AI Stars at Davos

The annual World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland is a midwinter gathering of global elites who are rich, powerful, and deeply uncool. They gather to bask in their mutual reflected glory, and to absorb coolness by proxy via TedTalk-style snippets of hot takes on the Next Big Trends. Last year (and for several years before that) it was Crypto-currencies. Now that most of the leaders of crypto are heading to jail, the new hot thing is AI. Davos was All-AI, All the Time. Sam Altman, the on-again off-again CEO of OpenAI publicly predicted that AI would grow so large that we would have to invent whole new sources of energy just to feed its ravenous appetite for computing power. In a world on fire due to climate change, this did not strike everyone as the unalloyed Good Thing that Sam obviously did. Go figure.

AI is the new hot thing at Davos

Sam Altman says AI will need an energy breakthrough

Elon Musk thinks he’s underpaid

Elon Musk, currently the richest man in the world with a net worth of over $200 billion (with a “B”) tweeted a whiny, truculent little screed on X (the Twitter that dare not say its name) arguing that he needs a whole lot more Tesla stock to keep him motivated. Which raises the question: How the f*** did we get stuck in this timeline, where all our billionaires are self-pitying clueless a**holes? Why can’t we have the cool billionaires, the fun ones, like other timelines?

Here’s the infamous tweet

Elon is already being sued by shareholders over his super-rich compensation

Microsoft releases Copilot Pro, “AI for normies”

OpenAI made AI cool with ChatGPT, garnering 100 million users in 2 months. Now Microsoft is putting the power of AI in the hands of its 1.4 billion customers with Copilot Pro, which turbocharges Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. with ChatGPT level AI. No more going to a separate website and learning a new user interface. Just use your familiar Microsoft productivity app, but now it has the ability to write that email reply for you.

Microsoft announces Copilot Pro

A review of Copilot Pro by Wharton Professor Ethan Mollick

SAG-AFTRA strikes another historic AI deal for actors

SAG-AFTRA, the union for Hollywood actors, follows up its historic victory over movie studios after a bitter strike last summer, and has now reached a first-of-its kind deal for voice actors in videogames. AI voiceover company Replica Studios signed a contract with SAG-AFTRA that compensates voice actors for use of their voice in electronic games.

SAG-AFTRA reaches model contract for voice actors cloned by AI

AI-powered Swarovski binoculars identify birds automagically

Swarovski crystal jewelry is popular, but now it’s passe’. The cool kids now get the newest overpriced bauble, binoculars that use AI to automatically identify 9,000 species of birds and animals. The price - a mere $4,799.

As scifi author William Gibson has said “The future is already here - it’s just not very evenly distributed.”

A review of AI powered binoculars from Swarovski

Swarovski’s demo video

AI is changing judging in gymnastics

Judging gymnastics competitions is a herculean task - requiring sharp eyes, strong nerves, and instantaneous judgments of tiny differences in movements from the ideal. In the past, it has included a lot of subjectivity, leading to vociferous disputes and charges of bias.

So, starting in 2017, the International Federation of Gymnasts (FIG), the worldwide ruling body of the sport, has been developing an AI-powered Judging Support System to bring more standardization and fairness into judging. The system uses multiple high definition cameras to capture performances from various angles in real time. It scores each element of the performance much like a human judge would. In a dispute, the computer-generated analysis is consulted, similar to video replay, with much more analytic detail. In the end, the human judges decide, but now aided by the added context of the AI analysis.

AI is changing judging in gymnastics

AI “Black Box” monitors surgeries

A growing number of hospitals are placing an AI-powered monitoring system in their ORs to improve safety and efficiency. Unfortunately named the “Black Box” after the airplane monitoring devices, the system consists of multiple cameras which record surgeries for later analysis by human surgeons and specially-trained AI models. Its stated purpose is to analyze system failures that can lead to poor outcomes or inefficient use of resources. There is already anecdotal evidence of improvements made to issues such as skin preparation for incision, or optimal layout of surgical tools. Adoption has been slowed due to clinical staff fears of being subjected to an Orwellian surveillance system, so reasonable safeguards will need to be developed.

AI “Black Box” monitors surgeries

FDA approves AI system to predict Alzheimer’s disease

San Francisco based AI startup Darmiyan announces that the FDA has approved its system for predicting the probability of development of Alzheimer’s disease in the next 5 years. The system analyzes brain scans and the results of cognitive tests, and assigns a score that correlates to the chance of progression from Mild Cognitive Impairment to Alzheimer’s disease over the next 5 years.

FDA approves AI system to predict Alzheimer’s disease

Google’s AMIE diagnoses medical problems as well as PCPs

Last week, Google announced the results of a study testing its medical diagnostic system, AMIE, against human PCPs when given challenging clinical scenarios. The AI system and the human physicians were closely matched on most dimensions, with AMIE being judged superior in two areas: 1) developing a comprehensive management plan, and 2) empathy. (It is becoming a commonplace that the ever-polite and helpful AI chatbots are judged as more empathic than actual human doctors.) Google sees a future for medical AI systems in interacting directly with patients to develop differential diagnoses, and acting as a decision support assistant for physicians working up patients.

Google’s AMIE AI system diagnoses medical problems as well as PCPs

AI analysis of retina scans detect CAD

The Lancet has published a preprint of a report by Chinese scientists on development of an AI system that predicts CAD based on analysis of retinal photographs. 

AI analysis of retina scans detect coronary artery disease