By Michelle Llamas, Bd Cert. Patient Adv, October 11, 2023
Michelle Llamas has been writing articles and producing podcasts about drugs, medical devices and the FDA for nearly a decade. She focuses on various medical conditions, health policy, COVID-19, LGBTQ health, mental health and women’s health issues. Michelle collaborates with experts, including board-certified doctors, patients and advocates, to provide trusted health information to the public. Some of her qualifications include:
Member of American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) and former Engage Committee and Membership Committee member
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Health Literacy certificates
Original works published or cited in The Lancet, British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and the Journal for Palliative Medicine
Board Certified Patient Advocate, Patient Advocacy Certificate from University of Miami.
“Glyphosate, the active component found in popular herbicides such as Roundup, sees extensive application in agriculture to combat unwanted weeds that compete with crops. Nevertheless, apprehensions have surfaced concerning its safety and potential impacts on health. Legal disputes have arisen, asserting that exposure to glyphosate through products like Roundup might be connected to specific types of cancer, notably non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Glyphosate operates by inhibiting the enzyme EPSP synthase, causing disruptions in plant growth that ultimately result in the plant’s demise. While some regulatory authorities consider the levels of glyphosate in food as safe, concerns regarding its long-term consequences continue to grow. Typical repercussions of exposure include skin and respiratory irritations, and research indicates potential associations between glyphosate and both cancer and neurological disorders. Certain countries within the European Union have imposed bans on glyphosate, and Bayer, the manufacturer of Roundup, has encountered significant settlements in legal actions in the United States lawsuits linked to glyphosate exposure.”
Tips for Reducing Glyphosate Exposure
People can avoid glyphosate use with several Roundup alternatives. These include manual or mechanical methods of weed pulling, such as small and large hand tools, tillers and other mechanical methods.
Natural or organic herbicides whose active ingredients are vinegar or essential oils are also an option. Ask your local home and garden center for organic or natural herbicides that do not contain glyphosate.
Drugwatch.com writers follow rigorous sourcing guidelines and cite only trustworthy sources of information, including peer-reviewed journals, court records, academic organizations, highly regarded nonprofit organizations, government reports and interviews with qualified experts. Review our editorial policy to learn more about our process for producing accurate, current and balanced content.
‘People are happier in a walkable neighborhood’: the US community that banned cars
Oliver Milman in Tempe, Arizona – October 11, 2023
If you were to imagine the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the modern US, it would be difficult to conceive such a thing sprouting from the environs of Phoenix, Arizona – a sprawling, concrete incursion into a brutal desert environment that is sometimes derided as the least sustainable city in the country.
But it is here that such a neighborhood, called Culdesac, has taken root. On a 17-acre site that once contained a car body shop and some largely derelict buildings, an unusual experiment has emerged that invites Americans to live in a way that is rare outside of fleeting experiences of college, Disneyland or trips to Europe: a walkable, human-scale community devoid of cars.
Culdesac ushered in its first 36 residents earlier this year and will eventually house around 1,000 people when the full 760 units, arranged in two and three-story buildings, are completed by 2025. In an almost startling departure from the US norm, residents are provided no parking for cars and are encouraged to get rid of them. The apartments are also mixed in with amenities, such as a grocery store, restaurant, yoga studio and bicycle shop, that are usually separated from housing by strict city zoning laws.
Neighborhoods of this ilk can be found in cities such as New York City and San Francisco but are often prohibitively expensive due to their allure, as well as stiff opposition to new apartment developments. The $170m Culdesac project shows “we can build walkable neighborhoods successfully in the US in [the] 2020s,” according to Ryan Johnson, the 40-year-old who co-founded the company with Jeff Berens, a former McKinsey consultant.
Johnson has the mien of a tech founder, with his company logo T-shirt and fashionable glasses, and was part of the founding team of OpenDoor, an online real estate business. But his enthusiasm for car-free living was born, he said, from living and traveling in countries such as Hungary, Japan and South Africa. Originally from the “classically sprawly” part of Phoenix, Johnson once had an SUV but has been car-free for 13 years. Instead, he has a collection of more than 60 ebikes, although he said he has stopped acquiring them as he is running out of storage space.
“Today in the US we only build two kinds of housing: single family homes that are lonely and have a painful commute, or we build these mid-rise projects with double loaded corridors and people mostly just walk to their car and that makes people know fewer of their neighbors,” said Johnson.
“We look back nostalgically at college, because it’s the only time most people have lived in a walkable neighborhood. People are happier and healthier, and even wealthier when they’re living in a walkable neighborhood.”
Culdesac is not only different in substance, but also style. The development’s buildings are a Mediterranean sugar-cube white accented with ochre, and are clustered together intimately to create inviting courtyards for social gatherings and paved – not asphalt – “paseos”, a word used in Spanish-speaking parts of the US south-west to denote plazas or walkways for strolling.
Importantly, such an arrangement provides relieving shade from the scorching sun – temperatures in these walkways have been measured at 90F (32C) on days when the pavement outside Culdesac is 120F (48C), the developer claims. The architects call the structures “fabric buildings” that form shared public realm, rather than charmless, utilitarian boxes situated next to a huge, baking car park.
“It’s positively European, somewhere between Mykonos and Ibiza,” said Jeff Speck, a city planner and urban designer who took a tour of Culdesac earlier this year. “It is amazing how much the urbanism improves, both in terms of experience and efficiency, when you don’t need to store automobiles.”
There is a small car park, although only for visitors, some disgorged by Waymo, the fleet of Google-owned driverless taxis that eerily cruise around Phoenix with their large cameras and disembodied voices to reassure passengers. To calm any nerves about making the leap to being car-free, Culdesac has struck deals to offer money off Lyft, the ride-sharing service, and free trips on the light rail that runs past the buildings, as well as on-site electric scooters. The first 200 residents to move in will be getting ebikes, too.
Such a place is an oddity, Speck points out, because of a car-centric ethos that permeates US culture and city planning. Over the past century, huge highways have been plowed through the heart of US cities, obliterating and dislocating communities – disproportionately those of color – leaving behind a stew of air pollution.
These roads have primarily served a sprawling suburbia, comprised almost entirely of single family homes with spacious back yards where car driving is often the only option to get anywhere. This car dependence has been reinforced by zoning laws that not only separate residential from commercial developments, but require copious parking spots added for every new construction. “The result is a nation in which we are all ruthlessly separated from most of our daily needs and also from each other,” Speck said.
Culdesac can be seen, then, as not only a model for more climate-friendly housing – transportation is the US’s largest source of planet-heating emissions and, studies have shown, fuels more of the pollution causing the climate crisis – but as a way of somehow stitching back together communities that have become physically, socially and politically riven, lacking a “third place” to congregate other than dislocated homes and workplaces.
Culdesac residents have “this shared thing of living without a car” and can have the sort of chance encounters that foster social cohesion, according to Johnson, who himself lives in one of the airy apartments. “When we started, people said: ‘What are you doing? You’re not going to get permission to build that. The demand’s not going to be there,’” he said. “And instead, we got unanimous approval, and there’s a lot of demand, and it’s open. Residents love it.”
Vanessa Fox, a 32-year-old who moved into Culdesac with her husky dog in May, had always wanted to live in a walkable place only to find such options unaffordable. For her, Culdesac provided a sense of community without having to rely on a car every time she left her apartment. “For some, cars equal freedom, but for me, it’s a restriction,” she said. “Freedom is being able to just simply walk out and access places.”
Speck said that he expects closer relationships to form among residents. “We will soon have Culdesac babies,” he predicted.
Fox admits, though, that some of her family and friends consider her decision to go car-free to be somewhat of an oddity. The New York subway and railroad tycoons of yore may have found international fame, but in the US, the car now reigns supreme.
Around nine in 10 Americans own a car, with only a tenth of people using public transport – which is typically underfunded and has suffered badly since the Covid pandemic – on even a weekly basis. Even Joe Biden’s administration, which has talked of reconnecting communities and acting on climate change, is enthusiastically pushing hundreds of billions of dollars to building new highways.
Driving to places is so established as a basic norm that deviation from it can seem not only strange, as evidenced by a lack of pedestrian infrastructure that has contributed to a surge in people dying from being hit by cars in recent years, but even somewhat sinister. People walking late at night, particularly if they are Black, are regularly accosted by police – in June, the city of Kaplan, Louisiana, even introduced a curfew for people walking or riding bikes, but not for car drivers.
If neighborhoods like Culdesac are to become more commonplace, then, cities will not only have to alter their planning codes, but there will also have to be a cultural switch from the ideal of a large suburban home with an enormous car in the driveway. Some US billionaires havedreams of creating new utopian cities that have such elements, although urban planning experts point out it would be better for the environment if existing cities just became denser and less car-centric.
Johnson, who said he is planning to bring the Culdesac concept to other cities, is upbeat about this. “This is something that the majority of the US wants, so they can work all over the country,” he said. “We have heard from cities and residents all over the country that they want more of this, and this is something that we want to build more.”
“Every trend begins with a one-off,” Speck said. “True proliferation will be dependent upon our cities improving their transit and micro-mobility systems. But for those cities that offer a decent alternative to driving, there is a great fit immediately. Government officials should be asking themselves whether their cities are Culdesac-ready.”
This is the first in a new series, The alternatives, looking at governments and communities around the world who are trying out new ideas for low carbon living
Breast cancer rates are rising. But more women are surviving too
Julia Manchester – October 11, 2023
(The Hill) – Tammy Moyle’s annual mammogram in March was clean. But then she discovered a small lump a few months later. The diagnosis came in August. It was early-stage invasive lobular carcinoma, an aggressive form of breast cancer that’s treatable if caught early enough.
Because it was caught so early, the 45-year-old mother of three said doctors told her there’s a 96 percent cure rate. She will need 12 weeks of chemotherapy, and will also be taking an infusion drug called Herceptin for the next nine months.
“If I had to get cancer, like God forbid anyone ever gets cancer, but if I had to get cancer, I feel like this is the time to have it. You know, we have so many advancements. I feel really hopeful about my outcome,” Moyle said.
Moyle’s experience captures both the exasperation and optimism in the battle against breast cancer. While rates continue to creep up year-on-year, particularly among younger women, evolutions in diagnostics and treatment mean breast cancer patients face far better prospects than ever before.
Rapid drug development, personalized screening recommendations, targeted therapies and new treatments like immunotherapies have all helped women diagnosed with early stage and even metastatic breast cancer.
“We’re increasingly more specific, personalized, individualized about the type of treatment that we can offer patients and the lines of treatment that they can have,” said Elizabeth Comen, a breast oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Breast cancer accounts for 31 percent of all cancers in women, the most common type, according to the American Cancer Society. Nearly 300,000 women will likely be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023. It will likely kill about 43,000 of them.
Despite the scientific advances, declines in mortality have slowed in recent years, and incidence rates have been slowly increasing by about 0.5 percent per year since the mid-2000s, according to the American Cancer Society.
This rise in diagnoses is due in part to more women having obesity, having fewer children, or having their first baby after age 30, the organization said. It may also be because of lower rates of screening.
While a breast cancer diagnosis is rare for women under 40, it is the leading cause of all cancer deaths in women between the ages of 20 and 49. And the diagnoses among those younger women are rising.
“There’s definitely a stigma around breast cancer like you don’t need to worry about it until you’re 40 or over, but that’s definitely not the case,” said Brianna Osofisan, 26, who was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer when she was 21 years old and heading into her senior year of college.
“It was definitely very unexpected, especially being a senior in college and trying to figure out my plans after graduation and then having to deal with the weekly doctor appointments and treatment on top of that,” she said.
A study published in JAMA Network Open in August showed all cancers are on the rise for younger women, particularly those younger than 50.
“This is not just because we’re screening women earlier because frankly, we don’t have guidelines for screening women earlier. They are being diagnosed more and they are being diagnosed with more aggressive cancers,” Comen said. “I cannot more passionately or emphatically state that this is an area of research that absolutely must improve. We need to address this unmet need.”
William Dahut, chief scientific officer of the American Cancer Society, noted the risk of breast cancer is significantly higher among older women, and while the absolute numbers of younger women being diagnosed are relatively low, they are undeniably increasing.
“We’re seeing similar trends in other cancers, colorectal cancer, for example, too. So there is something going on, which is increasing cancer in younger patients,” Dahut said.
Screening mammograms are only recommended for women between the ages of 40 and 74. Experts say there isn’t enough evidence of benefit or cost effectiveness in screening women younger than 40. There are also concerns over potential harms of screening, including the psychological toll of false positives.
Ann Patridge, an oncologist and founder of Dana Farber Cancer Institute’s Program for Young Adults with Breast Cancer, said America will likely move toward population-based screening for cancer predisposing genes.
However, that carries its own complications — such as forcing young women to decide whether to remove their ovaries or breast based on statistical guesses about their chances of getting cancer. And even if they are high risk, those prevention options are likely not going to be palatable for young women.
There’s a growing group of experts and advocates who want more research into lowering the recommended age of breast cancer screenings.
The recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) for women to start mammograms at 40 is only a draft, and was released earlier this year. Prior to that, USPSTF called for women with an average risk of breast cancer to begin screening at age 50.
Tari King, chief of the division of breast surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said she was happy to see the recommended age lowered to 40, but highlighted that some women need to start even earlier.
“What we need to recognize is that if the first time that you’re talking to your doctor about your breast cancer risk is at the age of 40, that’s probably too late,” King said.
King said younger women should have conversations with their primary care doctors or OB-GYNs about topics like family history of breast cancer and lifestyle habits that could be putting them at increased risk. Providers can then use that information to help determine whether starting screening earlier would be beneficial.
“Getting risk assessments early will allow us to identify women who may actually need to start screening before the age of 40,” King said.
Experts said there are different clinical considerations for younger women than older women, particularly around fertility.
But preserving the ability of a young woman to have children isn’t always an option.
Lourdes Monje, who was diagnosed at 25 years-old and is living with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, said she is going through chemical menopause, so can’t become pregnant.
“When you become pregnant, your body produces a ton of estrogen and that’s the last thing that we would want to do for my type of cancer because my cancer feeds on estrogen,” she said.
Patients with metastatic cancer cannot currently be cured, but there have been new drugs approved and new clinical trials, so when one treatment stops working, they can move to another. Eventually though, they will likely exhaust options.
Monje said that her diagnosis and treatment has shifted her own perspective on what’s next in life.
“Even though my doctor told me what side effects to expect, I don’t think I was quite prepared for the emotional part of it,” she said. “I process my emotions very differently than I used to and I think that was very hard for me to deal with because I felt like I didn’t know myself for a long time.”
There have also been research advances into the genetics of cancer, though the field is still evolving. Genetic counseling and genetic testing can help identify a person’s risk, and whether they have the breast cancer gene (BRCA) and other gene mutations.
Alejandra Campoverdi decided to get tested for the BRCA gene because of her family history. Her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and two aunts were all diagnosed with breast cancer.
“When I came up positive, it wasn’t a huge surprise but I realized there was something I could do preventative about it,” said Campoverdi, who was 38 at the time.
She went on to have a double mastectomy, during which doctors caught an early-stage, non-invasive breast cancer. Campoverdi said the experience led to her work in breast cancer advocacy, particularly focused on the Latino community.
Campoverdi noted how there is a lack of Spanish-language material on breast cancer prevention or advocacy in the space targeted toward Latinas, despite breast cancer being the leading cause of death for Hispanic women, according to the Mayo Clinic.
She has since co-produced a documentary on BCRA and hereditary cancer and launched the Latinx and BRCA initiative at the University of Pennsylvania Health System.
Experts and survivors strongly encourage women of all ages, particularly young women less familiar with breast cancer prevention, to get into the regular habit of practicing self-exams.
“For an average risk young woman, we recommend sticking to physical exam and being aware of one’s breast health and how one’s breasts feel, and to bring any concerning signs and symptoms…to medical attention,” Partridge said.
Among the signs and symptoms to look out for: breast lumps that get bigger or don’t go away with a menstrual cycle, discolored/bloody nipple discharge, skin rash/dimpling, or a lump in the underarm.
However, some younger women who were eventually diagnosed with breast cancer say that they felt their concerns were often brushed off by their medical providers.
Meghan McCallum was 32 when she was first diagnosed in 2019. She suspected something was off after a self-examination that year, but it took until Christmas to get an official diagnosis.
“I had a gut feeling,” McCallum said. “I felt confident in my knowing that something wasn’t right with body. That was just the very beginning of what ended up being a very unfortunately long process of getting a correct diagnosis.”
Most doctors told McCallum she was too young to have breast cancer, or likely had a benign breast tumor known as a fibroadenoma.
“It took a lot of visits and calling out doctors again and again to be taken seriously to get a correct diagnosis,” she said. “There were all of these things that I just had never experienced before and I didn’t have the self-advocacy tool in my toolbelt to really think about this from that lens of maybe my doctors are wrong and what if this is actually cancer.”
While much of the advocacy around breast cancer continues to focus on older patients, more groups are geared toward younger generations.
Osofisan, Monje, and McCallum are part of the Young Survival Coalition, an international organization aimed at supporting people who have been diagnosed with breast cancer under the age of 40.
“Now that I’m in it, I do meet a lot more people and I also meet a lot of young people who had a similar situation to me,” Monje said. “One of the first things I had trouble with was finding people like me, but that’s how I wound up at Young Survival Coalition.”
While genetic testing and screening can help, sometimes a cancer diagnosis comes seemingly out of nowhere.
Elissa Kalver, 36, was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer when she was 34, shortly before her daughter’s first birthday.
Kalver said she has no family history, and nothing showed up on genetic screenings. She even had a breast exam just two months before ultimately finding a lump. Things moved quickly after that, and tests showed the cancer had spread.
“So I’ve had cancer on my breasts and my lymph nodes, my liver, my spine, my brain,” Kalver said.
Kalver said she struggled with feeling powerless. So during an early round of chemotherapy, she started a national nonprofit called We Got This, which is a gift registry and marketplace for people with cancer.
She said she is often asked why her cancer wasn’t caught earlier, before it metastasized.
“I think a lot of that mentality is a bit toxic, because one, it is kind of blaming me. Like, no, I couldn’t find it earlier. You know, I went to tons of doctors, they knew something was wrong, but nothing led to [cancer,]” Kalver said.
Her cancer was so metastasized that she suspects it was spreading undetected for at least a year.
“In hindsight, there’s nothing more I could have done, other than if I like had a crystal ball to push to get a mammogram. But, like, how would I have known that at 34?”
Kalver said she wants to increase awareness of late-stage breast cancers. Breast Cancer Awareness Month each October puts a public focus on prevention and making sure women conduct self-exams. But she said there’s not as much attention on what happens if you’re already too late.
“And when what happens, like to me, which is kind of the worst case scenario … then, you know, not just pounding sand but having solutions too,” she said. “You know, I don’t want to just accept that I have stage four cancer and I’m gonna die. You know, there’s a lot of solutions for what I have. And I’m really lucky that they exist.”
Godfather of AI tells ’60 Minutes’ he fears the technology could one day take over humanity
Geoffrey Hinton hails the benefits of artificial intelligence but also sounds the alarm on such things as autonomous battlefield robots, fake news and unintended bias in employment and policing.
Kyle Moss – October 9, 2023
“We’re entering a period of great uncertainty where we’re dealing with things we’ve never done before,” says Geoffrey Hinton of AI. “We can’t afford to get it wrong.” (CBS)
Geoffrey Hinton, who has been called “the Godfather of AI,” sat down with 60 Minutes for Sunday’s episode to break down what artificial intelligence technology could mean for humanity in the coming years, both good and bad.
Hinton is a British computer scientist and cognitive psychologist, best known for his work on artificial neural networks — aka the framework for AI. He spent a decade working for Google before leaving in May of this year, citing concerns about the risks of AI.
Here is a look at what Hinton had to say to 60 Minutes interviewer Scott Pelley.
The Intelligence
After highlighting the latest concerns about AI to set up the segment, Pelley opened the Q&A with Hinton by asking him if humanity knows what it’s doing.
“No,” Hinton replied. “I think we’re moving into a period when for the first time ever, we have things more intelligent than us.”
Hinton expanded on that by saying he believes the most advanced AI systems can understand, are intelligent and can make decisions based on their own experiences. When asked if AI systems are conscious, Hinton said that due to a current lack of self-awareness, they probably aren’t, but that day is coming “in time.” And he agreed with Pelley’s take that, consequently, human beings will be the second-most intelligent beings on the planet.
After the idea was floated by Hinton that AI systems may be better at learning than the human mind, Pelley wondered how, since AI was designed by people — a notion that Hinton corrected.
“No, it wasn’t. What we did was, we designed the learning algorithm. That’s a bit like designing the principle of evolution,” Hinton said. “But when this learning algorithm then interacts with data, it produces complicated neural networks that are good at doing things. But we don’t really understand exactly how they do those things.”
Robots in a Google AI lab were programmed merely to score a goal. Through AI, they trained themselves how to play soccer. (CBS)
The Good
Hinton did say that some of the huge benefits of AI have already been seen in healthcare, with its ability to do things like recognize and understand medical images, along with designing drugs. This is one of the main reasons Hinton looks on his work with such a positive light.
The Bad
“We have a very good idea sort of roughly what it’s doing,” Hinton said of how AI systems teach themselves. “But as soon as it gets really complicated, we don’t actually know what’s going on any more than we know what’s going on in your brain.”
That sentiment was just the tip of the iceberg of concerns surrounding AI, with Hinton pointing to one big potential risk as the systems get smarter.
“One of the ways these systems might escape control is by writing their own computer code to modify themselves. And that’s something we need to seriously worry about,” he said.
Hinton added that as AI takes in more and more information from things like famous works of fiction, election media cycles and everything in between, AI will just keep getting better at manipulating people.
“I think in five years time it may well be able to reason better than us,” Hinton said.
And what that means is risks like autonomous battlefield robots, fake news and unintended bias in employment and policing. Not to mention, Hinton said, “having a whole class of people who are unemployed and not valued much because what they used to do is now done by machines.
The Ugly
To make matters worse, Hinton said he doesn’t really see a path forward that totally guarantees safety.
“We’re entering a period of great uncertainty where we’re dealing with things we’ve never done before. And normally the first time you deal with something totally novel, you get it wrong. And we can’t afford to get it wrong with these things.”
When pressed by Pelley if that means AI may one day take over humanity, Hinton said “yes, that’s a possibility. I’m not saying it will happen. If we could stop them ever wanting to, that would be great. But it’s not clear we can stop them ever wanting to.”
So what do we do?
Hinton said that this could be a bit of a turning point, where humanity may have to face the decision of whether to develop these things further and how people should “protect themselves” if they do.
“I think my main message is, there’s enormous uncertainty about what’s going to happen next,” Hinton said. “These things do understand, and because they understand we need to think hard about what’s next, and we just don’t know.”
Pelley reported that Hinton said he has no regrets about the work he’s done given AI’s potential for good, but that now is the time to run more experiments on it to understand, to impose certain regulations and for a world treaty to ban the use of military robots.
60 Minutes airs Sundays on CBS, check your local listings.
Rogue AI will learn to ‘manipulate people’ to stop it from being switched off, predicts British ‘Godfather of AI’
Ryan Hogg – October 10, 2023
Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile for Collision via Getty Images
The “Godfather of AI,” and one of its biggest critics, believes the technology will soon become smarter than humans and could learn to manipulate them.
Geoffrey Hinton, a former AI engineer at Google, told 60 Minutes he expected artificial intelligence to become self-aware in time, making humans the second most intelligent beings on the planet.
Humans have about 100 trillion neural connections, while the biggest AI chatbots have just 1 trillion connections, according to Hinton.
However, he suggests the knowledge contained within those connections is likely much more than that contained in humans.
Eventually, Hinton says, computer systems might be able to write their own code to modify themselves, in a sense going rogue. And if it does, he thinks AI will have a way to stop itself from being switched off by humans.
“They will be able to manipulate people,” Hinton told 60 Minutes.
“These will be very good at convincing because they’ll have learned from all the novels that were ever written, all the books by Machiavelli, all the political connivances. They’ll know all that stuff.”
Bigger threat than climate change
Hinton quit his role as an engineer at Google in May after more than a decade with the company, in part to speak out against the growing risks of the technology and lobby for safeguards and regulations against it.
While at Google, Hinton helped build the AI chatbot Bard, the tech giant’s competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. He also set the foundations for the growth of AI through his pioneering neural network, which helped him win a prestigious Turing Award.
Since he quit, Hinton has been one of the leading voices warning of AI’s dangers. Following his resignation announcement in the New York Times, he told Reuters he thought the tech had become a bigger threat to humans than climate change.
In late May, he was at the top of a list of hundreds of experts, which included OpenAI founder Sam Altman, calling for urgent regulation of AI.
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the 22-word statement read.
Hinton’s biggest worry about AI right now pertains to the labor market. He told 60 Minutes he feared a whole class of people would find themselves unemployed as more capable AI systems take their place.
In the longer run, though, he worries about AI’s militaristic potential. In his interview with 60 Minutes, Hinton called for governments to commit to not building battlefield robots. The warning is akin to J. Robert Oppenheimer’s calls to stop world leaders from developing nuclear weapons after he pioneered the first atomic bomb.
Hinton summed up by saying he couldn’t see a path that guarantees safety, adding he wasn’t sure robots could ever be stopped from wanting to take over humanity.
The world’s major governments appear to have heard Hinton’s and others’ warnings loud and clear.
The U.K. will host the first global AI summit in November, which is expected to be attended by 100 politicians, academics, and AI experts.
It could lay the groundwork for sweeping regulatory changes by major countries including the United States.
The U.S. is crafting an AI Bill of Rights, and in the coming months is expected to bring in safeguards that tech companies must abide by.
The European Union is crafting its own guardrails around AI, titled the AI Act. However, the potential for varying regulations based on geography is creating tension.
In June, more than 150 major European execs requested the EU pull back on its proposed restrictions around AI, including increased bureaucracy and tests on certain tech’s safety. They argued these would create a “critical productivity gap” in the region that would leave it trailing the U.S.
170,000-plus books used to train AI; authors say they weren’t asked
Lois M. Collins – October 9, 2023
An investigation by The Atlantic indicated thousands of e-books are being used to train an artificial intelligence system called Books3. | Adobe Stock
Authors are upset after tech companies started using their books to train artificial intelligence without letting them know or seeking their permission. They worry about copyright infringement and loss of income, among other issues.
Per CNN, “The system is called Books3, and according to an investigation by The Atlantic, the data set is based on a collection of pirated e-books spanning all genres, from erotic fiction to prose poetry. Books help generative AI systems with learning how to communicate information.”
“The future promised by AI is written with stolen words,” The Atlantic article said.
The article notes that some of the text that’s training AI on how to use language is taken from Wikipedia and other online entries. But “high-quality generative AI requires higher-quality input than is usually found on the internet — that is, it requires the kind found in books.”
Many authors apparently don’t view the use of their books to train artificial intelligence as an honor. Rather, it’s a shortcut that robs them of their due, they say.
CNN reported that Nora Roberts, who writes romantic novels, has 206 books in the database — “second only to William Shakespeare.” She told CNN the database is “all kinds of wrong. We are human beings, we are writers and we are being exploited by people who want to use our work, again without permission or compensation, to ‘write’ books, scripts, essays because it’s cheap and easy,” she said in a statement to CNN.
Per The Atlantic, Sarah Silverman, Richard Kadrey and Christopher Golden filed a lawsuit in California that claims Meta — owner of Facebook — violated their copyrights by using their books to train the company’s large language model LLaMA. That’s an algorithm that competes with OpenAI’s GPT-4 to create its own text by using word patterns it learned from the books and other sources, the article said.
The Atlantic’s Alex Reisner created a stir when he got a list of the books and published a searchable database so that anyone can see if their favorite author’s work is being used to teach AI communication skills. He notes the authors include well-known names like Stephen King, John Kratz and James Patterson, among others. The books apparently came through web-crawling technology that found bootleg PDF copies of the books for free online and they were then packaged into a database called Books3, where different AI companies are using them. Bloomberg said it will not use Books3 in the future as it trains its BloombergGPT.
The Authors Guild on Sept. 27 published a guide on actions authors can take if they learned their books are in the Books3 dataset. “This can be an unsettling revelation, raising concerns about copyright, compensation and the future implications of AI,” the article said.
The guild and 17 authors filed a different class-action suit in New York against OpenAI for copyright infringement. Those authors, per a separate guild article, include David Baldacci, Mary Bly, Michael Connelly, John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, Scott Turow and Rachel Vail, among others.
“The complaint draws attention to the fact that the plaintiffs’ books were downloaded from pirate ebook repositories and then copied into the fabric of GPT 3.5 and GPT 4 which power ChatGPT and thousands of applications and enterprise uses — from which OpenAI expects to earn many billions, the article said.
Reisner also wrote that while Meta is using authors’ books without permission, it employed a “takedown” order against at least one developer who used LLaMA coding after it was leaked a few months ago, on the claim that “no one is authorized to exhibit, reproduce, transmit or otherwise distribute Meta Properties without the express written permission of Meta.” And once it decided to make LLaMA open-source, Meta still requires developers to get a license in order to use it.
Bogost contends that successful art “exceeds its creator’s plans,” noting that an author cannot accurately predict a book’s audience. “Who am I to say what my work is good for, how it might benefit someone — even a near-trillion-dollar company? To bemoan this one unexpected use for my writing is to undermine all of the other unexpected uses for it. Speaking as a writer, that makes me feel bad.”
Shell Aims to ‘Decarbonize Profitably,’ Its New Energies US CEO Says
Velda Addison – October 9, 2023
Shell’s strategy has not changed as the company remains focused on delivering more value with less emissions, Shell New Energies US CEO Glenn Wright said this week, addressing unease about its position in the energy transition.
“In order for that to be a reality, it’s imperative that what we do is both economically viable, socially acceptable and environmentally sustainable,” Wright said Oct. 5 during an event co-hosted by the Baker Institute Center for Energy Studies and Baker Botts LLC in Houston. “Those are the three legs of the stool. If any one of those legs fails, the solution fails. So, our aim … is to continue our work and to decarbonize profitably.”
The comments were delivered in response to concerns that the supermajor was scaling back investments in renewable energy. Focused on increasing returns, Shell said it will hold oil output steady through 2030, having hit a lowered oil production target early through divestments.
Shell, which is targeting net-zero emissions by 2050, continues progress on providing cleaner energy solutions as energy demand rises, Wright said, pointing out how the company is repurposing the footprint of its energy and chemical parks. Shell’s low-carbon investment plans include investing between $10 billion and $15 billion through 2025 in areas such as biofuels, hydrogen, electric vehicle charging and carbon capture and storage.
“In my business, we will continue to invest in power opportunities, but we will do so in areas and spaces where it makes economic sense to do so and where we are incentivized to do so,” Wright said.
Energy companies, including Shell, are under pressure to not only provide affordable energy safely and lower emissions, but also increase returns for the shareholder. However, inflationary pressure and supply chain issues have posed obstacles, especially for offshore wind.
While the company has pulled out of some wind projects, including two wind projects offshore Ireland, it has powered forward with other investments. These have included the acquisitions of renewable natural gas company Nature Energy and Sprng Energy, a solar and wind power supplier, as well as starting construction on one of Europe’s largest renewable hydrogen plants.
The renewables investment comes alongside continued oil and gas production.
“We will continue to invest in power opportunities, but we will do so in areas and spaces where it makes economic sense to do so and where we are incentivized to do so,” Shell New Energies US CEO Glenn Wright says. (Source: Baker Institute)
Protecting the core
Determining where to invest capital is probably the biggest question in boardrooms today, said Michael LaMotte, senior managing director for Guggenheim Securities. Speaking about E&Ps’ limited capital investment and moves to pay down debt and pay dividends, he said companies in the industry should protect the core first.
“Identify that and focus on it because that’s where all that cash comes from at the end of the day,” said LaMotte, who spoke on a separate panel. “The return on your capital is going to be enhanced if you improve the efficiency of the operations in and around that core.”
It is also important to think about creating long-term value. Despite views on the pace of the transition, the “transition is here and we are in it.” He spoke of the need for companies to leverage core competencies into new energies.
“[It’s] really important how to think about taking what feels like a liability, what feels like a compliance cost to the business, and flip it on its head and say, ‘okay, this is actually a new business opportunity,’” LaMotte said, acknowledging the core is not leaving anytime some.
Sharing similar sentiments as Wright, LaMotte added that investments must be economic with focus on obligations to shareholders to generate a return.
“But it also has to be cleaner. It’s striking that balance” between protecting the core and focusing on something new and cleaner to leverage competitive advantages.
By 2050, the world’s population is expected to exceed 9 billion, nearly 2 billion more people than today, Wright said. Energy demand will likely double.
“We must find ways to profitably decarbonize. I cannot emphasize that enough. We aim to decarbonize, but we must do so profitably,” Wright said. “And we must work closely with others in new ways because we can only reach net zero if society reaches it, too.”
Pumping up power
The most profound change and fastest growth will happen in the power sector, according to Wright. Shell deepened its position in the renewable power space with its 2021 acquisition of Savion, a large utility-scale solar and battery energy storage developer, and the 2022 launch of its residential retail business in Texas. The company manages more than 8 gigawatts of power generation across North America.
“Electricity is far and away the easiest energy source to decarbonize. Every energy consuming sector, which is everybody from road transport to home and commercial heating and cooling, to manufacturing and major industrial processes, is actively pursuing electrification in some fashion,” Wright said.
Like others in energy, he says reform is needed—particularly regarding access to interconnections and transmission reform—as more renewable energy lines up to flow to the grid.
“FERC Order 2023 starts to help us in this regard. … How this will play out will continue to unfold, but it will encourage and allow quicker access to bring renewables online,” Wright said. “We also need to ensure that the market design encourages resource adequacy. We can encourage certainly the development of renewables. What’s important is that these assets are located in the right places at the right time.”
Power grids in parts of the U.S.—including the Electric Reliability Council of Texas—experienced stress this summer amid high demand and temperatures, which prompted some conservation alerts.
“As we see more and more renewables come onstream, we need more and more resources that can provide ancillary services that can help firm those renewables and ensure that the grid continues to operate,” Wright said.
BP says it remains committed to financial, climate ambitions
Ron Bousso – October 10, 2023
FILE PHOTO: Logo of British Petrol BP is seen at a petrol station in Pienkow
LONDON (Reuters) -BP said on Tuesday it remained committed to its financial and carbon reduction ambitions, as interim Chief Executive Officer Murray Auchincloss hosted an investor day in Denver.
It was Auchincloss’s first major investor event since taking the helm after Bernard Looney abruptly stepped down as CEO last month for failing to fully disclose relationships with colleagues.
“BP’s strategy, financial frame and net zero ambition are unchanged,” the energy group said in a statement.
“BP remains focused on delivering its strategy safely, with disciplined delivery, quarter-on-quarter, to meet 2025 targets and 2030 aims.”
The company aims to achieve zero net carbon emissions by 2050 and to invest billions in renewable and low-carbon power. In February, BP scaled back plans to reduce oil and gas output by 2030 to 25% from 40% from 2019 levels.
In the presentation, BP also raised its forecast for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) from oil and gas businesses for 2030 by $2 billion to $41 to $44 billion at an average oil price of $70 a barrel.
EBITDA for the whole company, including its renewables and low-carbon businesses, is now forecast to reach $53 to $58 billion, compared with $51 to $56 billion previously.
(Reporting by Ron Bousso;Editing by Tomasz Janowski, Susan Fenton and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
California hits major industry with lawsuit for allegedly spreading ‘lies and mistruths’: ‘[They] have privately known the truth for decades’
Leo Collis – October 10, 2023
California is one of the most committed regions in the United States when it comes to striving for a sustainable future.
The state is seeking to provide 100% renewable energy to residents and businesses by 2045, and it has seen billions of dollars of investment in “clean energy technologies.”
Now, it is taking on the oil industry, with the state of California filing a lawsuit against industry giants like ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP, as well as lobbying body the American Petroleum Institute.
NPR reported the suit was filed in the San Francisco Superior Court, and the focus is on claims the big players in the oil industry have been misleading the public about the dangers of dirty energy.
“California is suing these big polluters to hold them accountable for their decades of deception, cover-up, and billions of dollars in harm done to our state,” the office of California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.
The Governor’s office added the “lies” pushed by Big Oil over the course of decades have contributed to global heating, resulting in extreme weather events such as superstorms, wildfires, extreme heat, extreme drought, and flooding.
“It has been decades of damage and deception,” Governor Newsom continued. “Wildfires wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air, deadly heat waves, record-breaking droughts parching our wells. California taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill. California is taking action to hold big polluters accountable.”
If the state is successful, it is calling on oil companies to compensate the state and its residents for the industry’s impact on the environment and to help bring protection initiatives to mitigate against future damage that rising temperatures bring. It is also hoping to stop oil companies from engaging in further pollution and to cease misinformation campaigns.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is also leading the lawsuit.
“Oil and gas companies have privately known the truth for decades — that the burning of fossil fuels leads to climate change — but have fed us lies and mistruths to further their record-breaking profits at the expense of our environment,” he said. “Enough is enough.”
According to Cal Fire, there have been 5,741 wildfire incidents in the state in 2023 alone, with over 305,000 acres burned.
As California Local observed, Southern California saw its first tropical storm since 1939 in August, leading to record quantities of rainfall in Palm Springs, San Diego, and downtown Los Angeles. The state also saw its hottest recorded month in history in July, and 12 major rainstorms were recorded earlier in the year.
It’s clear, then, that California is bearing a significant burden when it comes to the impact of global heating, and the lawsuit will leave Big Oil with a lot to answer for.
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This state is requiring every new home to be built with money-saving, energy-efficient heat pumps: ‘The right choice’
Jill Ettinger – October 9, 2023
Starting this summer, every new house or apartment built in the state of Washington will be required to use money-saving, energy-efficient heat pumps for heating and cooling.
The decision came last November when the Washington State Building Code Council voted in favor of the mandate, making it one of the strongest building codes in the country for energy-efficient heat pumps.
Electric heat pumps are two to four times more energy efficient than gas heaters, which means they can help you cut down your electricity bill dramatically.
Another reason they’re being lauded is because they don’t run on methane, a potent gas that traps heat in our atmosphere and causes our planet to overheat. Methane is also linked to a number of human health issues, including respiratory illness, memory loss, and heart disease.
The Council voted for the heat pumps following a 2021 state law that requires 45% in greenhouse gas pollution reductions by 2030 and 95% by 2050, compared with 1990 levels. The state is also required to increase energy efficiency in buildings by 70% by 2031.
“The State Building Code Council made the right choice for Washingtonians,” Rachel Koller, managing director of the green-building alliance Shift Zero, said in a statement. “From an economic, equity and sustainability perspective, it makes sense to build efficient, electric homes right from the start.”
An influx of transplants to Washington in recent years has led to a 50% increase in planet-overheating gas pollution from buildings between 1990 and 2015 — the fastest-growing source in the state.
Across the country, lawmakers are making decisions like this to help move their municipalities away from dirty-energy-based heating systems. More than 90 cities and counties in the U.S. now have similar measures in place.
“It’s an exciting step forward toward meeting our goal to reduce greenhouse gases in our state,” Katy Sheehan, a council member who voted in favor of the heat pump mandate told Spokane’s Spokesman-Review. “I’m really happy that we did it.”
