade balance can be advanced," Choo said at a meeting of trade-related officials, without elaborating.

The government has forecast this year's exports would fall 4.5% after posting a 6.1% gain in 2022, and the trade ministry has said it would do what it can to avert a decline.

https://sports.yahoo.com/1-south-korea-jan-exports-001849763.html

U.S. readies $2 billion-plus Ukraine aid package with longer-range weapons -sources

 The United States is readying more than $2 billion worth of military aid for Ukraine that is expected to include longer-range rockets for the first time as well as other munitions and weapons, two U.S. officials briefed on the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

The aid is expected to be announced as soon as this week, the officials said. It is also expected to include support equipment for Patriot air defense systems, precision-guided munitions and Javelin anti-tank weapons, they added.

One of the officials said a portion of the package, expected to be $1.725 billion, would come from a fund known as the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which allows President Joe Biden's administration to get weapons from industry rather than from U.S. weapons stocks.

The USAI funds would go toward the purchase of a new weapon, the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) made by Boeing Co, which have a range of 94 miles (150 km). The United States has rebuffed Ukraine's requests for the 185-mile (297-km) range ATACMS missile.

The longer range of the GLSDB glide bomb could allow Ukraine to hit targets that have been out of reach and help it continue pressing its counterattacks by disrupting Russia further behind its lines.

Reuters first reported on Boeing's proposal to field GLSDB for Ukraine in November. At the time it was expected GLSDB could be in Ukraine by spring.

GLSDB is made jointly by SAAB AB and Boeing. It combines the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) with the M26 rocket motor, both of which are common in U.S. inventories.

GLSDB is GPS-guided, can defeat some electronic jamming, is usable in all weather conditions, and can be used against armored vehicles, according to SAAB's website. The GBU-39 - which would function as the GLSDB's warhead - has small, folding wings that allow it to glide more than 100km if dropped from an aircraft and hit targets as small as 3 feet (1 meter) in diameter.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/u-readies-2-billion-plus-223944008.html

Hedge Funds Push Chinese Holdings Close to Record

 By Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and analyst

Despite the world-beating rally in Chinese assets, positioning data show a clear dichotomy among investors’ views on the nation.

While hedge funds have boosted their exposure to Chinese stocks to near an all-time high again, mutual funds – which tend to have a longer-term investment horizon — remain significantly underweight, according to Goldman Sachs. Such a divergence shows that Chinese assets are viewed only as a three-month “trade,” rather than a three-year “investment.”

China’s manufacturing and services survey data Tuesday confirmed that the economy is bouncing back. The International Monetary Fund also raised China’s growth forecast this year by 0.8 percentage point to 5.2%, making it one of few major economies that may see growth accelerate this year.

With the economy healing, it’s not surprising that foreign investors are scooping up Chinese stocks hand over fist. The inflow into equities via the stock connect in January reached a record $21 billion, already exceeding the influx for the whole year of 2022.

But a closer look under the hood suggests a deep split between different types of investors. Hedge funds, who tend to be nimble, have increased their net exposure to Chinese stocks to 13%, from about 7% late last year, according to data from Goldman Sachs’s Prime Services unit. That isn’t far away from a peak of 15% in 2020, just before Beijing started cracking down on tech companies.

In comparison, while global mutual funds’ holding of Chinese stocks has increased to 8% from 6%, they still are  underweight China by 420 basis points relative to their benchmarks, as of December. The current position ranks in the 19th percentile over the past decade, analysts including Sunil Koul wrote in a note.

Source: Goldman Sachs

There’s also a divergence between investors in different regions: the further away from China, the more cautious they are.

The divergence, perhaps, comes down to cyclical versus structural views. After all, China can only “re-open” once. It’s a nice trade that fast money is willing to chase. But as life returns to normal, Beijing needs to grapple with the same long-term problems, including a bloated real estate industry, a shrinking population and increasing geopolitical tensions.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan has halted direct investing in private assets in China. Separately, the Biden administration is considering cutting off Huawei Technologies from all of its American suppliers.

Hedge funds are enjoying the reopening party, for now. For deep-pocketed, long-term investors, though, China remains “uninvestable.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/hedge-funds-push-chinese-holdings-close-record

'Time For The Scientific Community To Admit We Were Wrong About COVID & It Cost Lives'

 Real "mea culpa", ongoing and rapid revision of history, or further narrative management with regard 'amnesty' over what "the others" did to those who thought for themselves over the last few years..

In no less a liberal rag than Newsweek, Kevin Bass (MS MD/PHD Student, Medical School) has penned a quite surprising (and 'brave') op-ed saying that "it's time for the scientific community to admit we were wrong about COVID and it cost lives..."

[ZH: emphasis ours]

As a medical student and researcher, I staunchly supported the efforts of the public health authorities when it came to COVID-19.

I believed that the authorities responded to the largest public health crisis of our lives with compassion, diligence, and scientific expertise. I was with them when they called for lockdowns, vaccines, and boosters.

I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives.

I can see now that the scientific community from the CDC to the WHO to the FDA and their representatives, repeatedly overstated the evidence and misled the public about its own views and policies, including on natural vs. artificial immunity, school closures and disease transmission, aerosol spread, mask mandates, and vaccine effectiveness and safety, especially among the young. All of these were scientific mistakes at the time, not in hindsight. Amazingly, some of these obfuscations continue to the present day.

But perhaps more important than any individual error was how inherently flawed the overall approach of the scientific community was, and continues to be. It was flawed in a way that undermined its efficacy and resulted in thousands if not millions of preventable deaths.

What we did not properly appreciate is that preferences determine how scientific expertise is used, and that our preferences might be—indeed, our preferences were—very different from many of the people that we serve. We created policy based on our preferences, then justified it using data. And then we portrayed those opposing our efforts as misguided, ignorant, selfish, and evil.

We made science a team sport, and in so doing, we made it no longer science. It became us versus them, and "they" responded the only way anyone might expect them to: by resisting.

We excluded important parts of the population from policy development and castigated critics, which meant that we deployed a monolithic response across an exceptionally diverse nation, forged a society more fractured than ever, and exacerbated longstanding heath and economic disparities.

A students adjusts her facemask at St. Joseph Catholic School in La Puente, California on November 16, 2020, where pre-kindergarten to Second Grade students in need of special services returned to the classroom today for in-person instruction. - The campus is the second Catholic school in Los Angeles County to receive a waiver approval to reopen as the coronavirus pandemic rages on. The US surpassed 11 million coronavirus cases Sunday, adding one million new cases in less than a week, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.FREDERIC J. BROWN / AFP

Our emotional response and ingrained partisanship prevented us from seeing the full impact of our actions on the people we are supposed to serve. We systematically minimized the downsides of the interventions we imposed—imposed without the input, consent, and recognition of those forced to live with them. In so doing, we violated the autonomy of those who would be most negatively impacted by our policies: the poor, the working class, small business owners, Blacks and Latinos, and children. These populations were overlooked because they were made invisible to us by their systematic exclusion from the dominant, corporatized media machine that presumed omniscience.

Most of us did not speak up in support of alternative views, and many of us tried to suppress them. When strong scientific voices like world-renowned Stanford professors John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya, and Scott Atlas, or University of California San Francisco professors Vinay Prasad and Monica Gandhi, sounded the alarm on behalf of vulnerable communities, they faced severe censure by relentless mobs of critics and detractors in the scientific community—often not on the basis of fact but solely on the basis of differences in scientific opinion.

When former President Trump pointed out the downsides of intervention, he was dismissed publicly as a buffoon. And when Dr. Antony Fauci opposed Trump and became the hero of the public health community, we gave him our support to do and say what he wanted, even when he was wrong.

Trump was not remotely perfect, nor were the academic critics of consensus policy. But the scorn that we laid on them was a disaster for public trust in the pandemic response. Our approach alienated large segments of the population from what should have been a national, collaborative project.

And we paid the price. The rage of the those marginalized by the expert class exploded onto and dominated social media. Lacking the scientific lexicon to express their disagreement, many dissidents turned to conspiracy theories and a cottage industry of scientific contortionists to make their case against the expert class consensus that dominated the pandemic mainstream. Labeling this speech "misinformation" and blaming it on "scientific illiteracy" and "ignorance," the government conspired with Big Tech to aggressively suppress it, erasing the valid political concerns of the government's opponents.

And this despite the fact that pandemic policy was created by a razor-thin sliver of American society who anointed themselves to preside over the working class—members of academia, government, medicine, journalism, tech, and public health, who are highly educated and privileged. From the comfort of their privilege, this elite prizes paternalism, as opposed to average Americans who laud self-reliance and whose daily lives routinely demand that they reckon with risk. That many of our leaders neglected to consider the lived experience of those across the class divide is unconscionable.

Incomprehensible to us due to this class divide, we severely judged lockdown critics as lazy, backwards, even evil. We dismissed as "grifters" those who represented their interests. We believed "misinformation" energized the ignorant, and we refused to accept that such people simply had a different, valid point of view.

We crafted policy for the people without consulting them. If our public health officials had led with less hubris, the course of the pandemic in the United States might have had a very different outcome, with far fewer lost lives.

Instead, we have witnessed a massive and ongoing loss of life in America due to distrust of vaccines and the healthcare system; a massive concentration in wealth by already wealthy elites; a rise in suicides and gun violence especially among the poor; a near-doubling of the rate of depression and anxiety disorders especially among the young; a catastrophic loss of educational attainment among already disadvantaged children; and among those most vulnerable, a massive loss of trust in healthcare, science, scientific authorities, and political leaders more broadly.

My motivation for writing this is simple:

It's clear to me that for public trust to be restored in science, scientists should publicly discuss what went right and what went wrong during the pandemic, and where we could have done better.

It's OK to be wrong and admit where one was wrong and what one learned. That's a central part of the way science works. Yet I fear that many are too entrenched in groupthink—and too afraid to publicly take responsibility—to do this.

Solving these problems in the long term requires a greater commitment to pluralism and tolerance in our institutions, including the inclusion of critical if unpopular voices.

Intellectual elitism, credentialism, and classism must end. Restoring trust in public health—and our democracy—depends on it.

The problem was not people's ignorance of the facts, it was the organized antagonism and censorship against anyone presenting data that was contradictory to the mandate agenda. This is setting aside proclamations like those from the LA Times, which argued that mocking the deaths of "anti-vaxxers" might be necessary and justified.  After two years of this type of arrogant nonsense it's hard to imagine people will be willing to pretend as if all is well.

The active effort to shut down any opposing data is the root crime, though, and no, it can never be forgotten or forgiven.

People are still livid...

One cannot help but notice that the timing of the Atlantic's appeal for passive forgetfulness and now this op-ed mea culpa coincides with the swiftly approaching end of the COVID emergency declarations, amid a growing political backlash to the last two years of meaningless lockdowns and mandates, and Democrats were instrumental in the implementation of both.  A large swath of the population sees one party as the cause of much of their covid era strife.  

Perhaps the mainstream media is suddenly realizing that they may have to face some payback for their covid zealotry?  “We didn't know! We were just following orders!”  It all sounds rather familiar.

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/its-time-scientific-community-admit-we-were-wrong-about-covid-it-cost-lives

Similar Brain Atrophy in Obesity and Alzheimer's Disease

 Brain atrophy patterns are similar in individuals with obesity and those with Alzheimer's disease (AD), a new study shows.

Comparisons of MRI scans for more than 1000 participants indicate correlations between the two conditions, especially in areas of gray matter thinning, suggesting that managing excess weight might slow cognitive decline and lower the risk for AD, according to the researchers.

However, brain maps of obesity did not correlate with maps of amyloid or tau protein accumulation.

Dr Filip Morys

"The fact that obesity-related brain atrophy did not correlate with the distribution of amyloid and tau proteins in AD was not what we expected," study author Filip Morys, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, told Medscape Medical News. "But it might just show that the specific mechanisms underpinning obesity- and Alzheimer's-disease-related neurodegeneration are different. This remains to be confirmed."

The study was published today in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

Cortical Thinning

The current study was prompted by the team's earlier study, which showed that obesity-related neurodegeneration patterns were visually similar to those of AD, said Morys. "It was known previously that obesity is a risk factor for AD, but we wanted to directly compare brain atrophy patterns in both, which is what we did in this new study."

The researchers analyzed data from a pooled sample of more than 1300 participants. From the ADNI database, the researchers selected participants with AD and age- and sex-matched cognitively healthy controls. From the UK Biobank, the researchers drew a sample of lean, overweight, and obese participants without neurologic disease.

To determine how the weight status of patients with AD affects the correspondence between AD and obesity maps, they categorized participants with AD and healthy controls from the ADNI database into lean, overweight, and obese subgroups.

Then, to investigate mechanisms that might drive the similarities between obesity-related brain atrophy and AD-related amyloid-beta accumulation, they looked for overlapping areas in PET brain maps between patients with these outcomes.

The investigations showed that obesity maps were highly correlated with AD maps, but not with amyloid-beta or tau protein maps. The researchers also found significant correlations between obesity and the lean individuals with AD.

Brain regions with the highest similarities between obesity and AD were located mainly in the left temporal and bilateral prefrontal cortices.

"Our research confirms that obesity-related grey matter atrophy resembles that of AD," the authors conclude. "Excess weight management could lead to improved health outcomes, slow down cognitive decline in aging, and lower the risk for AD."

Upcoming research "will focus on investigating how weight loss can affect the risk for AD, other dementias, and cognitive decline in general," said Morys. "At this point, our study suggests that obesity prevention, weight loss, but also decreasing other metabolic risk factors related to obesity, such as type-2 diabetes or hypertension, might reduce the risk for AD and have beneficial effects on cognition."

Lifestyle Habits

Dr Claire Sexton

Commenting on the findings for Medscape, Claire Sexton, DPhil, vice president of scientific programs and outreach at the Alzheimer's Association, cautioned that a single cross-sectional study isn't conclusive. "Previous studies have illustrated that the relationship between obesity and dementia is complex. Growing evidence indicates that people can reduce their risk of cognitive decline by adopting key lifestyle habits, like regular exercise, a heart-healthy diet and staying socially and cognitively engaged."

The Alzheimer's Association is leading a 2-year clinical trial, U.S. Pointer, to study how targeting these risk factors in combination may reduce risk for cognitive decline in older adults.

The work was supported by a Foundation Scheme award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Morys received a postdoctoral fellowship from Fonds de Recherche du Quebec – Santé. Data collection and sharing were funded by the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, and multiple pharmaceutical companies and other private sector organizations. Morys and Sexton reported no relevant financial relationships.

J Alz Dis. Published online January 31, 2022. Full text

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/987704