Various web links I found to be of interest recently.
There is no single thing that can compare to exercise when it comes to protecting against age-related diseases and helping people get more out of their later years, no matter what it is whether it is regular cold plunges, off-label drugs and supplements like metformin, rapamycin or taurine.
The muscle and bone growth stimulated by exercise can help older adults maintain their independence, lessen fatigue and protect against bad injuries from falls, the leading cause of injury-related death among those over 65.
Exercise can reduce the risk of certain age-related diseases, including Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Christof Koch wagered David Chalmers 25 years ago that researchers would learn how the brain achieves consciousness by now.
Both scientists agreed publicly on 23 June, at the annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) in New York City, that it is an ongoing quest - and declared Chalmers the winner.
What ultimately helped to settle the bet was a study testing two leading hypotheses about the neural basis of consciousness, whose findings were unveiled at the conference.
The founders of AI are divided over what's next.
But one major researcher thinks these fears are entirely unfounded:
Yann LeCun, the third 2018 Turing Award winner alongside Hinton
and Bengio, and Meta's chief AI scientist since 2013. LeCun and
Hinton have been friends for decades. Hinton taught LeCun. Now
they are at odds. Hinton's predictions about the impact of AI on
jobs have been "totally wrong" in the past, LeCun tweeted on
28 May, having dismissed Hinton's fear of "an AI takeover" as
"very, very low-probability and preventable rather easily" on 2 April.
"AI will save the world, not destroy it," he wrote on 6 June,
criticising the "destructive moral panic" being fostered by some,
invoking Hinton in all but name.
...
Hinton thinks such reasoning quickly leads you towards what he has
described as a "pre-scientific concept": consciousness, an idea he
can do without. "Understanding isn't some kind of magic internal essence.
It's an updating of what it knows."
Also see the editorial in Nature, Stop talking about tomorrow’s AI doomsday when AI poses risks today.
Talk of artificial intelligence destroying humanity plays into the tech companies’ agenda, and hinders effective regulation of the societal harms AI is causing right now.
by Marc Andreessen
My view is that the idea that AI will decide to literally kill humanity
is a profound category error. AI is not a living being that has been
primed by billions of years of evolution to participate in the battle
for the survival of the fittest, as animals are, and as we are.
It is math - code - computers, built by people, owned by people, used by
people, controlled by people. The idea that it will at some point
develop a mind of its own and decide that it has motivations that lead
it to try to kill us is a superstitious handwave.
...
So far I have explained why four of the five most often proposed risks
of AI are not actually real - AI will not come to life and kill us,
AI will not ruin our society, AI will not cause mass unemployment,
and AI will not cause an ruinous increase in inequality.
But now let's address the fifth, the one I actually agree with:
AI will make it easier for bad people to do bad things.
The most common screening test for prostate cancer so often returns
a false positive result that it's no longer recommended for men older
than 70, and it's offered as a personal choice for younger men.
...
By calibrating PSA levels to each man's genetics, doctors could control
for other factors that might cause levels to be elevated, according
to researchers at Stanford Medicine, in California.
...
By one estimate, less than one-third of men with elevated PSA levels
were confirmed by a biopsy to have prostate cancer, the researchers
reported. Moreover, 15% of men with normal PSA levels were later found
to have prostate cancer.
After winning a Grammy, artists tend to release music that deviates
stylistically from their own previous work, as well as from other artists
in their genre. Nominees who lose do the opposite-their subsequent albums
trend toward the mainstream.
...
While winning an award prompts creativity and innovation,
nominations alone result in conformity.