You may be interested to know that your sweat glands come in two distinct types: Eccrine for thermoregulation and Apocrine for the wild mess of emotions we experience.
I think their point is that, in general, social-scale healthcare is an under-solved problem in practice and LLMs have potential to improve a significant portion these challenges by increasing accessibility to treatment. The availability of these tools will inevitably lead to more instances of reports like this (from the report the article is based on):
> This case also highlights how the use of artificial intelligence (AI) can potentially contribute to the development of preventable adverse health outcomes. Based on the timeline of this case, it appears that the patient either consulted ChatGPT 3.5 or 4.0 when considering how he might remove chloride from this diet. Unfortunately, we do not have access to his ChatGPT conversation log and we will never be able to know with certainty what exactly the output he received was, since individual responses are unique and build from previous inputs.
However I don't see this single negative instance of a vast social-scale issue as much more than fear/emotion-mongering without at least MENTIONING that LLM also have positive effects. Certainly, it doesn't seem like science to me. Unless these models are subtly leading otherwise healthy and well-adjusted users to unhealthy behavior, I don't see how this interaction with artificial intelligence is any different than the billions of confirmation-bias pitfalls that already occur daily using google and natural stupidity. From the article:
> The case also raises broader concerns about the growing role of generative AI in personal health decisions. Chatbots like ChatGPT are trained to provide fluent, human-like responses. But they do not understand context, cannot assess user intent, and are not equipped to evaluate medical risk. In this case, the bot may have listed bromide as a chemical analogue to chloride without realizing that a user might interpret that information as a dietary recommendation.
It just seems they've got an axe to grind and no technical understanding of the tool they're criticizing.
To be fair, I feel there's much to study and discuss about pernicious effects of LLMs on mental health. I just don't think this article frames these topics constructively.
Also, CAT is run by CATNMS, LLC which was created in response to an SEC rule 613, however it is operated by the same consortium of SROs that it purports to provide oversight on...
All these layers of responsibility diffusion and a notable absence of penalties for failing to meet rule 613 guidelines mean that rule is little more than for show.
Pretending to be subject to a law however in practice never prosecuting opens the door to inconsistent (aka selective) enforcement. How is this not the worst of both worlds?
What a weird gotcha....
You've got it backwards mate, a lack of enforcement isn't an agreement or resolution or much of anything reliable or solid or sound. This vacuum of enforcement actually ENABLES selective enforcement because a lack of enforcement isn't an official stance but technically at odds with the written law: It's an implicit status quo that could be changed any time and when it does, you could become retroactively liable for behavior that was acceptable under the prior status quo. That is precisely the conditions of selective enforcement: the choice of the enforcer. Under these inconsistent regulatory modalities you may insidiously lose valuable rights like: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
Laws and their enforcement will always have some nonzero amount of selectivity by the localized nature of the universe but good legislation confronts these challenges proactively and tries to make prosecutorial discretion closer to the question: What should the Punishment be? Rather than: Is this behavior Punishable?
>> an implicit status quo that could be changed any time
> So is a history of enforcement!
Are you really saying that history can be changed at any time?
While there will always be jurisprudence that attempts to advance precedent, a history of consistent enforcement cannot, in fact, be changed. People will always have vulnerability to novel interpretations and surprising re-interpretations of the law, but laws which sit on the books IGNORED can easily lead to essentially undefined behavior which I have no doubt you can understand the potential pernicious nature of...
I humbly submit to you hypothesis that the lawlessness of finance is so pervasive that it has effectively become legalized through intellectual and regulatory capture. If you're interested in supporting evidence for this idea, check out how Enron sought and acquired SEC 'approval' for their ponzi instruments....
Well official disclosure in finance is very similar to assigning value, since many of the instruments that actually trade are derivative or abstract representations of actual assets with 'real' value.
My only point is that the notion of 'legal' can get very fuzzy when you're talking about an industry with so many private/self-interested entities that rival or exceed intellectual/manpower of the agencies responsible for regulation.
The SEC has a three-part mission: to protect investors; maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets; and facilitate capital formation.
These mandates are, of course, subjective and vague enough to be interpreted a variety of ways whether you view 'investors' as institutions, households, individuals, etc... What you define as 'fair/orderly/efficient', and what meaningful 'capital formation' really is.
When SEC approved Enron's change in account reporting practices from historical cost to mtm, I would argue that the SEC failed it's mandate to protect investors by allowing disingenuously optimistic instrument valuations. You could argue that eventually the SEC fulfilled its mandate by recovering much of the misappropriate funds, but it's hard to say they didn't also facilitate the disorder in approving these instruments given how that story concludes with a corporate collapse and flurry of regulation...
> When SEC approved Enron's change in account reporting practices from historical cost to mtm, I would argue that the SEC failed it's mandate to protect investors by allowing disingenuously optimistic instrument valuations
In a broad sense, sure. But that means making the SEC both an auditor and determiner of fair value. Even after the ensuing flurry of rule making, that is very much not part of the SEC’s remit.
There is a reasonable debate to be had around whether it should be. But the SEC not double checking auditors is not evidence of its lawlessness.
The financial markets are more than the SEC but the SEC is part of the financial markets. Evidence of the SEC's imperfect lawlessness implies the greater financial markets are also, in part, lawless.
But my point wasn't even to say whether a given industry as broad as finance is 'lawless' or not, that's your sweeping strawman. I was just saying that in Finance of ALL industries, the line between lawful and illegal has been, and continues to be literally, morally and philosophically blurry...
> Evidence of the SEC's imperfect lawlessness implies the greater financial markets are also, in part, lawless
By this logic lawlessness anywhere means lawlessness everywhere.
> my point wasn't even to say whether a given industry as broad as finance is 'lawless' or not
You said the “lawlessness of finance is so pervasive that it has effectively become legalized” [1]. You cited the SEC in respect of Enron as an example. I “asked for one example of something the SEC had a mandate to do that it didn’t” do with Enron. You ignored the question and started pontificating on not the law but legal philosophy.
You continue to evade that first question. Now you’re claiming you didn’t make the first statement.
To maybe help you alleviate a small bit of your presumably nearly overwhelming confusion I will repeat my reply to your SEC question[1], if that is indeed the 'first' one you ambiguously refer to.
> When SEC approved Enron's change in account reporting practices from historical cost to mtm, I would argue that the SEC failed it's mandate to protect investors by allowing disingenuously optimistic instrument valuations
I'm not sure what about that you think is evasive but I'd like to end the conversation here regardless.
[1][Whats] one example of something the SEC had a mandate to do that it didn’t.
Exactly, these diffuse international entities are merely responding to structures of incentives which are ultimately the government’s responsibility to create and enforce.
Contrary to the quote in the article, proper investment in response and mitigation has, so far, been proven to ~not~ be mandatory for making incredible amounts of cash, which is the primary objective of these behemoths.
Now that externalized costs are starting to personally affect members of government and enforcement, I hope we’ll see some meaningful regulation around accounts on private-but-essential digital platforms resembling a general bill of rights rather than letting private companies get away with nearly anything by default, as is the current state. However merely asking these pseudo-nation-states masquerading as companies to behave differently and expecting to be taken seriously is good for a laugh!
Hello, first of all you have my sympathies and I share your opinion that the 'tech' job market is seeming less appealing to new graduates for a variety of objective/measurable reasons you've mentioned. I also think your self-described lack of interest is sufficient cause to seek other careers and the previous justifications may be worth not focusing on too much... The world has more interconnected opportunity now than ever before and even if you don't do full-stack web development ever again I am sure your computer skills are valuable in very many domains.
I finished college 8 years ago and have been coding since. I still code, but I have just begun tutoring/teaching Adult Education classes for a Service-worker Union (Search for SEIU + <your_locale>) and have found the work to be fulfilling, flexible (fully remote), and pay surprisingly well (over $50/hr entry). In my limited experience there is great demand from this somewhat hidden (but growing!) demographic of multi-year-industry-specific professionals seeking to upgrade their career flexibility through education. Digital literacy is a subject us programmers take largely for granted that has nearly constant over-subscribed classes in my branch, and one of the first questions I was asked by a much-adored veteran teacher when observing their science/math TEAS prep class was 'How's your Google-fu?' I felt right at home...
Part of the reason I got into CS was because I had a diverse range of interests and somehow computers seemed to power the foundations for interacting with and connecting the vast majority of them. If you've got similar motivations I think you'll enjoy the wide range of challenges that teaching adults offers. Fwiw, I think most folks in the world face professionally uncertain times ahead but at least we can understand enough to try and make the most of the inevitable instead of squandering precious energy...
I hope my perspective offers you some assistance, and I thank you for sharing. I know a lot of people (both your age and older) have similar feelings.
PS English Literacy classes in my branch are also heavily oversubscribed, and with bilingualism you might be a marvelously effective teacher in that meaningful domain as well.
In my opinion, these governments haven't implemented 'effective' bans (though maybe chilling, as you say) but primarily created awkward new grey markets for the personal data that these policies rely on for theatrics. Remember when China 'banned' youth IDs from playing online games past 10PM? I think a bunch of grandparents became gamers around the same time...
Another example is some Korean games requiring essentially a Korean ID to play. A few years ago there was a game my guild was hyped about and we played the Korean version a bit. You more or less bought the identity of some Korean guy via a service that was explicitly setup for this. Worked surprisingly well and was pretty streamlined.
Which is exactly what happens for markets that are desirable enough. We compare bans of things not enough people care about, to bans of things that people are willing to do crazy things for. They don't yield the same results.
At least from personal experience, when there was a period where my ISP in the UK started requiring ID verification for porn, I literally ceased to watch it.
Making something difficult to do actually works to _curb_ behavior.
To play devil's advocate, there was a potentially legitimate complaint about increased weight/size and potential loss of features (Waterproofing, durability, etc) during the earlier stages of these consumer products' existences when requiring these sophisticated features would represent a relatively larger burden on their creating entities.
However now that we've seen the establishment of these consumer systems, I think it's quite fair to begin requiring the corporations making these gadgets to respect the environments in which they were able to flourish while incurring/leveraging many externalized costs. These corporations won't begin to reduce their rate of externalized environmental debts without government regulation until it begins to damage their profit and forecasts, by which point it will be far too late...
Unfortunately, this marketplace has only the illusion of consumer choice because the flagship mobile devices are unilaterally designed by entrenched trillion-dollar companies. Beginning the modularization of these ubiquitous tools through their most environmentally-impactful components seems like an encouraging start to creating a 'real' marketplace for mobile phone technology. As others in this thread have pointed out, this regulation will require infrastructure to be most effectively and can most certainly be screwed up/sabotaged to the point of tragic ineffectiveness but I believe that if there is a place to begin this struggle for consumer freedoms, it is clearly with batteries.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/eccrine-glands