Listening is
/Listening is not thinking about what you are going to say when the other person has stopped talking. – H Norman Wright
ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
Why some Couples Endure
/There are many reasons why relationships fail, but if you look at what drives the deterioration of many relationships, it’s often a breakdown of kindness. As the normal stresses of a life together pile up—with children, career, friend, in-laws, and other distractions crowding out the time for romance and intimacy—couples may put less effort into their relationship and let the petty grievances they hold against one another tear them apart. In most marriages, levels of satisfaction drop dramatically within the first few years together. But among couples who not only endure, but live happily together for years and years, the spirit of kindness and generosity guides them forward.
Emily Esfahani Smith writing in The Atlantic
Toxicity is harder for AI to fake than intelligence
/"The next time you encounter an unusually polite reply on social media, you might want to check twice. It could be an AI model trying (and failing) to blend in with the crowd. A new study reveals that AI models remain easily distinguishable from humans in social media conversations, with overly friendly emotional tone serving as the most persistent giveaway. Also, the AI models struggled to match the level of casual negativity and spontaneous emotional expression common in human social media posts." -ArsTechnica
The Perfect Parent Trap
/When perfectionists become parents, their mindsets don't change; they just shift their unreasonable expectations onto their children. Now their kids must be perfect too. In fact, a number of studies have found that perfectionists are so busy worrying about the drive for excellence that they aren't sensitive are responsive to the children's real needs.
Perfectionist parenting is anxious parenting. So that their children never make mistakes, these parents are overprotective, controlling, authoritarian, intrusive and dominating.
(Not that any of it helps: Research at Macquarie University in Australia showed that perfectionist parents’ tendencies to admonish kids and emphasize accuracy didn't decrease errors in children's work.)
Unsurprisingly kids of perfectionists are perfectionists too, adopting the same unreasonable expectations and exaggerated responses to failure. As a result, they're more likely to be anxious and obsessive. According to the University of Louisville researchers Nicholas Affrunti and Janet Woodriff-Borden, every time parents rush into fix something their kids learn their mistakes of threatening and they come to believe they can't be trusted to handle new experiences on the run.
And through their parents’ disengagement, kids learn that love is conditional. The only way to get it? Achieve.
Ashley Merryman, co-author of Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing
30 Recent Articles about the Impact of AI on Health Care
/Woman Scammed by Ad With Deepfake of Her Doctor – NBC’s Today Show
What the next generation of doctors needs to know about AI – WBUR
AI Accurately Predicts Complication Risk After Kidney Cancer Surgery – Cancer Nursing Today
AI fails to reliably detect pediatric pneumonia on X-ray – Univ of Wisconsin Medicine
People Are Uploading Their Medical Records to A.I. Chatbots – New York Times
Instead of an AI Health Coach, You Could Just Have Friends – Wired
The AI model that uses sounds like coughs & sniffles to predict early signs of disease – Mashable
The right place for AI companions in mental health care – Stat News
We found what you’re asking ChatGPT about health. A doctor scored its answers. – Washington Post
How AI can monitor your movements to improve your health – Fast Company
The perils of politeness: how large language models may amplify medical misinformation – Nature
How conspiracy theories infiltrated the doctor’s office - MIT Technology Review
Microsoft launches 'superintelligence' team targeting medical diagnosis to start – Reuters
AI steps in to detect the world's deadliest infectious disease – NPR
Agentic AI advantage for pharma - Mckinsey
5 Tips When Consulting ‘Dr.’ ChatGPT – New York Times
AI May Be the Cure for Doctor Burnout, After All – Newsweek
Answering your questions about using AI as a health care guide – Washington Post
RTP startup uses AI to fight health insurance denials – Axios
OpenEvidence, the ChatGPT for doctors, raises $200M at $6B valuation – TechCrunch
Low-quality papers are flooding the cancer literature — can this AI tool help to catch them? – Nature
How AI is taking over every step of drug discovery - Chemical & Engineering News
Coalition for Health AI faces escalating attacks by Trump officials, loss of founding member Amazon – StatNews
Empathetic, Available, Cheap: When A.I. Offers What Doctors Don’t – New York Times
How AI scribes could usher in higher medical bills - StatNews
Review of Large Language Models for Patient and Caregiver Support in Cancer Care Delivery – ASCO
24 Recent Articles about AI Fakes
/Researchers: Toxicity is harder for AI to fake than intelligence – Ars Technica
Journalist Caught Publishing Fake Articles Generated by AI – Futurism
AI video slop is everywhere, take our quiz to try and spot it – NPR
Deepfake of North Carolina lawmaker used in award-winning Whirlpool video - The Washington Post
An MIT Student Awed Top Economists With His AI Study—Then It All Fell Apart. – Wall Street Journal
Deepfakes flood retailers ahead of peak holiday shopping – Axios
AI comes to local elections. Fake videos hit contentious school board races – Columbus Dispatch
Georgia Rep.’s campaign uses AI-generated deepfake of opponent in tight Senate showdown – CBS News
Welcome to the Slopverse Generative AI isn’t hallucinatory. It is multiversal. – The Atlantic
Town’s Christmas art contest ends in scandal: Did the winner use AI? - The Washington Post
The number one sign you're watching an AI video – BBC
AI-generated evidence is showing up in court – NBC News
Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era – The Local
How would-be authors were fooled by AI in suspected global publishing scam – The Guardian
University of Hong Kong probes non-existent AI-generated references in paper; prof. says content not fabricated – Hong Kong Free Press
People can't tell AI-generated music from real thing anymore, survey shows – CBS News
Major Study Finds Many Mistakes in AI-Generated News Summaries – TV Tech
AI-generated news sites spout viral slop from forgotten URLs – Harvard’s Nieman Lab
Deepfake Videos Are More Realistic Than Ever. Here's How to Spot if a Video Is Real or AI - CNET
Teacher pleads guilty after being accused of using AI to make sexual videos of 8 students – KGNS-TV
Woman Scammed by Ad With Deepfake of Her Doctor – NBC’s Today Show
Woman accused of using AI to create fake burglary suspect – Fox13 Tampa Bay
AI deepfakes are costing billions in fraud. Can you detect one? Take our quiz - NBC Bay Area
Majoring in AI
/Why major in computer science when you can major in artificial intelligence? From the NYT: At MIT, a new program called “artificial intelligence and decision-making” has become the second most popular major. At the University of California, San Diego, 150 first-year students signed up for a new AI program. The State University of New York at Buffalo has created a stand-alone “department of AI and society.” More than 3,000 students enrolled in a new college of AI & cybersecurity at the University of South Florida.
A Painting not a Ladder
/When you look at a painting from a distance, you see a larger, cohesive picture. But as you approach the canvas, you see that there are, in fact, hundreds of separate strokes that make up that picture. Think about your career as a work of art — expansive, independent movements that incrementally reveal a whole.
When we visualize a career ladder, we start putting ourselves in a box. Step back and see the painting — every experience adds a brushstroke to a bigger picture.
Zainab Ghadiyali quoted in a FirstRound article
Fear
/It is said that people are shaped the most not by what they want but by what they fear. -Gene Weingarten
How AI search (GEO) differs from SEO
/
AI Overviews and AI Mode are dramatically changing organic search traffic. Content creators are focusing on “position zero” — that is, in the search snippet or AI Overview, which appears at the top of many Google search result pages.
The process of optimizing your website’s content to boost its visibility to AI-driven search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI) through GEO (generative engine optimization) has some similarities to increased visibility to search engines (Google, Microsoft Bing) through SEO (search engine optimization). SEO is a sort of guessing game, a digital Jeopardy! in which the person creating web content tries to anticipate the query that will bring users to their content. GEO has the same goal, only toward AI overviews and AI mode.
The game has some similarities for both SEO and GEO. They use keywords and contextual phrasing, prioritize engaging content and aim to connect with conversational user queries. Both consider how fast a website loads, mobile friendliness, and prefer technically sound websites.
However, while SEO focuses on metatags, keywords and backlinks, AI models are trained to provide quick, direct responses from the synthesized content gathered from multiple sources. GEO is about, not only the query, but information about the user — from their social media footprint to their Google Docs usage. This informs, not only the search at hand, but future searches. AI will evaluate who created the content, its trustworthiness, and how it fits within the broader knowledge graph the AI is using.
Generative search efforts, therefore, attempt to fit into this reasoning process. AI judges the content value, not just on whether it ends up a part of the final answer, but whether it helps the model reason its way toward that answer. This is why, despite performing all the typical SEO common practices, a GEO effort may not make it to the other side of the AI reasoning pipeline. It’s not enough to be generally relevant to the final answer. Your content is now in direct competition with other plausible answers, so it must be more useful, precise, and complete than the next-best option. In fact, the same content could go through the pipeline a second time and yield a different result. And since newer models are rapidly changing right now, the best GEO may be effective when using an older model but not with a more recently trained model.
There is also a user shift to consider toward longer, more natural queries, from one- or two-word keywords to three- and four-word search terms. Research indicates that queries in AI mode are generally two to three times the length of traditional searches.
What do AI Overviews avoid? Content that is overly generalized, speculative, or optimized for clickbait over clarity. Vague and generic writing underperforms. So what kind of content does the Google AI Overviews favor?
Content that contains the who, what, why
Straightforward content offering distinctiveness; AI rewards niche-specific content
Is written in natural, conversational terms (AI will attempt to deliver its answer in that same way)
Uses strong introductory sentences that convey clear value
Has H2 tags (subheadings) that align with user questions
Is structured to match common question structures (open, closed, probing)
Answers complex questions
Allows for restatement of quires and implied sub-questions, where a main question is broken down into smaller parts; content structured in a way to be easily grabbed — in citable chunks
Contains multi-faceted answers
Is rich in relationships
Has explicit logical structures and supports causal progression
Has clear headlines
Cites sources and has clear authorship
Includes statistics & quotations
Has multimedia integration
Content that tells the world something new
Uses HTML anchor jump links to connect different sections of content to one another
Podcasts that include full transcripts in YouTube video descriptions, which are easily searchable
Appears on YouTube (a Google-owned company) based on the titles, descriptions & transcripts of videos
More information:
What is AI reading? Takeaways from a report on AI brand visibility
How AI Mode and AI Overviews work based on patents and why we need new strategic focus on SEO
What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?
How To Get Your Content (& Brand) Recommended By AI & LLMs
Google Ads data shows query length shift post-AI Mode
The winners and losers of Google’s AI Mode
Stephen Goforth
Loss Aversion
/People hate losses. Roughly speaking, losing something makes you twice as miserable as gaining the same thing makes you happy. In more technical language, people are “loss averse.” How do we know this?
Consider a simple experiment. Half the students in a class are given coffee mugs with the insignia of their home university embossed on it. The students who did not get a mug are asked to examine their neighbor’s mugs. Then, mug owners are invited to sell their mugs and nonowners are invited to buy them. They do so by answering the question “At each of the following prices, indicate whether you would be willing to (give up your mug/buy a mug).”
The results show that those with mugs demand roughly twice as much to give up their mugs as others are willing to pay to get one. Thousands of mugs have been used in dozens of replications of this experiment, but the results are nearly always the same. Once I have a mug, I don’t want to give it up. But if I don’t have one, I don’t feel an urgent need to buy one.
What this means is that people do not assign specific values to objects. When they have to give something up, they are hurt more than they are pleased if they acquire the very same things.
Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein, Nudge
What a computer science degree should look like now
/Experts suggest that computer science degree requirements should move away from coding and align with the expectations of a liberal arts degree—critical thinking and communication skills, along with computational thinking and AI literacy. The new CS coursework would include basic principles of computing and AI, along with hands-on experience in designing software using new AI tools. AI tools can help with the building of prototype programs, check for coding errors and serve as a digital tutor.
Computational thinking involves breaking down problems into smaller tasks, developing step-by-step solutions and using data to reach evidence-based conclusions. AI literacy is an understanding — at varying depths for students at different levels — of how AI works, how to use it responsibly and how it is affecting society. Nurturing informed skepticism should be a goal.
Read more at the NYT: How Do You Teach Computer Science in the AI Era?
The Tyranny of Clock Time
/Clock time is that linear time by which our life is measured in abstract units appearing on clocks, watches, computers, and calendars. These measuring units tell us the month, the day, the hour, and the second in which we find ourselves, and decide for us how much longer we have to speak, listen, eat, sing, study, pray, sleep, play, or stay. Our lives are dominated by our clocks and watches. In particular, the tyranny of the one-hour slot is enormous. There are visiting hours, therapeutic hours, and even happy hours. Without being fully aware of it, our most intimate emotions are often influenced by the clock. The big wall clocks in hospitals and airports have caused much inner turmoil and many tears.
Clock time is outer time, time that has a hard merciless objectivity to it. Clock time leads us to wonder how much longer we have to live and whether “real life” has not already passed us by. Clock time makes us disappointed with today and seems to suggest that maybe tomorrow, next week, and next year it will really happen. Clock time keeps saying, Hurry, hurry, time goes fast, maybe you will miss the real thing! But there is still a chance.. Hurry to get married, find a job, visit a country, read a book, get a degree…Try to take it all in before you run out of time.”
Clock time always makes us depart. It breeds impatience and prevents any compassionate being together.
Henri Nouwen, Donald McNeill, Douglas Morrison from the book Compassion
Keep going
/If you're going through hell, keep going. -Winston Churchill, born Nov. 30, 1874
Favourable Conditions
/The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favourable conditions never come. -CS Lewis (born Nov. 29, 1898)
21 Articles about AI & Politics
/Tech Titans Amass Multimillion-Dollar War Chests to Fight AI Regulation – Wall Street Journal
Fears About A.I. Prompt Talks of Super PACs to Rein In the Industry – New York Times
Georgia Rep.’s campaign uses AI-generated deepfake of opponent in tight Senate showdown – CBS News
Robots and AI Are Already Remaking the Chinese Economy - Wall Street Journal
Trump’s attempt to block states from regulating AI sparked pushback from Republicans – Washington Post
AI Is Transforming Politics, Much Like Social Media Did - TIME
How the U.S. Economy Became Hooked on AI Spending - Wall Street Journal
In the A.I. Race, Chinese Talent Still Drives American Research – New York Times
White House pulls back on AI laws executive order – Mashable
Four ways AI is being used to strengthen democracies worldwide – The Guardian
An Economist Asked, How Much Should We Spend to Avoid the A.I. Apocalypse? – New York Times
Chinese hackers used Anthropic's AI agent to automate spying – Axios
The Politics of AI Are About to Explode - Bloomberg
The AI Cold War That Will Redefine Everything - Wall Street Journal
Exploring AI's role in democracy: Here are 5 essential insights – Fast Company
The UK’s fact-checkers are sending their AI to help Americans cover elections – Poynter
How Trump Is Using Fake Imagery to Attack Enemies and Rouse Supporters – New York Times
Political consultant defies court order in lawsuit over AI robocalls that mimicked Biden – AP
Is it ok for politicians to use AI? Survey shows where the public draws the line – The Conversation
Saudi Arabia’s New Power Play Is Exporting A.I. to the World - The New York Times
AI comes to local elections. Fake videos hit contentious school board races – Columbus Dispatch
LLMs & Retracted Research Papers
/Large language models should not be used to weed out retracted literature, a study of 21 chatbots concludes. Not only were the chatbots unreliable at correctly identifying retracted papers, they spit out different results when given the same prompts. On average, the 21 chatbots correctly identified fewer than half of the retracted papers. More at Retraction Watch
A Prayer
/Lord, make me the kind of person my dog thinks I am.
Direction
/Love is the compass of life.