Emotional Support Punctuation

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“The em dash is such a powerful writing tool that also carries great subtlety to it,” said Aileen Gallagher, a journalism professor at Syracuse University. “The idea that it is an indicator of soulless, dead AI-generated writing is really upsetting to me. Moniza Hossain, a children’s author based in Britain, called the em dash her “emotional support punctuation mark.” -Washington Post

What’s our job?

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Last year, I sat in a faculty meeting while a guest lecturer gleefully explained how they had used AI to design their class, craft PowerPoint presentations, and develop exams. At the end of the presentation, a colleague leaned over and asked, “Then what’s our job?” I have thought long and hard about that question. If faculty hope to survive, much less prosper, in the age of AI, they need to come up with a compelling answer to that question: “What’s our job?” -Scott Latham writing in the Chronicle of Higher Ed

Driving in a Snowstorm to see a Game

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Two avid sports fans plan to travel 40 miles to see a basketball game. One of them paid for his ticket: the other was on his way to purchase a ticket when he got one free from a friend. A blizzard is announced for the night of the game. Which of the two ticket holders is more likely to brave the blizzard to see the game?

The answer is immediate: we know that the fan who paid for his ticket is more likely to drive. Mental accounting provides the explanation. We assume that both fans set up an account for the game they hoped to see. Missing the game will close the accounts with a negative balance. Regardless of how they came by their ticket, both will be disappointed – but the closing balance is distinctly more negative for the one who bought a ticket and is now out of pocket as well as deprived of the game. Because staying home is worse for this individual, he is more motivated to see the game and therefore more likely to make the attempt to drive into a blizzard.

The emotions that people attach to the state of their mental accounts are not acknowledged in standard economic theory. An Econ would realize that the ticket has already been paid for and cannot be returned. Its cost is “sunk” and the Econ would not care whether he had bought the ticket to the game or got it from a friend (if Econs have friends). To implement this rational behavior, (the fan) would have to be aware of the counterfactual possibility. “Would I still drive into this snowstorm if I had gotten the ticket free from a friend?” It takes an active disciplined mind to raise such a difficult question.

Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman

Loving the Real Person

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Christ did not, like a moralist, love a theory of good, but he loved the real man. He was not, like a philosopher, interested in the universally valid, but rather in that which is of help to the real and concrete human being. What worried him was not, like Kant, whether the "maxim of an action can become a principle of general legislation," but whether my action is at this moment helping my neighbor to become a man before God.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics

AI Attending Class

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Two students in Austria created a program that is attending classes and is treated like any other student. It attends lectures, turns in artwork for assignments, collaborates with classmates and will receive grades on submitted work. ‘Flynn’ is testing the boundaries of artificial intelligence tools, and could, in theory, progress toward a diploma.” - Washington Post

AI in the Next Decade

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“Over the course of the next 10 years, AI-powered institutions will rise in the rankings. US News & World Report will factor a college’s AI capabilities into its calculations. Accrediting agencies will assess the degree of AI integration into pedagogy, research, and student life. Corporations will want to partner with universities that have demonstrated AI prowess. In short, we will see the emergence of the AI haves and have-nots. Prepare for an ever-widening chasm between resource-rich, technologically advanced colleges and those that are cash-starved and slow to adapt to the age of AI.” - Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Lesson of Disenchantment

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The lesson of disenchantment begins with the discovery that if you want to change – really to change, and not just to switch positions – you must realize that some significant part of your old reality was in your head, not out there. The flawless parent, the noble leader, the perfect wife, and the utterly trustworthy friend are an inner cast of characters looking for actors to play the parts. One person is on the lookout for someone older and wiser, and another is seeking an admiring follower. And when they find each other they fit like the interlocking pieces of a puzzle.

Or almost. Actually, the misfit is greater than either person knows, or even wants to know. The thing that keeps this misperception in place is an “enchantment,” a spell cast by the past on the present. Most of the time, these enchantments work fairly well, but at life’s turning points they break down. Almost inevitably, we feel cheated at such times, as though someone were trying to trick us. But usually the earlier enchanted view was as “real” as we could manage a the time. It corresponded to a self-image and a situation and it could not change without affecting ourselves and others.

William Bridges, Transitions

Anger in Relationships

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No one in a relationship problem is ever totally innocent or totally guilty. With this belief, people can always keep the door open to their own faults without engaging in excessive, guilt-provoking self-incrimination. Holding back anger for even a short time and engaging in self-analysis in private has the effect of tempering the expression of anger. Confession altars our goals from changing others to changing the relationship.

Gary Collins, Counseling and Anger

Motivated by Screaming

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I had the most satisfying Eureka experience of my career while attempting to teach flight instructors that praise is more effective than punishment for promoting skill-learning. I was telling them about an important principle of skill training: rewards for improved performance work better than punishment of mistakes. This proposition is supported by much evidence from research on pigeons, rats, humans and other animals.

When I had finished my enthusiastic speech, one of the most seasoned instructors in the audience raised his hand and made a short speech of his own. He began by conceding that positive reinforcement might be good for the birds, but he denied that it was optimal for flight cadets. This is what he said,

“On many occasions I have praised flight cadets for clean execution of some aerobatic maneuver. The next time they try the same maneuver they usually do worse. On the other hand, I have often screamed into a cadet’s earphone for bad execution, and in general he does better one his next try. So please don’t tell us that reward works and punishment does not, because the opposite is the case.”

This was a joyous moment of insight, in which I saw in a new light a principle of statistics that I had been teaching for years. The instructor was right – but he was also completely wrong! His observation was astute and correct: occasions on which he praised a performance were likely to be followed by a disappointing performance, and punishments were typically followed by an improvement. But the inference he had drawn about the efficacy of reward and punishment was completely off the mark.

What he had observed is known as regression to the mean, which in that case was due to random fluctuations in the quality of the performance. Naturally, he praised only a cadet whose performance was far better than average. But the cadet was probably just lucky on that particular attempt and therefore likely to deteriorate regardless of whether or not he was praise. Similarly, the instructor would shout in to a cadet earphones only when the cadet’s performance was usually bad and therefore likely to improve regardless of what the instructor did. The instructor had attached a causal interpretation to the inevitable fluctuations of a random process.

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow

26 Articles about Amazing Things AI can do now

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How Google Used AI to Re-Create ‘The Wizard of Oz’ for the Las Vegas Sphere – Wall Street Journal  

New AI chips transfer data using light instead of electricity for greater speed – Reuters

New AI algorithm to predict risk of cardiovascular events, heart-related death – AP 7am

AI is shaking up the hidden world of earthquake forecasting – The Star

This new AI tool changes a speaker's accent to American English in real-time - hear for yourself – Zdet  

Doctors Told Him He Was Going to Die. Then A.I. Saved His Life.- New York Times

Arizona Supreme Court taps AI avatars to make the judicial system more publicly accessible – Associated Press 

Agibot unveils AI model that allows humanoid robots to perform real-world tasks – SCMP  

How A.I. Is Changing the Way the World Builds Computers - New York Times

Artificial intelligence finds 5,000-year-old civilization beneath Dubai desert – Jerusalem Post

AI made its way to vineyards. Here’s how the technology is helping make your wine – Associated Press 

Google Cloud unveils AI-powered weather predictions - Axios 

The New Leverage: AI and the Power of Small Teams – Jarango

Duke Health develops AI model that predicts mental health illness risks for adolescents – CBS 17  

AI can outperform humans in predicting correlations between personality items – Nature

McDonald’s Gives Its Restaurants an AI Makeover - Wall Street Journal

These AI powered earbuds pack a secret — you can record and translate speech – Tom’s Guide  

Earth AI is using AI algorithms to identify overlooked deposits of critical minerals – Tech Crunch   

Surveillance software uses machine learning and motion analysis to help retailers catch shoplifters – Financial Times

A weather model that offers a faster and more efficient alternative to traditional forecasting methods – The Register 

A small robot can be used to detect and potentially treat cancers found in the large intestine – Medical Express  

A new AI tool helps recruitment agencies automate outreach and follow-ups - Financial Times

Krisp is using AI to change user accents during phone calls in real-time. - Tech Crunch  

Scientists in the UK have developed an AI model that speeds up the diagnosis of coeliac disease – The Guardian

AI and satellites help aid workers respond to Myanmar earthquake damage – Associated Press

Meta Unveils Mind-Reading AI That Types Your Thoughts with Shocking Precision – The Brighter Side

Effectively Remixing Other People’s Materials

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According to Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist, the so-called “original” thinkers and creators are simply people who effectively learned to remix other people’s materials.

Originality isn’t about doing what’s never been done in a strict sense, but it’s about the unique way in which each individual gives expression to his or her artistic influences. Quoting Jonathan Lethem, Kleon argues that “when people call something ‘original,’ nine out of ten times they just don’t know the references or the original sources involved.”

It’s a simple idea, but not as simple as “copy the people you like” and you’ll be an instant genius.

The kind of stealing Kleon refers to is not about pretending you came up with somebody else’s idea or just modifying a few details, but it’s about being strategic and selective with the process of choosing your influences, taking what resonates with you, making other people’s ideas your own, and being diverse enough to find unexplored points of intersection between your various influences.

TK Coleman, 5 Ways to Steal Like An Artist

Obsessed with Image

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As Americans, we're obsessed with images. Who we are isn't as important as how we appear. In fact, we spend so much time and effort on appearances, we lose the ability to recognize the true identity of another person, or even ourselves. We've become more familiar with the image than we are with the real thing.

Dating relationships are especially vulnerable to this problem. A person isn't evaluated on character or individuality, but on how close he or she measures up to the other's image of the ideal mate. Real people take second chair to the ideal; they measure up to the image or they don't.

Have you ever noticed the excitement at the beginning of a romance that later faded with growing familiarity? In the early stages of any new friendship, we're usually seeing more of the image than we are of the real person. We've seen enough of the surface to see similarities between the object of our affections and the ideal we seek, but not enough to show us that our ideal and the new friend are not the same person. In essence, we're falling in love with the image, with the idea that this one person might be "it." Sooner or later the real person is going to start breaking through that image, and disillusionment will set in.

The success of a marriage comes not in finding the "right" person, but in the ability of both partners to adjust to the real person they inevitably realize they married. Some people never make this adjustment, becoming trapped in an endless search for an image that does not exist.

John Fischer, Real Christians Don’t Dance!

29 Articles about the Impact of AI on Health Care

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Arguing the pros and cons of AI in healthcare - TechTarget

Randomized Trial of a Generative AI Chatbot for Mental Health Treatment – New England Journal of Medicine

Apple Readies Its Biggest Push Into Health Yet With New AI Doctor – Bloomberg

Adaptive deep brain stimulation uses AI to reduce Parkinson’s symptoms - The Washington Post

Retracted articles on cancer imaging are not only continuously cited by publications but also used by ChatGPT to answer questions – Science Direct

Open-Source AI Matches Top Proprietary LLM in Solving Tough Medical Cases – Harvard Medical School 

Doctors Told Him He Was Going to Die. Then A.I. Saved His Life. – New York Times 

AI-Powered Test Reveals Biological Age from Small Blood Sample – Inside Precision Medicine

AI failed to detect critical health conditions: study - Axios 

Algorithm may reduce racial, ethnic inequalities in MS treatment: Study – Multiple Sclerosis News Today  

The Hologram Doctor Will See You Now – Wall Street Journal

Machine learning outperforms deep learning in audiometry in a new study – Dev Discourse

Duke Health develops AI model that predicts mental health illness risks for adolescents – CBS17

Pre-trained convolutional neural networks identify Parkinson’s disease from spectrogram images of voice samples – Nature

Can AI predict the next pandemic? A new study says yes – News Medical

Train clinical AI to reason like a team of doctors – Nature

An AI-powered model that accurately predicts blood sugar levels in diabetes patients – Deccan Herald

An AI clinical assistant that automates pre-surgery assessments for cataract patients – BBC

How health insurers are using AI today – StatNews

A diagnostic tool that uses DNA sequencing and machine learning to detect multiple diseases from a single blood sample - Inside Precision Medicine

A Versatile AI System for Analyzing Series of Medical Images - Cornell Medicine

Cancer could be spotted early on thanks to new 'human-defying' AI-powered body scan – Daily Record

AI-based pregnancy analysis discovers previously unknown warning signs for stillbirth and newborn complications – University of Utah

Reid Hoffman Raises $24.6 Million for AI Cancer-Research Startup - Wall Street Journal

From Prediction To Practice: AI’s Role In Healthcare 2025 – Forbes

Assessing AI-Driven Approaches to Student Mental Health – Dartmouth

6 ways AI is transforming healthcare – World Economic Forum

Trump’s early actions imperil efforts to improve AI’s performance in medicine – Stat News

Medical students use AI to practice communication skills - Cornell Chronicle

Wearable AI to enhance patient safety and clinical decision-making – Nature