10 Comments

Thanks Chris, hugely enjoyed this episode. I listened a day after talking at a party with a tech enthusiast who has a background in economics about how AI will impact healthcare (my field).

His perspective was that frequent patient symptoms uploads could be fed through AI and used to identify early disease, with doctors reduced to technicians, scanning, scoping and biopsying on behalf of the computers.

He treated the problem of healthcare as a maths problem, with the goal being early diagnosis and subsequent treatment all done with maximum efficiency (and, inevitably, maximum profit).

Missing from his argument was any consideration of disease prevention which, to my mind, can only be achieved through a fundamental change in the way we live, move and eat and a societal rejection of the chronic stress which is responsible for much of the ‘illness’ I see day to day.

Any integration of AI into healthcare will be led by those with an interest in ‘efficiency’ and profit rather than an a true understanding of what humans need to feel ‘well’ in any true sense and would, I suspect, make an already anti-human system fundamentally worse.

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Synchronicity alert. Sometime last week I received an email from either Amazon or Barnes & Nobles announcing some up coming books including Quantum Criminals. I thought this was something right up Dr. Ryan's ally and meant to forward it on . In the meantime, Im listening to ROMA 63 and not only are you aware of it, you are going to be talking to the author. Finally, I finish my walk, head over to the local coffee roasters and what is playing on Sirius in the shop, Donald Fage (i believe The Nightfly).

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I think you nailed it on the head. The real threat of AI lies not in the tyranny of humanlike machines, but that of machinelike humans.

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Dude, try get this lady on! Ella Al-Shamahi. Anthropologist, Comedian, Badass

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Hey, please give a shoutout here if you do a meetup or hangout when you visit Atlanta. I actually live on the same side of town as Rick Beato and met him at a local restaurant once and chatted briefly. Cool guy!

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To sum it up: Resistance is futile

https://youtu.be/c5rlAjuwdLQ?t=199

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Totally off topic, but thank you for putting us onto The Blindboy Podcast, Chris. He's a highlight of every week. His recent episodes about the demise of Silken Thomas, the deaf tomcat that lived with his protector sister in BB's yard, are a sublime study in grief and social dynamics. He's starkly aware that humans aren't the only people.

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The screenwriters just went on strike in Hollywood. It may be their last stroke because produceers wil soon be able to commission scripts written by AI, even in the style of famed screenwriters such as Mankaweicz and Epstein.

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Looking forward to the convo with Alex! Only a casual Steely Dan fan, but I listened to him on a fun convo on the podcast Bandsplain about Steely Dan (good podcast for already-fans or intro to steely dan songs). Def recommended

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Really enjoyable episode. The insight of the chimp integration analogy is gonna stay with me as we watch this thing unfold. Reminiscent of the George Carlin bit about our hubris, that for all we know the planet made us because it wanted plastic, and that when we'd made a sufficient amount it would dispose of us. No one gets to participate in all infinity.

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