Nick Byrd, Ph.D.May 14

Has anyone done a randomized and/or controlled version of this pre- versus post- test of an automatic order set change protocol?

https://doi.org/10.1002/jhm.70283

Highly scalable, if a health system is willing to experiment!

#medicine #pneumonia #antibioticResistance #xRisk #informatics

AnthonyApr 17
I thought the Ronan Farrow/Andrew Marantz New Yorker article on OpenAI and Sam Altman in particular reveals many important details and helps settle several speculations (e.g. about what happened when Altman was briefly fired from OpenAI). The overall portrayal of Altman as frankly a compulsive liar is much needed.

However, like many Farrow and Marantz seem to take the so-called "existential risk" framing of AI seriously. I really wish people would stop doing that. In this case it makes the article feel incoherent in places.

This technology by itself does not pose a unique risk. It's the people, organizations, and governments around it, and their behavior with respect to it, that generate risk. Treating the technology alone as uniquely existentially risky provides cover for a wide variety of bad actors to both continue doing their work as well as to shrug and say "oops" if something goes catastrophically wrong or if smaller harms accumulate into intolerably large ones. The very framing provides an accountability shield, which by my read contradicts what Farrow himself suggests is needed, namely more accountability. I take this from this article, his previous work, and comments he makes in interviews (e.g., this one with Decoder.

We need to stop catastrophizing. It's thought and action terminating.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #OpenAI #SamAltman #RonanFarrow #AndrewMarantz #NewYorker #xrisk #ExistentialRisk #AISafety
Ronan Farrow on Sam Altman's strained relationship with the truth | Decoder

YouTube
JamesMar 17
Our 50th episode on the podcast! Part 4 of our alignment series "The SCALE of the Issue" This episode looks at humanity's alignment problem at three different scales, the human, the political and an issue at the core of our microscopic biology #biology #alignment #AI #GoalAlignment #Ethics #XRisk

The Alignment Problem No One i...
The Alignment Problem No One is Talking Aboutβ€”The SCALE of the Issue

Non-Zero-Sum James Β· Episode

Spotify
Show threadJanne M. KorhonenNov 12, 2025
(It is IMHO symptomatic that the authors of the paper above, and in general the broader #x-risk / #EffectiveAltruism community, tend to go to great lengths to avoid talking about the obvious solution to unilateralist's curse and many other problems: fair, #democratic sharing of #power.) 12/12
πŸ†˜Bill Cole πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦Oct 17, 2025

Kayak: in principle, an application that may be well-served by "old" rules-based AI. Its function is supposed to be deterministic, needing more data ingestion & analysis than humans can tolerate.

But if they're calling it "AI" today, I'm sure it's a LLM/neural net gadget which will hallucinate flights & fares. Because we're playing out the theory that the #XRisk of so-called "AI" is in believing that it is smarter than us before it stops being surrealistically stupid.
https://mastodon.social/@Sarahp/115385533219971992

Nick Byrd, Ph.D.Sep 9, 2025

A conceptual replication of a result from our U.S. participants in U.K. participants:

A reminder that #antibiotics are probably ineffective for respiratory infections reduced expectations of needless #antibiotics.

https://doi.org/10.1111/bjhp.70020

#antibioticResistance #AMR #xRisk #edu

Nick Byrd, Ph.D.Sep 2, 2025

How can #hospitals easily reduce #medication orders that can increase #antibioticResistance?

After months of baseline #prescription tracking, a computer #nudge helped docs order 17-35% fewer extended-spectrum #antibiotics.

https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2025.11256

#AMR #xRisk #bioethics #CogSci

Colin RowatJun 4, 2025
#aisdr #london #tube #xrisk
Nick Byrd, Ph.D.Jun 3, 2025

Early antibiotic treatment in patients hospitalized with non-severe #COVID19 didn't improve outcomes β€” if anything, early #antibiotics were actually linked to *poorer* clinical outcomes.

https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.11499

#AntibioticStewardship #AntimicrobialResistance #medicine #xRisk

Nick Byrd, Ph.D.May 3, 2025

#Japan launched a national plan to reduce #AntimicrobialResistance in 2016.

Data from 2012 to 2020 show a pretty clear, abrupt, and consistent reduction in overall and inappropriate #antibiotic #prescription corresponding to the launch.

https://doi.org/10.1093/jacamr/dlaf062

#medicine #xRisk