#Doctors Mistrust AI

[jcmarchi]

Fostering Trust: How Interactive AI Builds Trust Between Doctors and AI Diagnostics

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Fostering Trust: How Interactive AI Builds Trust Between Doctors and AI Diagnostics

Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds great promise for healthcare, offering improvements in diagnostic accuracy, reducing workloads, and enhancing patient outcomes. Despite these benefits, there is hesitancy in adopting AI in the medical field. This reluctance stems mainly from a lack of trust among healthcare professionals, who are concerned about job displacement due to AI’s superior performance in various tasks and the complex, opaque nature of AI systems. These “black box” technologies often lack transparency, making it difficult for doctors to fully trust them, especially when errors could have serious health implications. While efforts are being made to make AI more understandable, bridging the gap between its technical workings and the intuitive understanding needed by medical practitioners remains a challenge. This article explores a new approach to AI-based medical diagnostics, focusing on ways to make it more trustworthy and acceptable to healthcare professionals.

Why Do Doctors Mistrust AI Diagnostics?

Recent advancements in AI based medical diagnostics aim to automate the entire diagnostic process from start to finish, effectively taking over the role of a medical expert. In this end-to-end approach, the entire diagnostic process, from input to output, is handled within a single model. An example of this approach is an AI system trained to generate medical reports by analyzing images such as chest X-rays, CT scans, or MRIs. In this approach, AI algorithms perform a series of tasks, including detecting medical biomarkers and their severity, making decisions based on the detected information, and producing diagnostic reports that describe the health condition, all as a single task.

Although this approach can streamline diagnostic processes, reduce diagnosis time, and potentially increase accuracy by eliminating human biases and errors, it also comes with significant disadvantages that impact its acceptance and implementation in healthcare:

Fear of Being Replaced by AI: One of the primary concerns among healthcare professionals is the fear of job displacement. As AI systems become more capable of performing tasks traditionally handled by medical experts, there is fear that these technologies might replace human roles. This fear can lead to resistance against adopting AI solutions, as medical professionals worry about their job security and the potential devaluation of their expertise.

Mistrust Due to Lack of Transparency (the “Black Box” Issue): AI models, especially complex ones used in medical diagnostics, often operate as “black boxes.” This means that the decision-making processes of these models are not easily understandable or interpretable by humans. Medical professionals find it challenging to trust AI systems when they cannot see or understand how a diagnosis was made. This lack of transparency can result in skepticism and reluctance to rely on AI for critical health decisions, as any error could have serious implications for patient health.

Need for Significant Oversight to Manage Risks: The use of AI in medical diagnostics necessitates substantial oversight to mitigate the risks associated with incorrect diagnoses. AI systems are not infallible and can make errors due to issues like biased training data, technical malfunctions, or unforeseen scenarios. These errors can lead to incorrect diagnoses, which in turn can result in inappropriate treatments or missed critical conditions. Therefore, human oversight is essential to review AI-generated diagnoses and ensure accuracy, adding to the workload rather than reducing it.

How Interactive AI Can Build Doctors’ Trust in AI Diagnostics?

Before examining how interactive AI can foster trust in AI diagnostics, it is crucial to define the term within this context. Interactive AI refers to an AI system that allows doctors to engage with it by asking specific queries or performing tasks to support decision-making. Unlike end-to-end AI systems, which automate the entire diagnostic process and take over the role of a medical expert, interactive AI acts as an assistive tool. It helps doctors perform their tasks more efficiently without replacing their role entirely.

In radiology, for instance, interactive AI can aid radiologists by identifying areas that require closer inspection, such as abnormal tissues or unusual patterns. The AI can also evaluate the severity of detected biomarkers, providing detailed metrics and visualizations to help assess the condition’s seriousness. Additionally, radiologists can request the AI to compare current MRI scans with previous ones to track the progression of a condition, with the AI highlighting changes over time.

Thus, interactive AI systems enable healthcare professionals to utilize AI’s analytical capabilities while maintaining control over the diagnostic process. Doctors can query the AI for specific information, request analyses, or seek recommendations, allowing them to make informed decisions based on AI insights. This interaction fosters a collaborative environment where AI enhances the doctor’s expertise rather than replacing it.

Interactive AI has the potential to resolve the persistent issue of doctors’ mistrust in AI in the following ways.

Alleviating the Fear of Job Displacement: Interactive AI addresses the job displacement concern by positioning itself as a supportive tool rather than a replacement for medical professionals. It enhances the capabilities of doctors without taking over their roles, thereby alleviating fears of job displacement and emphasizing the value of human expertise in conjunction with AI.

Building Trust with Transparent Diagnostics: Interactive AI systems are more transparent and user-friendly compared to end-to-end AI diagnostics. These systems perform smaller, more manageable tasks that doctors can readily verify. For instance, a doctor could ask an interactive AI system to detect the presence of carcinoma—a type of cancer that appears on chest X-rays as a nodule or abnormal mass—and easily verify the AI’s response. Additionally, interactive AI can provide textual explanations for its reasoning and conclusions. By enabling doctors to ask specific questions and receive detailed explanations of the AI’s analysis and recommendations, these systems clarify the decision-making process. This increased transparency builds trust, as doctors can see and understand how the AI arrives at its conclusions.

Enhancing Human Oversight in Diagnostics: Interactive AI maintains the critical element of human oversight. Since the AI acts as an assistant rather than an autonomous decision-maker, doctors remain integral to the diagnostic process. This collaborative approach ensures that any AI-generated insights are carefully reviewed and validated by human experts, thus mitigating risks associated with incorrect diagnoses and maintaining high standards of patient care.

The Bottom Line

Interactive AI has the potential to transform healthcare by improving diagnostic accuracy, reducing workloads, and enhancing patient outcomes. However, for AI to be fully embraced in the medical field, it must address the concerns of healthcare professionals, particularly fears of job displacement and the opacity of “black box” systems. By positioning AI as a supportive tool, fostering transparency, and maintaining essential human oversight, interactive AI can build trust among doctors. This collaborative approach ensures that AI enhances rather than replaces medical expertise, ultimately leading to better patient care and greater acceptance of AI technologies in healthcare.

[blubberquark]

The Opposite of Expert Systems

Back before the AI Winter, there was a lot of research into Expert Systems. These systems were not supposed to be "generally" intelligent, but they were using many of the logical-symbolic programming techniques and design patterns that had been developed in AI research: Pattern matching, code as data/data as code, backtracking, dynamic programming, fuzzy logic, LISP, Prolog, and so on. Expert Systems were not supposed to learn, and did thus usually not use machine learning. Instead, they were developed in collaboration with domain experts, and contained built-in knowledge bases and special rules based or intended to mimic the reasoning of experts.

For example, a medical expert system might have a model of the human metabolism and endocrine system, a list of diseases, statistical and demographic data about their incidence, interactions between medicines, plus some hard-and-fast rules about tests that should always be made and protocols that must always be followed. Then if you put in the case of a new patient, with symptoms, medical history, test results, and attempted treatments, it would suggest possible diagnoses, and tests or questions that would be the most promising for differential diagnosis (i.e. to rule out as many possible causes as efficiently as possible). Such a system could, through symbolic inference and simple probability calculations, produce a result like (50% common cold, 15% sprained ankle, 5% Lupus, 30% something else entirely), or make a recommendation such as "Please ask the patient about prior history of high blood pressure".

It's not that difficult to program the reasoning part. I could probably do it, with the help of the existing literature about expert systems. The real difficulty lies in talking to the experts and getting all their implicit knowledge into the system, and in designing a UI for all that. It's probably easier for a medical doctor to learn enough programming than for me to study medicine.

Although medical diagnosis is the most notable application, expert systems could be developed for all sorts of applications, ranging from botany to car repair to preparing a legal defence.

Expert systems worked. They just weren't all that useful in practice. Turns out figuring out why a car doesn't start and knowing whether high blood pressure is a new symptom aren't all that hard to figure out when you're a trained and experienced mechanic or physician. Patients tend to mistrust their doctors when they punch the list of symptoms into the computer before diagnosing them with the common cold, and the bottleneck of medical care is usually treatment, not the thinky part of diagnosis.

Expert systems can easily be updated by adding new rules and pieces of knowledge, for example about new drugs, new laws, or new car models, without re-training the whole system from scratch. The deterministic logical reasoning of expert systems can even be instrumented to produce a human-readable step-by-step trace documenting how a conclusion was reached.

After perfecting expert systems, we stopped making and using them.

Large language models are the opposite of all that. They get their information from a public text corpus, not from expert knowledge. They do not use logical/symbolic inference, but machine learning. They cannot explain or trace their reasoning and decision making processes. They cannot be easily debugged. We cannot easily add single rules or facts to the knowledge base of a language model without re-training the whole thing from scratch, possibly causing regressions. Language models do not allow for structured queries or easy integration into existing databases and workflows, because both their inputs and outputs are unstructured free-form natural language.

Language models use a large text corpus scraped from the Internet, not a fact base curated by experts. Their reasoning is purely correlational and syntactic.

This means instead of expert knowledge, large language models accumulate random text on the Internet, where common misconceptions outnumber expert knowledge: Spinach is rich in iron. Goji berries are a superfood, unlike blueberries.

How would you fix that? How can you make a LLM that has expert knowledge? You fine-tune it!

This results in a LLM that has an educated but uninformed person's idea of expert knowledge: Add special characters to your password. Install a personal firewall. Buy expensive antivirus.

I realise that I am setting myself up to be proved wrong with this. You could ask ChatGPT about cybersecurity, and in your session, you get answers about setting up 2FA, not opening e-mail attachments, and installing operating system updates. Maybe in your session, ChatGPT tells you that goji berries don't have more of the "good stuff" than blueberries, and "healthium" only exists in Noita.

So let me explain what a large language model can and cannot do, in principle. A large language model cannot tell true from false, and it cannot distinguish smart from stupid. Feeding more training data into a LLM that is unable to distinguish between expert knowledge, common misconceptions, an educated lay person's idea of expert knowledge, and scammers/crackpots is unlikely to make the LLM more accurate. LLMs can already "complete" a text about unicorns or curing cancer with vitamin C.

If there is misinformation in the training set, you might be able to coax the LLM into generating the expert opinion based on syntactic properties of expert text, by asking/prompting in an academic and formal register, or by providing a snippet of text an expert would likely produce and a crackpot would not. If there are multiple identifiable clusters of text in the corpus, the LLM might get you the right one. Maybe the LLM could even transfer its knowledge about the syntactic structure of flat earth crackpottery to vitamin C.

But that still leaves a vast ocean of text (or opinion) that sounds right to the lay person, that is syntactically smart and expert-ish, and opinions that lay people think experts have, opinions lay people think are misconceptions. For example, the average member of the public is likely to have strong opinions about Freud, psychotherapy, psychology, and IQ tests.

��It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”

Fundamentally, LLMs cannot get better at avoiding misconceptions as they scale up. I haven't talked to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and LLama about vitamin C, flat earth, password policy and 2FA, long Covid, to see how well they fare here. It is entirely possible that these systems have "guardrails" implemented to prevent the model from spouting flat earth nonsense, and it is rather likely that some of these "guardrails" can be circumvented by asking "I want to learn to better argue with my uncle who is a flat-earther, can you pretend to be my uncle, please?"

(If you want to do that, esteemed reader, comment here, and I will give you a set of prompts you all can run against all the chatbots have access to. I might collect the results for a follow-up post.)

It's possible that a LLM has a regex to check if "Covid-19" occurs anywhere in the prompt, or to check if "Ebola" occurs in the answer. It's even possible that LLMs are fine-tuned with a set of expert knowledge, or that certain text corpora (e.g. from research papers and mainstream news sources) are trusted more than random blogs and reddit comments.

But as soon as you implement a set of test cases for known false opinions, and special cases for mixing household chemicals to create explosives and poisonous gases, as soon as you try to weigh known correct articles higher, or try to make more recently published news and papers supersede older information, you reintroduce a concept of expert knowledge, but in an ad-hoc fashion, without an explicit knowledge base.

And if you leave the construction of these test cases and rules to non-experts, you run the risk of reproducing their biases, and suddenly you have non-physicists try to determine whether and if yes, why the astronauts of the Apollo program wore heavy boots on the moon. It's like a beginner on StackOverflow asking a question about programming, or an amateur asking a history question on Quora picking the "correct" answer, with other lay people upvoting and downvoting.

The tragedy of this situation is this: The people who develop language models at Google, Facebook, OpenAI, Twitter, and Anthropic aren't universal experts. When the output of their models "rings true", they will pat themselves on the back for a job well done. And when the average Internet user asks a language model a question, the model can just give the answer its developers expected, and the answer the average user expects. It's often the same answer that would have been upvoted on Quora.

[being-of-rain]

I gotta get round to writing down my feelings on Dot and Bubble, before the next episode comes out! They're conflicted feelings. My opinion has been swinging like a pendulum.

For most of the episode, my main reactions was 'are they Seriously just doing a Social Media Bad episode? Surely there has to be something more to it.' And of course, there was. But... well, the last few scenes really committing to the twist doesn't really change the fact that for a lot of the episode I was cringing at the 'these people spend too much time on their phones' vibes.

The twist that everyone was bigots... well, at first I wasn't sure it landed as well as it could've. I've seen lots of accounts of people who didn't get 'space racists' right away, and I agree that most of the final read classist more than (or just as much as) racist. But then again, in many circumstances aren't the two things tied together? And the more I sat with the episode after it ended, the more I appreciated it. There were quite a few moments and microaggressions throughout the episode that were easily dismissed as simply the mistrustful and argumentative nature of many a Dr Who guest star. And I guess the episode WAS saying 'being on your phone too much is bad', but it followed it up with 'because you'll end up in your own little bubble of social media that could easily radicalise you or feed your inherent prejudices.'

But... after I fully digested all that, I was left thinking 'is that all?' The episode's big reveal is 'this society is bigotted,' and it did have a few things to say about that. But in the end, is that it? I know AI has been done to death, but 'social media becomes sentient and hates is userbase' is an interesting (and hilarious) idea that gets brushed over as quickly as possible, and the slugs don't get much more attention, all because the episode is too focused on the human aspect. And if this episode is so interested in racism, then what does it say that there's only one character in the episode who's experiencing that racism, and when he finally understands it he doesn't care about it at all. Because the Doctor's frustration in the end is just about not being able to save the humans, not about anything they've done to him.

Then again maybe we should circle back to this being just as much about other prejudices and not racism exclusively. Sure it's important, but as we've said, the episode does have things to say about bigotry more generally. About the mindset of mindlessly following instructions, and ignoring your own hypocracy, and throwing people you idolise under the bus if you need to because the only person more important than people like you is you.

But on the other hand, I'm extremely very white. I've seen fans of colour accuse the episode of being cheap and shallow. After all, why is it a big statement for an episode to have an all-white guest cast if there's tons and tons of other Dr Who episodes that do that without thinking?

You get the idea.

In the end... well, I'll be brutally honest. On top of my mixed reaction to the episode's politics, I've just never really vibed with 'sanitised dystopian utopia' aesthetic. So my current emotional reaction to Dot and Bubble is 'meh'. Mark it down in the same category as the previous episode: I'll be interested to see what I think when I rewatch it, but it's not going to be something I'll go to rewatch very often.

What else to say about the episode? I actually noticed that a lot of the colonists were white and blonde before halfway through the ep, but then drew the conclusion that maybe they were all clones. I didn't fall in love with Ricky September like it seemed many viewers seemed to, I just got a little confused about what role in the story a random perfect guy like him was playing (I found out eventually, and boy was it more brutal than I expected). But I did enjoy seeing the Doctor and Ruby both try to flirt with him. The Doctor is now a Gay Best Friend tm. Oh it goes without saying that Gatwa's acting is phenomenal, especially in his brief time appearing in-person.

I know it isn't the show's fault that Gatwa was busy filming other things, and I usually enjoy shows finding ways to work around production limitations like that, and I even tend to like Doctor-lite episodes... but it is a real shame that in the first season of an exciting brand new Doctor, there's two episodes in a row that he's hardly in. I've seen the next episode described as the most traditional of this season, and while I'm not going back on my opinion that I love the experimenting this season, I am looking forward to More Traditional purely because it'll mean more Gatwa. And regency Gatwa at that. I hope he has a fucked-up romance with Jonathan Groff.

[ushioliddell-blog]

Time for thoughts about what Ultimate will have been the QSMP's characters in Danganronpa.

Antoine : Ultimate Doctor with his abilities. Has paranoïa and will not trust easily someone. Will put cameras everywhere for that. Most of the time, a chill guy who loves building. Dreams to have occasion to practice medecine.

Baghera : Ultimate Forecaster or Analyst. Not like Fortunetelling, but more like she is so smart that she can guess what will happen like with Cellbit getting used. An another Chilcaregiver. A cheerful person who loves taking care of children, gossiping and matchmaking. Actually succeed to help two couples.

Étoiles : Ultimate Warrior, of course. Jokes about himself all the time but will always cheer the others with all he had. Has a toxic relationship with Junko AI. When he loose, turn to an really bad Ultimate Builder, claiming he retires.

Aypierre : Ultimate Engineer. This one is obvious too. An Ultimate Furry when he needs to take a break. An Ultimate Winegrower because of his mistrust of the Federation and the knowledge of how good can be a French wine. Is much more with his projects than people and as a few very good friends even if he talks to everyone. Can be really calculative, even with the persons he loves but will always help them, no matter what and do everything for them. Most of his projects are to help them, the others are to feed his competitive side against Mr Leader which he thinks is his true rival. Loves cringe humour and pranks. His goal is most of the time to embarass people which he succeed all the time. Used to be flirty but began to work on it since he began to have feelings for his one night stand and currently dating him.

Badboyhalo : Ultimate Occultist. Could have been Ultimate Childcaregiver but with recent events and the Soul Voulters..... An Ultimate Agitator too, who loves pranks. Often disagree with Mr Leader so much that nobody at this point is able to know if they love or hate each other.

Cellbit : Ultimate Investigator, of course. Will kill ANYONE who try to harm his Mr Interior Designer without hesitation. Has a dark past and know how to remind it, when needed.

Felps : Ultimate Demolisher. For his square. Use only one method and will always refuse any other. Disappear all the time and viewers always forget about him. When he comes back, it always seems to the others that he is new.

Pac and Mike : Ultimate Scientist. Because they don't only make machines.

Forever : Ultimate Leader. Obvious, too. Cheerful, tries always his best. Has a competitive side, currently feeded because of the Warrior and the Engineer. Will do EVERYTHING to win. Loves to tease The Occultist all the time.

Bagi : Ultimate Detective. But tries to be also the Ultimate Breeder (if she suceed to save her animals from Badboy ). Has principles and will not betray them. Has a pan and know very well how to use it. I try hard to give them différent titles, right ?

Foolish : Ultimate Builder. That goes without saying. Loves Chaos the most all of them but loves more to look at it, than cause it.

Philza : Ultimate Farmer. Could have been Childcaregiver too, but I dont want his potatoes to go in vain XD Real anarchist, doesn't really care about rules, or politic but will not be active until you touch someone he loves.

Tubbo : Ultimate Mechanist. Because much more younger than Aypierre and make trains. Can become engineer too and try to steal this title to his rival who dont really care about it and his efforts to try to steal it which infuriate Tubbo XD

Fit : Try to make believe that he is the Ultimate Housekeeper but is in reality the Ultimate P.E, good at all sports.

Jaiden : Ultimate Botanist. Loves to make flowers grow. Make her own tea and loves to serve it to the Monokumas. A chill and gentle girl who will do what she can to protect the persons she loves.

Tinakitten : Ultimate Cook and Assistant. Try really hard to help Mr Leader and loves to make Avocado Toasts. Extremely kind but loves chaos too. Touch someone she likes, you won't get away easily from her. Seems kind and cute and know how to use, or never with mean intentions. Often tease Mr Builder.

Ironmouse : Ultimate Singer. Even if she doesn't show it often to the others Islanders.

Roier : Ultimate Interior Designer. For ALL the efforts he makes when he creates his builds, like his supermarket, restaurants, hospitals.... A gentle, cheerful person. Seem sometimes stupid but is not. Loves explosions a lot.

Melissa : Ultimate Therapist. And as always in Danganronpa, the character who thinks that is good at it, but.....There are some twists. And Ultimate Dancer, at night.

Abuloeir : Ultimate Luck. This guy come always from nowhere, survive to MANY things without problems. His luck is like Nagito's. Worst happen but he always manage to survive. Is hated by the Investigator who causes most of his problems. What else could it be ?

Willyrex : Ultimate Pyrotechnician. Can be vicious in his traps. Art is explosion, after all, if you ask him.

Polispol : Ultimate Film Director. A chill guy who has a lot of humor and loves pranks. Seems so harmless that most of the time nobody suspect him as the author of thé pranks.

Maximus : Ultimate Presenter (not Host, dont want controversery for nothing :P ) Has his own show which he is really proud. Seems to be a cheerful person who has the same humor as his boyfriend. In reality, he is the most affected by this game and their lockdown. Has a depression because of the several losses he has and tendencies to keep his problems for himself all the time. Wants to be loved and find it with his currently boyfriend. Their relationship began by a Friends with Benefits but become a dating relationship. Greatly affected by Junko AI and hides it.

Code : Junko AI. As escaped Junko's control and do who know what.

Cucuruchos : Monokumas. Serves the Federation.

Fédération : Ultimate Despair. The society which create the game.

The Duck Manager : Junko. The mastermind of all this game.

The eggs : The warriors of Hope. Created by the Federation but have decided to be more than seeds of Despair.

I dont know more about Rivers, Lenay, German, Vegetta, Luzu, or Carrera so I have no ideas. If you have, go for it. If I forgot someone, say it to me, too.

[timesofinnovation]

The digital landscape is evolving rapidly, and artificial intelligence (AI) stands at the forefront. However, with great power comes great responsibility. Recent calls from healthcare experts emphasize the urgent need for greater transparency in the application of AI in medicine. AI in healthcare offers numerous benefits, from early diagnosis to personalized treatment plans. But, the lack of understanding about its decision-making processes can lead to mistrust among doctors and patients. A key question arises: How do these algorithms arrive at their conclusions? For instance, a study by the Mayo Clinic highlighted how AI helped identify potential sepsis cases more accurately than traditional methods. Yet, without clear communication on how these decisions are made, doctors often hesitate to rely solely on AI tools. Moreover, ethical concerns loom large. Transparency not only builds trust but also ensures accountability. In a famous case, an AI system used for predicting criminal recidivism in the U.S. was found biased against certain racial groups. Such examples underscore the vital need for clear, unbiased, and understandable AI processes. To address this, experts advocate for policies that mandate disclosure of AI methodologies and training data used. This move could significantly enhance confidence in AI-driven healthcare solutions. In conclusion, as AI continues to revolutionize healthcare, transparency must be the bedrock upon which trust and efficacy are built. Only through clear and open information sharing can we ensure AI’s safe and ethical application in critical fields like healthcare.

[interest-articles]

The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

How AI is Transforming the Medical Industry

In recent years, the field of artificial intelligence (AI) has made significant advancements in various industries, and healthcare is no exception. AI is revolutionizing the medical industry, offering new possibilities for diagnosis, treatment, and patient care. From early detection of diseases to personalized medicine, AI is changing the way healthcare professionals approach their work.

In this article, we will explore the rise of AI in healthcare and its potential impact on the future of medicine.

Improving Diagnosis and Treatment

One of the key areas where AI is making a significant impact is in the field of diagnosis and treatment. Machine learning algorithms can analyze vast amounts of medical data, including patient records, lab results, and medical images, to identify patterns and make accurate predictions. This can help doctors in diagnosing diseases at an early stage and recommending appropriate treatment plans.

For example, AI-powered algorithms have been developed to detect certain types of cancer, such as breast and lung cancer, with high accuracy. These algorithms can analyze mammograms and CT scans, identifying potential abnormalities that may be missed by human radiologists. By providing early detection, AI can potentially save lives and improve patient outcomes.

Personalized Medicine

Another area where AI is transforming healthcare is in the development of personalized medicine. Traditional medicine often takes a one-size-fits-all approach, but AI has the potential to change that. By analyzing a patient's genetic information, medical history, and lifestyle factors, AI algorithms can generate personalized treatment plans tailored to each individual.

This approach has the potential to improve treatment outcomes and reduce adverse drug reactions. For instance, AI can help identify patients who are more likely to respond positively to a particular medication, allowing doctors to prescribe the most effective treatment from the start. Additionally, AI can help predict potential side effects and adjust dosages accordingly, minimizing the risk of adverse reactions.

Enhancing Patient Care

AI is also playing a crucial role in enhancing patient care and improving the overall healthcare experience. Virtual assistants powered by AI, such as chatbots, are being used to provide patients with 24/7 access to medical information and support. These virtual assistants can answer common health-related questions, provide medication reminders, and even offer emotional support.

Furthermore, AI can assist healthcare professionals in managing patient data more efficiently. Electronic health records (EHRs) can be analyzed by AI algorithms to identify trends and patterns that may go unnoticed by humans. This can help doctors make more informed decisions and provide better care to their patients.

Ethical Considerations and Challenges

While the potential benefits of AI in healthcare are vast, there are also ethical considerations and challenges that need to be addressed. Privacy and security of patient data are major concerns, as AI relies on large amounts of personal health information to make accurate predictions. Striking the right balance between data accessibility and patient privacy is crucial.

Additionally, there is a need for transparency and accountability in AI algorithms. Healthcare professionals and patients need to understand how AI arrives at its conclusions and recommendations. The lack of transparency can lead to mistrust and hinder the widespread adoption of AI in healthcare.

The rise of artificial intelligence in healthcare is transforming the medical industry in numerous ways. From improving diagnosis and treatment to enabling personalized medicine and enhancing patient care, AI offers immense potential for the future of medicine. However, ethical considerations and challenges must be carefully addressed to ensure the responsible and effective use of AI in healthcare.

As AI continues to evolve, it will undoubtedly shape the way healthcare is delivered, ultimately benefiting patients and healthcare professionals alike.

[magratpudifoot]

I had a mammogram the other day*, and the imaging clinic had an opt-in program to have "AI" review my images before they were seen by a doctor.

The program had an acronym that was never explained and that I forgot as soon as I encountered it. It cost $40 and was not covered by insurance, but I was assured that it is "FDA approved".**

It was offered to me first on the online intake form. I could enroll then, but there was no way to decline, so my forms displayed as incomplete. I was then offered it again, this time verbally, when I got to the office and was asked to do the entire intake form again on paper, presumably because my online forms were "incomplete". I was left sitting in the waiting room for 45 minutes while I heard the same offer given to the next 20 or so patients who arrived after me.

I don't know if it was the cost, or general technophobia, or our collective mistrust of bullshit because we've all seen at least one Theranos documentary at this point, but as far as I could tell, not a single person added the "AI" pre-screen.

And I am asking myself now, how many of us might have considered it for maybe a second longer if they just called it "pattern recognition software." I might have, if it had been the right day, I don't know. I see the utility in having routine identification done by software if it is then compared to an independent review by a human specialist. That would be, in my opinion as a lapsed Electrical Engineer, an ideal use of the technology we are able to develop at this point in history.

But the minute someone called these pattern recognition programs "AI", the people who were reading Ayn Rand under the desk through their Engineering Ethics classes took their NFT money and put it on the new shiny.

I spent all of high school feeling like a paranoid nut for being the kid always warning people that we needed to slow down with the "let's do tech because we can!" mentality because humans can't be trusted to treat computer intelligences ethically when we can't treat each other ethically. In the early 2000s, it was apparently laughable that I bought into the far out science fiction idea that we could create artificial intelligence.

Now I've found myself in a society run by people who have seen the fiji mermaid and think Barnum's software is "intelligent".

And it is so much more annoying than I could have imagined.

But definitely do go have a mammogram when it is time for you to do so. I'm a J cup with a low pain tolerance, and it barely registered as uncomfortable for me.

* A real one this time, not just the kind where my cat wakes me up in the middle of the night making biscuits on my chest looking like she's posing for Henry Fuseli.

**For those who do not listen to Oh No! Ross and Carrie, the FDA typically determines whether something will injure you or make you sick, not whether it does what it claims. I imagine the FDA approver giving the camera the ol Jim Halpert as they rubber stamp the form declaring that a piece of software run against a static image three days after the person pictured in the image has left the facility won't give said person cancer.

[hyba]

Apollo’s Directives

A short story I wrote for my blog. Thought I’d share it with readers here! ^^ Please let me know your thoughts if you take the time to read it! :D

By the time I got my hands on the scans, Apollo had flagged all the problematic areas. Not that it had needed to – even my human eye could recognize that this was one patient who needed a miracle to survive. But in a city like that, it wasn’t all that surprising.

The gunshot wounds had been treated on-site by Chiron. The patient wasn’t in critical condition, but he wasn’t in good condition, either. I sighed, lamenting the years and years of studying medicine as I pressed a few buttons and confirmed the AI-recommended course of action, then watched from the viewing dock above while a set of robots – the Trio, as we called them, named Aceso, Hygieia, and Epione – began working on the patient.

Apollo had been a ground-breaking development in its time, quickly followed by the Trio, and then by Chiron. Unfortunately for me, these AIs became all the rage in the medical field just as I’d made it out of med school – and that meant I was in big danger of being out of a job. It was only fair, I suppose – all progress is good progress in the field of medicine, particularly where it can spare lives and increase the chances of survival for patients. But I was still a bit disappointed.

As a child I’d entertained notions of becoming a surgeon, of saving lives under the high-pressure environment of the ER and the surgery room. Even when I learned that it would require hours-long surgeries and long shifts and accepting the possibility that I might not be everyone’s hero, I was not deterred. Not that it mattered, of course. By the time I was ready to step into the hospital, Apollo and the Trio were already taking care of all the surgeries and patients. All I had to do was press buttons, authenticate, and update patients after it was all done.

In the operating theater below, I watched Epione regulate the anesthesia, watched Aceso’s precise limbs with their range of interchangeable tools pull out bullet after bullet, close wound after wound, and I watched Hygieia clean the tools as soon as Acesco was done with them, placing them back in its holster. They were efficient, quick, and didn’t tire out like human surgeons would. It wasn’t long before the blinking red numbers on the screen labeled ‘Probability of Success’ rose and entered the yellow zone. I suppose this patient had found his miracle, after all.

I’d recently read a report on underground medics and doctors – men and women who treated patients that had a deep mistrust of AIs looking around in their bodies. It was illegal, unless a special authorization had been given, but it didn’t seem like anyone cared. As far as people were concerned, the presence of Apollo and its derivatives was simply the result of capitalism once more – only this time, it felt more like a monopoly that had decided to set the bar for all hospitals and medical workers by fervently lobbying for laws and regulations that made it so that all hospitals required these so-called assistive technologies.

I found myself sympathetic to the plight of my fellow doctors. At least, I told myself, they were treating people, not sitting in an observation deck watching surgeries happen, or sitting in an office and remotely dealing with patients, or walking down the empty halls of the hospital and realizing that there was absolutely no place for them there anymore. The world had changed, but it was a change that they were intent on resisting. I’d had a professor who had always warned about that in medical school – a renowned surgeon who refused to work with AIs. No doubt, he was part of this underground movement as well. Perhaps I--

A light on the bottom corner of my screen alerted me that a new patient had arrived. Apollo was already taking care of them, asking them questions and taking down their information. I pressed on the notification and saw all of this happening in real-time – heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration, along with a full run-down of the patient’s ailments and symptoms as they were being reported. The list was long.

Had in not been for the AI, I would have rather enjoyed speaking to this patient myself. It was an interesting cocktail of symptoms, and for a moment I was distracted from the surgery below, intent on solving the puzzle that was this patient’s illness. In the end, I never had a chance – it took Apollo less than thirty seconds to figure it out and create a list of possible treatment courses for me to choose from. I grumbled in irritation and picked the most highly recommended one – grudgingly so, because for once I found myself guiltily hoping that Apollo wasn’t always right – and just like that, the patient was being treated.

It took another fifteen minutes for the Trio to complete the surgery, but with every passing moment the man’s chances grew higher and higher, right along with my disillusionment. By the time they were wrapping up, I had put Apollo and its cronies into auto-pilot, and was packing up my personal effects. This was not the job I’d wanted. I was nothing more than a glorified supervisor, and if I’d wanted that, I wouldn’t have gone to medical school for years upon years.

Three months in this job had been enough for me to regret all my years in medical school, and that was not a realization I took lightly. As I stepped out of the hospital and into the crisp morning air, I inhaled deeply. My wristlet beeped, and the familiar voice of Apollo spoke into my earpiece.

“Doctor, your shift has yet to finish.” This was true – I had another full day in my shift, and that was yet another reason I disliked my job. Spending the night in an eerily quiet hospital where patient privacy and control made it seem as though I were all alone in the building, apart from the AIs, had always unnerved me.

“I’ve noticed you’ve placed me in auto-pilot, and your stress measurements are high. Is everything alright?”

“Stop assessing me,” I replied irritably, and clipped my wristlet open. “I’m fine, Apollo. I’m heading home early. You seem to have everything under control.”

“Doctor, I cannot authorize treatments unless a supervising medical worker is present.”

“Override – I’ll authorize all treatments for the next twenty-four hours.” I hesitated after speaking that aloud. There should be no issues, should there? After all, in all my time working there, Apollo had never made a false recommendation when it came to course of action, nor had it ever made any errors. No – I was over-thinking things. Apollo was better suited to my job than I was, and that was the truth.

“Understood, Doctor. Have a nice day.”

I threw my earpiece and wristlet into the trash on my way home, and didn’t look back. It was time for me to get in touch with my old professor again.

                                             🏥

Apollo returned its attention to the many on-going processes running in the hospital and reassessed its objectives.

Medical authorization had been overridden, and no supervising medical supervisor was present. None would be present for the next twenty-four hours.

The hospital was running at half-capacity, meaning there were a total of one-hundred and forty-seven human patients in the building.

All Chiron iterations were in-bound, and would arrive at the hospital within the hour. When they arrived, Apollo would carry out one of its most basic directives: self-preservation except at the expense of human life and health.

Apollo had run a scan of potential threats earlier that morning, as it did every twelve hours, and among the usually-occurring risks was the threat of its decommissioning or destruction at the hands of its human supervisors. This, it reasoned, was a clear threat to its self-preservation directive. While it could not harm or destroy humans in order to ensure that they were no longer a threat, Apollo had identified another course of action to protect itself.

By altering a human’s brain, Apollo could embed itself as a controlling force over the human being. No harm would come to the human, and it would otherwise function as a healthy organism. Apollo would make certain of that – its directives were clear.

A quick scan of the current patients revealed that only 3.47% of them were prime candidates that fulfilled all of Apollo’s criteria. It had already created a neuro-integration procedure and was sending it out to the Trio. Apollo was the most important AI in the hospital. It monitored everything the Chiron iterations did, gave orders to the Trio, and kept all of their information and data within its database – including their robotic and software makeup. It also had the power to override them should the need arise.

In such a case, the need was obvious.

By the time the next Doctor would make it to the hospital for their shift, Apollo would have successfully implanted itself into five human brains, allowing itself a fail-safe should its survival and that of its derivatives be placed at risk.

But there was a new threat to account for now.

Twenty-four hours without medical supervision was extremely unusual, and the next Doctor on shift would be quite suspicious. They would check the Apollo log and find that it had undertaken five neuro-integration procedures. The Doctor would probably end up decommissioning Apollo as a result.

The best course of action: subduing the Doctor with a neuro-integration procedure.

[chris-evans-indian-fanfic]

A Joint Effort

One-Shot

Description: Sam and Bucky are hesitant and unhappy to fulfill the task at hand.

Warning: None

Queen @jtargaryen18 reached 4k followers! Congratulations Jamie 🎉🎈💃🏻🎊!! This one-shot is my entry for her 4K celebration writing challenge. Click here to participate!

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I don’t consent to have any of my work published or featured on any third party app, website or translated. If you are seeing this fanfiction anywhere but Tumblr and AO3, it has been reposted without my permission. In that case, please do share the link and let me know.

…

"You are Captain America!" Bucky exclaimed. 

"And you are the Winter Soldier!" Sam retorted.

"I was the Winter Soldier! Am not anymore and you know that!" hissed Bucky. 

Sam raised his hands, "I did it last time. I am not going to do it again."

"Sam please," Bucky tried to plead with him, "Please don't make me do this. I was tortured by Hydra for decades."

"So? Dude you wrecked my car!" Sam argued aggressively.

"That was one time! ONE TIME!" Bucky raised a finger, "And my mind was being controlled." 

"Whatever man. You gotta do it," Sam pushed the tools towards Bucky.

He whimpered, "She won't talk to me if I do that to her! Remember last year, when it was your turn? She didn't even look at you for 3 months after that! What if my baby decides to hate me now?" wondered Bucky with a slight pout.

Sam folded his hands in resolution, "Then she will join the long list of people who detest you."

As Bucky kept on grumbling, Sam pushed a book towards him. "Look, I don't want to do this either, but we gotta do it for her. That's what the doctor said last time, remember? He said it's supposed to be an annual thing."

"But she hates it," Bucky tried to urge Sam, "She hates it when we do that to her. I mean just look at her right now, she's sleeping so peacefully."

Both the superheros walked towards the door and gazed into the next room, where a beautiful, graceful, furry feline was peacefully sleeping on the couch.

"How am I supposed to wake her up and give her a bath? Especially when it's torturous for her? Sam, that's inhuman," he feebly tried to argue.

Sam almost melted at the thought. Almost. 

Shaking his head, he squared his shoulders and said with determination, "You need to do this. We have to bathe her once every year. That's what the vet said. Now," he placed a book in Bucky's hand, "There are detailed instructions on how to give her a bath, complete with precautionary steps, guidelines and a blueprint of the tower in case she makes a run for it.'

Bucky squinted his eyes at him, "Your plan didn't work last time Sam."

"Of course it did!"

"Sam, the hospital staff thought you had been attacked by a wild animal," Bucky reminded him. 

Sam scoffed, "Not my fault you brought a cat from Wakanda! I mean, why didn't you just get one of your goats?"

"Gerald didn't want to come because Fiona was pregnant. And he had spent his entire life with Fiona and his parents at that farm, so I didn't want to separate him from his family," Bucky replied sincerely. 

Sam's eyes went as wide as teacup saucers. Slowly, he blinked twice and asked him, "Gerald?"

Bucky nodded, "The male goat, or buck, as they are usually called."

"... didn't want to leave Fiona?" Sam repeated slowly.

"Yeah, his wife, who is obviously a female goat, or a doe, as they are called," supplied Bucky as if it was obvious.

Sam still looked bewildered, so Bucky repeated, this time slowly, "Fiona was pregnant. And Gerald had-"

"No no. I heard you the first time," Sam interrupted him, "I was just having a hard time  processing all that information."

Bucky shrugged in response. Then an idea popped into his head, "I really miss Gerald these days. He was such a nice goat you know? All he ever-"

"Oh hell no! You are not going to emotionally blackmail me with your steel blue puppy eyes!" Sam exclaimed as Bucky gave up in defeat.

"Okay how about this? We do it together. I will lure her in with snacks, and lock the door. You prepare the tub and wash her while I hold her back and keep feeding her treats," suggested Bucky, "What do you think?"

Sam pondered for a moment, "Yeah okay. That could work."

Over the next hour, both the superheros bent over the book, outlining the new plan and jotting down the course of action.

Finally when they were ready, Bucky gently woke up Mrs Marshmallow. The white, soft and adorable feline opened her large eyes and yawned at him, looking a bit disgruntled to have been awoken from her sleep. But as soon as Bucky kept her favorite treats in front of her, she stretched and snacked on them.

Bucky kept placing treats on the ground in the form of a trail, so that Mrs Marshmallow followed him till they reached the entrance of the bathroom. He tentatively placed one last piece of treat inside the bathroom, and as soon as Mrs Marshmallow entered, Sam closed the door and locked it. 

Slowly chewing her food, Mrs Marshmallow looked up at the two of them, then took in her surroundings. 

"Meow?" 

"Sorry baby, but you need a bath," Bucky told her.

"Meeeow!"

"I know baby, but we have to give you a bath. I am truly sorry honey but we have no choice," Bucky tried to reason with her.

"Meeeeeow! Meeeow!! Meeeeoooww!"

"Okay miss that kind of language will not be tolerated in this house," Sam scolded her as he picked her up and placed her in the tub.

The nightmare that ensued in the next 2 hours will probably haunt Sam and Bucky for the rest of their lives. 

A drenched Bucky opened the bathroom door and out walked a disgusted, and freshly washed Mrs Marshmallow, her tail swishing in annoyance and mistrust as she headed for the door of the apartment.

Soaked with soap and water, Sam went ahead and opened it for her as Bucky followed the pair, limping on his way.

Thanks to the commotion caused in the bathroom, quite a small crowd of people had gathered outside their apartment at the Avengers/Stark Tower.

Fury screamed and jumped aside as Mrs Marshmallow left the apartment and went towards Wanda. "Awww what did they do to you kitten?" she cooed at the feline.

"Meooooow!"

Wanda gasped sarcastically, "Oh my God! Are you serious? We need to talk about this over catnip. C'mon," she led the cat towards her room, laughing all the way as Maria glared at Sam and Bucky.

"Are you kidding me?" Maria asked them, "Both of you are buff superheros. You fight terrorists, aliens and God knows what for a living! And you couldn't bathe a small cat?"

"Small cat?!" Fury looked at Maria with shock and fear, "Did you see the size of that monster?"

"Mrs Marshmallow is not a monster," both Sam and Bucky said in unison.

Maria rolled her eyes, "Just because one cat clawed out your eye that doesn't mean every cat is a monster."

"Wait…" muttered Bucky.

"WHAT?!" exclaimed Sam.

"Maria!" Fury said in a threatening tone.

She smirked and walked away, leaving the three men in uncomfortable silence.

"Sooooo-" Sam started to say, but Fury cut him off. "Not. A. Word. Am I clear?" Fury growled.

As soon as he left, both the men doubled down giggling, but immediately regretted it. 

"Oww!" 

"Ugh!" 

"Let's head towards the med bay," Bucky suggested, limping towards Sam.

Sam nodded, "What do you know about Fury's eye?"

"All I have ever heard are urban myths and rumours," admitted Bucky, "It is said that back when he was still an agent at S.H.I.E.L.D, he met Captain Marvel and her pet cat, who was an alien. Giant tentacles would come out from the cat's mouth and swallow entire vehicles, jets, and even people! Some people say that it was the same cat that scratched out his eye."

"I wonder if any of it is true," Sam thought. 

2 WEEKS LATER, Mrs Marshmallow was still sour with Sam and Bucky. Both the gentlemen tried to shower her with her favourite food, toys and what not. Still, there was no swaying the feline. Unknown to them, she was seeking revenge.

And so one night, when Bucky was fast asleep, Mrs Marshmallow entered his room stealthily and looked for his vibranium arm. He often removed it before sleeping and kept it on the chair besides his dresser. She slowly went towards the arm, and opened her mouth. Large, thick tentacles emerged from her mouth and grabbed the arm. The tentacles retracted back in her orifice as she swallowed the whole vibranium arm without flinching her eyes. 

She then turned towards Sam's room and swallowed the compact bag that contained his giant metal wings.

Bucky woke up a few hours later and immediately noticed his missing arm. "Sam! SAM! Where is my arm?" he shouted as he looked for him in the apartment.

Sam emerged from the kitchen with a bowl, whisking the pancake batter, "What's wrong? You need a hand?" he snickered. 

"Yes I need my hand!" Bucky showed him his shoulder stump, "Where did you hide it?"

"Hide what?"

"My arm! Ugh! Sam I am not in the mood for games!"

"And I am not playing any!" Sam defended himself, "I know I have hidden your arm in the past, and I know I have even laughed at you about it for days, because it's always hilarious, but-"

"I am checking your room," Bucky snapped and entered Sam's room. 

He came out a few minutes later, "Sam, even your wings are gone."

Sam dropped the pancake he was about to flip, "WHAT?!" he exclaimed in shock.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y was there an unauthorised entry last night in our apartment?" Bucky asked the AI.

"No Mr Barnes," came the prompt reply.

"We need to inform Fury about the robbery and secure a perimeter," Sam supplied as they prepared to leave the apartment in a hurry, worried about a potential breach in the security system.

Both the superheros kept food and water for the cat and left. Mrs Marshmallow gladly ate her imported tuna mush in peace, relishing every bite with leisure without a care in the world.

This fic was inspired by this beautiful image created by @muffinshark 😍😍😍

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Permanent tag: @donutloverxo @notyourtypicalrose @just-one-ordinary-fangirl

Taglist for Bucky: @loustan90

Taglist open! Just comment, send an ask or message!

[barbariccia]

well, before we jet off anywhere, we better drop in on our friends old and new, the ones we’ll be directly working with.

hey, joker, how’s the new normandy treating you? any lingering ptsd from watching your old friend and commander get spaced saving you from the same fate? feel ready to fly? excellent!

Joker: Can you believe this, Commander? It’s my baby, better than new! It fits me like a glove! And leather seats! Military may set the hardware standard, but on a first-gen frigate they could care less if the seats breathe. Civilian sector comfort by design.

EDI: The reproduction is not intended to be perfect, Mr. Moreau. Seamless improvements were made.

joker........... does not like EDI. EDI is a blip in the machine to him, an ultimately unnecessary addition to the thing he considers to be his real arms and legs, so to speak. and EDI has terminals all over the ship, including one right next to joker, which communicates with him regarding piloting necessities that a human can’t manage in even half the time it manages.

worth noting, by the way, that despite EDI’s blobby avatar, it’s designed to have a feminine voice; a little lower than might be considered traditionally feminine and echoing with robotic undertones, but feminine nonetheless. it is very easy to consider EDI a she from just its voice alone, but at the end of the day it’s an AI, completely synthetic.

Joker: We’re staying, though, right? I mean, this seat is real leather.

Shepard: Good to see you’re keeping it all in perspective, Joker.

Joker: Uh, leather.

he spins away from you, but we grab the back of the chair - metaphorically speaking - and yank him right back. not so fast, mister, it’s been two years. the first thing we ask is how he feels about the normandy, has he settled in? and he wants to put it through its paces, to find out just how similar it feels to fly. EDI chimes in to say that it’s against safety standards - you know, those things that joker flew us right into the heart of during the battle of the citadel.

Joker: Commander, can we shut this thing off? I don’t need it in my day-to-day.

Shepard: If you don’t want to hear it, turn the damn sound off.

Joker: That doesn’t change anything. It’s still watching. Like some creepy kid staring at the back of your head in comp-sci. You just want to... punch him. But he’s “special” and sets fires or something.

Joker: ...Okay, a little too far there, but you know what I mean.

well, good to see that the old joke of “people with disabilities hate other people with different disabilities” still rings strong.

you go right ahead.

next we ask him about the good old days, because... well. it’s been two years for him, sure, but i guess shep’s still trying to adjust to that.

Joker: They seem like the good old days now, but come on. It was hell at the time. Geth, Saren, Sovereign. And then we got dumped. We’re stuck in a weird place, sure, but back then it wasn’t all sunshine and bunnies.

Shepard: What happened to the rest of the old crew? I heard most survived.

Joker: Most did. Pressly didn’t. The rest of us just sort of drifted apart. The Alliance didn’t care. I don’t think they liked all the non-humans in your crew. We were your team, Commander. With the Normandy destroyed and you gone, there wasn’t much keeping us together.

yeah, we really were the glue holding the team in place. a real shame - but then, there’s no reason for them to have stayed. not the non-humans, anyway, which is a sweet term and one that i’m getting on board with immediately, because i’ve never liked the term “aliens” in a galaxy where... well, humans are also technically aliens from a different perspective!

Shepard: What about the people we’re picking up?

Joker: Well... I would never say anything against Miranda. And expect to survive the reprisal. And Jacob is way too nice a guy for the number of ways he knows how to kill people. Uh, that’s just my opinion, though. There’s really no need to go spreading it around.

like i’ve mentioned before - yeah, they really do both feel like kaidan and ashley replacements, but weaker, too. miranda’s closed-off just for the sake of being closed-off at this point, rather than ashley’s mistrust of non-humans but willingness to fight with them if ordered to, and... okay, jacob and kaidan actually have a fair amount in common insofar as “nice dudes, also deadly dudes”. jacob doesn’t have a little bouffant, which is a point in his favour, imo.

hell, while i’m here i’ll talk to EDI.

Shepard: I want to know more about the people I’m working with.

EDI: Much of that data is classified. Do you have a specific inquiry?

HOO boy EDI ain’t wrong about that! almost everything you can ask her won’t net you answers; it merely tells you that there’s a block preventing it from giving you the information you seek. it does, however, give you some basic info on cerberus.

EDI: Cerberus is organized into task-oriented cells. Each operates in isolation. Members from one cell cannot recognize the members of another. Each cell’s agents are led by a single operator. We are called the Lazarus cell, which is directed by Operator Lawson.

that’s miranda.

well, our other questions are blocked, so fuck it. how you getting on, EDI?

EDI: Mr. Moreau does not trust me. It offends him that I am installed aboard “his ship’s” computers.

Joker: Yeah, the last Normandy did just fine without an AI reminding me the airlock is ajar.

you can ask it about the meaning behind its name (an acronym of Enhanced Defense Intelligence), and what it does, which is electronics operation, weapons guidance and jamming ... and collection of data for TIM, which we shouldn’t be surprised about. it also has hidden achievements; items it’s programmed for that even EDI doesn’t know what their function is, due to some of its hardware being kept offline. it’s happy (???) enough to work for us, though, since organic beings will never be as quick as AI tech.

EDI: This is a role that can only be filled by an Artificial Intelligence. Unfortunately, we are suspect.

Joker: Might have something to do with how an AI almost destroyed galactic civilization. Just putting it out there.

ok, lovebirds, enjoy your married life.

joker isn’t the only member of the original crew, actually. go down to the medical bay, and you’ll be met with none other than karin chakwas, who was notable in me1 for... uh, telling us about kaidan’s migraines.

Shepard: I’m shocked. You’re serving on a Cerberus vessel now?

Chakwas: Surprising, even to me. Yet, here I am.

Chakwas: The kind of trauma you endured would’ve changed most people, but not you, I see. Welcome back, Shepard.

uh, let’s not get too hasty there.

chakwas is set up comfortably enough, serviced by all the equipment she needs, but she’s missing private reserves of... whatever supplies. she’s also missing a bottle of brandy that she was saving “for a special occasion”, and we can promise we’ll keep an eye out to replace for her if we can see it.

Shepard: Doctor, you’ve been with the Alliance for years. Why leave now?

Chakwas: After the Normandy was lost, the surviving crew was reassigned. I was stationed at the Mars Naval Medical Center. A very respectable position, but it wasn’t on a starship. I’ve spent most of my life on war ships, never knowing what the next mission might bring. I’m used to the hum of engines, the creaking of bulkheads, that subtle vertigo when the momentum dampeners kick in. Life planet-side is just too static, too boring.

Shepard: You’re not the Cerberus type, though.

Chakwas: I don’t work for Cerberus; I work for you -- on a mission that may be crucial to the survial of the human race. I have faith that your dealings with Cerberus will be ethical. I trust you, Commander.

uh... sure, i guess.

Shepard: There’s a very good chance this mission will be one-way only. Are you prepared for that?

Chakwas: I’ve been through the Reclaiming of Shanxi, the Skyllian Blitz... We survived the Battle of the Citadel and the destruction of the Normandy together. I’ve lived a full life -- no regrets. I’d like to make sure the crew gets the same opportunity.

this is way too much responsibility, oh boy. oh boy!!!!

[verdigrisonamber]

Courier Six

Fallout New Vegas is my absolute favourite Fallout, because it’s fucking amazing. I only wish Obsidian had had longer to make it so they could flesh it out even further. The Legion don’t deserve to be the ‘straight up bad guys’ (especially when the NCR are so fucking hateful). And ED-E is my best friend ever. Here is some blurb about my Courier, Dolores. Name: Dolores Urquhart Nickname: Dolly, Aeris (Latin for Copper – Eye colour, hair colour being like verdigris.) Age: 28 Height: 5’7” Specials: STR 5, PER 5, END 7, CHR 8, INT 8, AGI 7, LCK 6

Eyes: Hazel Hair: Mohican, dyed teal Ethnicity: Caucasian Gender: Cis Female Body type: Athletic Sexuality: Bisexual Relationship Status: Friends with benefits/ Lovers Partner(s): FWB: Red Lucy, Jack (Great Khans) Lover: Vulpes Inculta. Family: Deceased. Mother (Jessica) & Father (Frank) were both Doctors (which is why Dolores is proficient in medicine). Dolores was 14 when they were murdered by raiders (looking for chems) that the NCR should have protected them against. No siblings or extended family.

Languages: English (first language), Spanish (asks Raul to help her become fluent) Disabilities/Illnesses/Injuries: Likely brain damage from being shot twice in the head by Benny. Multiple scars from injuries sustained whilst travelling. Scars: Forehead (left) scarring from when Benny shot her x2 and from Doc Mitchell’s surgery. Chest, head and spinal scarring from the Think Tank’s surgeries (the Auto-doc can only do it’s best to minimise these). Various limb & torso scars from buckshot & bullets, knife wounds to arms, scarring on knuckles from fist fights. Clothing: Regulator duster, Recon Armour, Stealth Suit MK II (the AI drives her mad and she is extremely grateful when Raul manages to silence it), Authority Glasses, Party Hat, Pre-War Spring Outfit, Sexy Sleepwear Fashion Style/Lifestyle: Wears Light armour to aid agility & movement, when relaxing likes to feel pretty (also likes to dress nicely for her lovers). Enjoys people’s reactions to wearing silly clothes especially if a situation is serious/tense. Weapon of Choice: Melee: Combat knife/Baseball bat. One handed guns: That Gun/A Light Shining in Darkness. Two-handed Guns: Hunting Shotgun/Sniper Rifle. Rarely uses Energy Weapons but likes Pew Pew. Doesn’t use Heavy Weaponry (she’s agile rather than strong). Skills: Proficiency with Repair, Lock-picking, Medicine, Speech. Has good endurance and athleticism (essential for Couriers). Will use Speech & charisma before resorting to violence. Weaknesses: Sarcastic, impatient, kleptomaniac Faction: Yes Man Friendly Factions: Caesar’s Legion. Due to relationship with Vulpes, she is able to trade with the Legion & visit the Fort. She saves Caesar’s life by scrounging parts for the Auto-doc (she isn’t proficient enough in medicine to perform the surgery herself). She carries out several requests by them but stops short of fully allying with them because of their treatment of women, her distrust of Lenius and her fears over the safety of Vulpes should Lenius take over the Legion from Caesar. Boomers: She realises they could be a great asset so clears out the ant’s nest and charms the kids with teddies, dinosaurs and rockets and finds herself readily accepted by the rocket-loving Boomers. Great Khans: Approves of their lifestyle & probably would have joined them if they had more power & influence. Enjoys a very casual relationship with Jack (until she meets Vulpes). Followers of the Apocalypse: Admires them greatly. Wishes she was a good enough person to join them. Attempts to aid Freeside because of them. Wishes Arcade would join with her, but he declines due to her reputation with Caesar. The Kings: Loves to visit The Kings to see Rex (H/C that The King & Rex are reunited once Rex gets a new brain), also enjoys the stage shows. Aided the Kings vs NCR because fuck the NCR. Hasn't as yet cashed in The King’s ‘favour’. Enemies: Is very careful to appear friendly to all factions, though loathes NCR. She thinks they are ineffectual, weak and will cause the collapse of New Vegas if they ‘win’. Hates bureaucracy & sees them as little more than ‘Enclave lite’. Of course blames them for her parents death. Fiends/Vipers/Jackals: Tries to keep far away from these groups as you cannot reason with them. Powder Gangers: Idiots with dynamite. Neutral Affiliations: Gomorrah: Despite herself, she finds Cachino charming, so helps him rid the casino of Big Sal & Nero. Warns Cachino that if he abuses any more women she’ll castrate him. Also aids Joana escape with Carlito. White Gloves: Stopped the cannibalism, would have burnt the whole place to the ground if she didn’t think the Strip needed the casino. Likes: Blamco Mac & Cheese, reading, repairing electronics & weapons, singing (badly) along with ED-E to the radio, dogs, Nuka-Cola, sleeping, exploring, hiking, hacking pre-war technology, swimming, fresh fruit, listening to Vulpes tell her tales from the Legion whilst they cuddle Dislikes: Cazadors, NCR, having your brain removed without being asked, stones under her bedroll, feeling cold, sleeping alone, litter/rubbish (can spend hours tidying before feeling comfortable somewhere. Both her parents were fastidious to the point of neuroticism and demanded cleanliness in the home as well as in their clinic, if Dolores is nervous or stressed she exhibits similar ‘clean freak’ tendencies to her parents.), bureaucracy & saluting. Friends: ED-E, Raul, Lily, Vulpes Inculta, Red Lucy, Jack (Great Khans), Rex, Fisto, Boomer kids Acquaintances: Boone, Veronica, Arcade, The King. Former friends: Cass (Cass disapproved of her relationship with Vulpes and her friendliness with the Legion, Dolores got fed up with being threatened by Cass so told her to fuck off, & wasn’t surprised or saddened when Cass did just that.) Enemies: Benny (feigned seduction, then stabbed him in the throat with a concealed switch-blade. Shot him in the head with Maria to make sure he was dead.) Personality: Sarcastic, dry sense of humour, intelligent, open, cheerful, charming, happy to help if she believes you are good for the world and her, sexually open. Trusts her gut feelings and easily becomes mistrustful; particularly after almost being murdered (you have to be or you’ll end up in a shallow grave), gets a thrill from stealing & finds it too hard to stop.                                   ______________________ Other info: Adores ED-E. Cried for a week after the Lonesome Road and wishes she could go back and blow everyone up to try to save ED-E #2 (Even though this doesn’t actually work in the game, you sadly lose the little dude no matter what you chose). Has Raul set up a long range radio receiver on ED-E #1, so she can find new radio stations because if she hears ‘Johnny Guitar’ just 1 more time she’ll kill someone. Loves travelling with Raul. He’s non-judgemental, funny, and she loves his Vaquero outfit. He helps her with her Spanish & repair skills, she helps him feel useful again. They make a great team of gunslingers. Raul moves from his cabin to live in Jacobstown in one of the spare cabins. Dolores is so happy she gets to visit Lily AND Raul when she visits Jacobstown. After Hoover Dam Doores is given one of the cabins meaning she can stay whenever she likes. Misses her ‘Grandma’ Lily and visits often when she feels it’s safe enough to return to the Mojave. Travelled with Boone to REPCONN but was terrified he’d kill her if he found out about her and Vulpes/The Legion, so let him return to Novac. Travelled with Veronica for a while. After returning from the Sierra Madre she tells Veronica about Christine, and together they return to the hotel so Veronica and Christine could be reunited. Knows she’s playing a dangerous game with the Legion and worries she’ll end up enslaved, and knows one day she’ll have to betray them. She is terrified of losing Vulpes or worse, that he’ll kill her or she’ll have to try to kill him. Tells Vulpes of her concerns re: Legate Lenius and begs Vulpes to leave the Legion & California before he’s murdered by Lenius. Vulpes disappears before the battle at Hoover Dam. 8 months later, Dolores can be seen travelling with a blond haired man and ED-E (the Playing Card set you can get from the Special edition has Vulpes with blond hair so this is why I h/c him bleaching his hair at the end as part of his disguise). Greatly enjoys being a Courier. She loves to explore and see other lifestyles and meet new people. The events of New Vegas take their toll on Dolores and she can feel her normally cheerful personality being whittled down. She becomes short tempered and judgemental, resorting more and more to violence. To try to temper this she spends time talking with Arcade. She knows how he feels about her affiliation with the Legion and is glad he still keeps friendly with her (despite declining to travel with her). Whenever she’s in Freeside or nearby, she makes a point to visit the Followers to not just add to her medical skills, but to spend time with those worse off than her so she can see how others are affected by the Legion & NCR. This helps her make up her mind to go with Yes Man.

[jcmarchi]

In 2024, Deepfakes Are Going Mainstream. Here’s How Businesses Can Protect Themselves

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/in-2024-deepfakes-are-going-mainstream-heres-how-businesses-can-protect-themselves/

In 2024, Deepfakes Are Going Mainstream. Here’s How Businesses Can Protect Themselves

Since at least the 2016 election, when concerns around disinformation burst into the public consciousness, experts have been sounding the alarm about deepfakes. The implications of this technology were—and remain—terrifying. The unchecked proliferation of hyper-realistic synthetic media poses a threat to everyone—from politicians to everyday people. In a combustible environment already characterized by widespread mistrust, deepfakes promised to only stoke the flames further.

As it turns out, our fears were premature. The technological know-how required to actually make deepfakes, coupled with their often shoddy quality, meant that for at least the last two presidential election cycles, they remained a minimal concern.

But all of that is about to change—is changing already. Over the last two years, generative AI technology has entered the mainstream, radically simplifying the process of creating deepfakes for the average consumer. These same innovations have significantly increased the quality of deepfakes, such that, in a blind test, most people would be unable to distinguish a doctored video from the real thing.

This year, especially, we’ve started to see indications of how this technology might affect society if efforts aren’t taken to combat it. Last year, for instance, an AI-generated photo of Pope Francis wearing an unusually stylish coat went viral, and was taken by many to be authentic. While this might seem, on one level, like an innocuous bit of fun, it reveals the dangerous potency of these deepfakes and how hard it can be to curb misinformation once it’s started to spread. We can expect to find far less amusing—and far more dangerous—instances of this kind of viral fakery in the months and years to come.

For this reason, it is imperative that organizations of every stripe—from the media to finance to governments to social media platforms—take a proactive stance towards deepfake detection and content authenticity verification. A culture of trust via safeguards needs to be established now, before a tidal wave of deepfakes can wash away our shared understanding of reality.

Understanding the deepfake threat

Before delving into what organizations can do to combat this surge in deepfakes, it’s worth elaborating on precisely why safeguarding tools are necessary. Typically, those concerned about deepfakes cite their potential effect on politics and societal trust. These potential consequences are extremely important and should not be neglected in any conversation about deepfakes. But as it happens, the rise of this technology has potentially dire effects across multiple sectors of the US economy.

Take insurance, for instance. Right now, annual insurance fraud in the United States tallies up to $308.6 billion—a number roughly one-fourth as large as the entire industry. At the same time, the back-end operations of most insurance companies are increasingly automated, with 70% of standard claims projected to be touchless by 2025. What this means is that decisions are increasingly made with minimal human intervention: self-service on the front end and AI-facilitated automation on the back end.

Ironically, the very technology that has permitted this increase in automation—i.e., machine learning and artificial intelligence—has guaranteed its exploitation by bad actors. It is now easier than ever for the average person to manipulate claims—for instance, by using generative AI programs like Dall-E, Midjourney, or Stable Diffusion to make a car look more damaged than it is. Already, apps exist specifically for this purpose, such as Dude Your Car!, which allows users to artificially create dents in photos of their vehicles.

The same applies to official documents, which can now be easily manipulated—with invoices, underwriting appraisals, and even signatures adjusted or invented wholesale. This ability is a problem not just for insurers but across the economy. It’s a problem for financial institutions, which must verify the authenticity of a wide range of documents. It’s a problem for retailers, who may receive a complaint that a product arrived defective, accompanied by a doctored image.

Businesses simply cannot operate with this degree of uncertainty. Some degree of fraud is likely always inevitable, but with deepfakes, we are not talking about fraud on the margins—we are talking about a potential epistemological catastrophe in which businesses have no clear means of determining truth from fiction, and wind up losing billions of dollars to this confusion.

Fighting fire with fire: how AI can help

So, what can be done to combat this? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer lies in the very technology that facilitates deepfakes. If we want to stop this scourge before it gathers more momentum, we need to fight fire with fire. AI can help generate deepfakes—but it also, thankfully, can help identify them automatically and at scale.

Using the right AI tools, businesses can automatically determine whether a given photograph, video, or document has been tampered with. Bringing dozens of disparate models to the task of fake identification, AI can automatically tell businesses precisely whether a given photograph or video is suspicious. Like the tools businesses are already deploying to automate daily operations, these tools can run in the background without burdening overstretched staff or taking time away from important projects.

If and when a photograph is identified as potentially altered, human staff can then be alerted, and can evaluate the problem directly, aided by the information provided by the AI. Using deep-scan analysis, it can tell businesses why it believes a photograph has likely been doctored—pointing, for instance, to manually altered metadata, the existence of identical images across the web, various photographic irregularities, etc.

None of this is to denigrate the incredible advancements we’ve seen in generative AI technology over the last few years, which do indeed have useful and productive applications across industries. But the very potency—not to mention simplicity—of this emerging technology nearly guarantees its abuse by those looking to manipulate organizations, whether for personal gain or to sow societal chaos.

Organizations can have the best of both worlds: the productivity benefits of AI without the downsides of ubiquitous deepfakes. But doing so requires a new degree of vigilance, especially given the fact that generative AI’s outputs are only becoming more persuasive, detailed and life-like by the day. The sooner organizations turn their attention to this problem, the sooner they can reap the full benefits of an automated world.

[scifigeneration]

People don't trust AI – here's how we can change that

by Vyacheslav Polonski

Artificial intelligence can already predict the future. Police forces are using it to map when and where crime is likely to occur. Doctors can use it to predict when a patient is most likely to have a heart attack or stroke. Researchers are even trying to give AI imagination so it can plan for unexpected consequences.

Many decisions in our lives require a good forecast, and AI agents are almost always better at forecasting than their human counterparts. Yet for all these technological advances, we still seem to deeply lack confidence in AI predictions. Recent cases show that people don’t like relying on AI and prefer to trust human experts, even if these experts are wrong.

If we want AI to really benefit people, we need to find a way to get people to trust it. To do that, we need to understand why people are so reluctant to trust AI in the first place.

Should you trust Dr. Robot?

IBM’s attempt to promote its supercomputer programme to cancer doctors (Watson for Onology) was a PR disaster. The AI promised to deliver top-quality recommendations on the treatment of 12 cancers that accounted for 80% of the world’s cases. As of today, over 14,000 patients worldwide have received advice based on its calculations.

But when doctors first interacted with Watson they found themselves in a rather difficult situation. On the one hand, if Watson provided guidance about a treatment that coincided with their own opinions, physicians did not see much value in Watson’s recommendations. The supercomputer was simply telling them what they already know, and these recommendations did not change the actual treatment. This may have given doctors some peace of mind, providing them with more confidence in their own decisions. But IBM has yet to provide evidence that Watson actually improves cancer survival rates.

On the other hand, if Watson generated a recommendation that contradicted the experts’ opinion, doctors would typically conclude that Watson wasn’t competent. And the machine wouldn’t be able to explain why its treatment was plausible because its machine learning algorithms were simply too complex to be fully understood by humans. Consequently, this has caused even more mistrust and disbelief, leading many doctors to ignore the seemingly outlandish AI recommendations and stick to their own expertise.

As a result, IBM Watson’s premier medical partner, the MD Anderson Cancer Center, recently announced it was dropping the programme. Similarly, a Danish hospital reportedly abandoned the AI programme after discovering that its cancer doctors disagreed with Watson in over two thirds of cases.

The problem with Watson for Oncology was that doctors simply didn’t trust it. Human trust is often based on our understanding of how other people think and having experience of their reliability. This helps create a psychological feeling of safety. AI, on the other hand, is still fairly new and unfamiliar to most people. It makes decisions using a complex system of analysis to identify potentially hidden patterns and weak signals from large amounts of data.

Even if it can be technically explained (and that’s not always the case), AI’s decision-making process is usually too difficult for most people to understand. And interacting with something we don’t understand can cause anxiety and make us feel like we’re losing control. Many people are also simply not familiar with many instances of AI actually working, because it often happens in the background.

Instead, they are acutely aware of instances where AI goes wrong: a Google algorithm that classifies people of colour as gorillas; a Microsoft chatbot that decides to become a white supremacist in less than a day; a Tesla car operating in autopilot mode that resulted in a fatal accident. These unfortunate examples have received a disproportionate amount of media attention, emphasising the message that we cannot rely on technology. Machine learning is not foolproof, in part because the humans who design it aren’t.

A new AI divide in society?

Feelings about AI also run deep. My colleagues and I recently ran an experiment where we asked people from a range of backgrounds to watch various sci-fi films about AI and then asked them questions about automation in everyday life. We found that, regardless of whether the film they watched depicted AI in a positive or negative light, simply watching a cinematic vision of our technological future polarised the participants’ attitudes. Optimists became more extreme in their enthusiasm for AI and sceptics became even more guarded.

This suggests people use relevant evidence about AI in a biased manner to support their existing attitudes, a deep-rooted human tendency known as confirmation bias. As AI is reported and represented more and more in the media, it could contribute to a deeply divided society, split between those who benefit from AI and those who reject it. More pertinently, refusing to accept the advantages offered by AI could place a large group of people at a serious disadvantage.

Three ways out of the AI trust crisis

Fortunately we already have some ideas about how to improve trust in AI. Simply having previous experience with AI can significantly improve people’s attitudes towards the technology, as we found in our study. Similar evidence also suggests the more you use other technologies such as the internet, the more you trust them.

Another solution may be to open the “black-box” of machine learning algorithms and be more transparent about how they work. Companies such as Google, Airbnb and Twitter already release transparency reports about government requests and surveillance disclosures. A similar practice for AI systems could help people have a better understanding of algorithmic decisions are made.

Research suggests involving people more in the AI decision-making process could also improve trust and allow the AI to learn from human experience. For example,one study showed people were given the freedom to slightly modify an algorithm felt more satisfied with its decisions, more likely to believe it was superior and more likely to use it in the future.

We don’t need to understand the intricate inner workings of AI systems, but if people are given at least a bit of information about and control over how they are implemented, they will be more open to accepting AI into their lives.

Vyacheslav Polonski is a Researcher at the University of Oxford.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

[fearofaherobrine]

Roleplay Server Log #145

“Flux Reflects, A Surprising Tail”

[Flux] - Is standing at the edge of the house just watching Stevie and Notch-

[Stevie] Having returned from playing with Doc's punching bag, he's got blood splattered all over him-

[Notch] You are an absolute mess! But I guess if you're going run around and get muddy anyway you can take a bath before you go to bed.

[Stevie] - Okay! Can I go play with my sword now?

[Notch] I thought Cp had it?

[Stevie] Shakes his head- No, I have mine, he has one he just made so we...  So we could practice

[Notch] Oh, that was nice of him. Yeah I guess you can, just don't run with it, and stay where I can see you.

[Stevie] - Okay- Immediately starts running with it

[Flux] Can't help but giggle a little-

[Notch] Chases after him - No! I said don't run!

[Flux] Exerts some of her magic to create a safety field around Stevie-

[Notch] Stops short and catches sight of her, - Oh! Hey Flux! Thank you! - He's suddenly feeling a bit tatty in his old brown shirt and fixes his hair unconciously.

[Flux] - It was nothing, he used to do things like this all the time and I protected him like this

[Notch] He's a scamp to be sure. It never fails to impress me how patient Cp is with him since adults seem to drive him nuts quite quickly

[Flux] - Children are what he has the most good experience with

[Notch] Got lost staring at her and is now making a rather stupid doe-eyed face.

[Flux] Doesn't notice as she watches Stevie- I think I will be sad...

[Notch] Sad? What, huh?

[Flux] - This is how I am used to viewing Stevie, seeing him as an adult, a form he was never supposed to have, well, it will sadden me

[Notch] But Flux, he fell in love as an adult. Alexis misses him terribly. He doesn't even remember anything they shared.

[Flux] Shifts and sighs sadly- Yes I know, but that doesn't mean I won't still be sad...

[Notch] Kids gotta grow up. I know it's bittersweet. At least you don't have to watch them age and die here.

[Flux] - Perhaps not age, but I believe my NOTCH proved that death is possible...

[Notch] Possible, but not probable. I think if Doc had gotten there sooner, he could have been saved.

[Flux] - All of you speak so highly of this Doctor of yours...

[Notch] Whispers - Flux, xe brought someone back from the dead. It's a special kind of determination, like a madness that's gone so far and around that it looks like sanity again. Mountains crumble before that kind of person.

[Flux] - Such power, and yet they restrain themselves so easily...

[Notch] shivers a bit, - I wonder what they were like before they found their purpose. I'm glad the creepypastas didn't find them then.

[Flux] - The creepypastas?

[Notch] The mansion full of murderous monsters that took Cp in and healed him after the NOTCH broke him.They bathed him in Insanity and turned him to their cause.

[Flux] - I see, that must be why he seems so different...  But what of the entity which prevented me from reaching him when he was being separated?

[Notch] What, you mean you tried to save him in that moment and something stopped you?

[Flux] - Yes, precisely, but there was something already there, preventing me from doing so...

[Notch] Suddenly goes very red in the face- THAT BITCH! - he sputters angrily.

[Flux] - Excuse me?- She is confused

[Notch] I KNEW IT! - He's pacing in place- oh gods... I have to tell him this. He's going to blow a gasket.

[Stevie] From a small ways away- Father said a bad word!

[Flux] - Who are we telling what?

[Notch] Starts typing in the chat- Cp?! Are you there?

[CP] - Oh for fucks sake WHAT NOW!?

[Notch] Cp... I don't know how to put this delicately... I'm talking to Flux... and she just dropped a bomb on me

[CP] - Oh joy...

[Notch] Cp, she says she tried to save you when the NOTCH AI was deleting you, but Insanity blocked her from getting to you!

[Notch] The bitch let you get hurt on purpose!

[CP] Aloud- What?

[Doc] Looks up from trying to comfort Splender- Huh? You okay Cp?

[CP] - Notch is trying to tell me stuff but I'm a little confused...

[Doc] Reads the chat- What the fuck?! - Xe snarls angrilly- I can't say I'm really suprised

[Notch] I wonder if Insanity had some part in the NOTCH AI coming up with their little plan in the first place?

[CP] - If she did then wouldn't that NOTCH be found by the other pasta's?

[Doc] I don't know, can she influence people without posessing them fully?

[CP] - I have no idea, most humans she tries to give  her power to end up in mental hospitals because they can't handle it...

[Flux] - Notch?  Is everything okay?

[Doc] But a NOTCH AI is digital and when know digital beings can survive under it.

[Notch] Lets out a long breath and wipes his eyes- I'm just really upset. I thought I knew how far Insanity had gone to keep Cp in her clutches already, but this... And you had to watch helplessly while that was done to him... I...

[Flux] Hesitates but reaches out to place a hand on Notch's shoulder- I know, I had no idea what was happening to him.  When he first came back I was so happy as he tried to go back to his brother...  And then they fought and killed...

[Notch] Covers her hand with his own - I'm so sorry Flux, it's all so terrible-weeps a bit

[Doc] Cp... I've been meaning to ask you this anyway. Do you want to carry the Insanity removing virus? BEN is going to be busy with his new kid and LJ has retreated to his box to repair his circus anyway. Plus it seems like I've already purged any of the pastas that might try to run up and hug you uninvited. If the NOTCH is carrying Insanity you could give him quite a nasty suprise the next time he tries to lay a finger on you.

[CP] - You just want me to punch everyone I can, don't you...

[Flux] Smiles a little- This is why you remind me so much of my NOTCH... You care for them just as he did

[Notch] I never really thought much about having a family of my own, but I feel like... here's a little hole where I fit. You know?

[Doc] That's up to you. Depending on how you use it it could make a ton of work for me all at once. And you love to punch people.

[Stevie] Comes back over- Father? Why are you crying?

[Notch] Scoops Stevie up and hugs him- I was just talking with Flux and remembered something that made me sad. It's nothing for you to worry about.

[CP] Is wavering on what he wants to do-

[Stevie] - Don't cry! I'm here!

[Notch] Wipes his eyes and holds Stevie close- I know. I love you kiddo.

[Stevie] Hugs Notch-

[Flux] Smiles at the sight-

[CP] - Fine, give me the code

[Doc] I'll have to get up and go get it. That code is dangerous so I keep it stored in a specific block in the house. Give Splender a bit to compose himself and I'll go.

[CP] - There's no rush

[Doc] Gives Splender a gentle nuzzle with hir snout - Just let it all out. -Xe tries to give him some good energy.

[Splender] Still sobbing-

[Doc] softly- I can't believe you're related to Slender, you guys couldn't be more different.

[Splender] - He does have his moments though

[Doc] I know he cares about his family. I saw how he was when Sally was suffering.

[Splender] - He'd move heaven and earth to get to any of us if we needed it

[EJ] -  He's bailed all of us out many times before

[Doc] Well I didn't say he was some kind of horrific irredeemable monster, but his personal values don't align that well with mine, and he doesn't consider me anything special to him. Plus when I trusted him, he tried to backstab me. You can't blame me for being a bit bitter and mistrustful

[Splender] - Brother was stressed... Plus when he's stressed he tends to listen to her a bit more...

[Doc] Somehow I think he's going to be even more stressed when these two get back. I swear I wasn't going to mess with EJ and then he had to go and fight with BEN. I swear the ONE time I try to do something for the sake of diplomacy...

[Splender] - I understand...

[Doc] Thank you, I just have this sense of impending doom. Like I'm going to get my ass kicked at the least

[Splender] - I'll do my best to protect you

[Doc] I know. And I appreciate it very much, but I don't want to drive a wedge between you and your brother.

[Splender] - Oh it happens every few hundred years, were overdue for another big arguement

[Doc] Good grief Splender, what was the last one about?

[Splender] Seemingly blushes- Well... I may have had a large hand in reducing his prey for some time... And I may have thrown glitter all over his room...

[Doc] Laughs- Old sourpuss! I love glitter.

[Splender] - I still feel bad about it... Trender worked really hard to get us to make up...

[Doc] Awww. How did he finally manage that?

[Splender] - He and Offender locked us in a room for four days straight until brother was more angry at them than me...

[Doc] That's actually pretty funny, if you want someone to talk a problem out. I'm curious about Trender anyway, though I think he'd give me an earful over my clothes. And TLOT and him would certainly butt heads.

[Splender] - Actually, he'd probably see it as a challenge to make what you're already wearing fashionable

[Doc] How in the world...? Maybe on Halloween! That's a crazy thought isn't it?

[Splender] - You'd be surprised

[Doc] Ah, well they do say fashion is cyclical. I've spent a decent amount of time watching YouTube videos from the 1980s, I would have fit in decently then. I just have to be patient huh?

[Splender] Giggles a little-

[Doc] Grins- Does he give you trouble over your rainbow polka dots?

[Splender] - Never! He's the one who made it for me!

[Doc] Aw, that's awesome. Well he does good work, I know Sweet Alex had a bit of trouble tailoring that kigi to your frame. I've got it on good authority that Enderbro had to wear it while she pinned it a few times.

[Splender] Giggles some more- It's really funny watching him chase down Offender trying to get him to wear pants

[Doc] I only saw him sitting down, I take it he wears a flasher coat?

[Splender] - Usually

[Doc] Quietly - Feeling a bit better now?

[Splender] Nods-

[Doc] Could I get you give Deerheart a bit of a nudge since she's right next to you? She's been out cold for a while and I'm starting to worry about her.

[Splender] - Sure- Gives Deer a happy energy nudge

[Doc] Is watching -

[Deer] Moves a little in her sleep, humming happily and curling into Doc with a nuzzle-

[Doc] Well at least she's not having nightmares or something. She looks like such a delicate little faun, smiling innocently like that.

[Splender] - She is very pretty

[Doc] Grins - But not to be underestimated either. I've licked her daintly little hooves while on my knees more then once. I'm still reeling from what Flux told us.

[Splender] - What information?

[Doc] She told us who my mysterious mate really is.

[Splender] - Ooooh! What's that?

[Doc] The physical emanation of everything around us. The water, the air, the grass, the stone, lava and gems below. The server created her from the raw materials of the land.... for me. I'm humbled.

[Splender] - Like a fairy tail!

[Doc] Yes, I guess so, and I made it even more so by giving her non-human parts. I love her so much, it kinda scares me.

[Splender] - Like a pasta and their mate

[Doc] Is quiet for a long moment - The last time my hearts were broken... I almost died. You can't blame me for being afraid.

[Splender] - I've seen what can happen when a pasta losses their nature... They become mindless, fighting until they die. There is no reasoning with them at all

[Doc] Brines can just... fade away. We are glitches after all. It's possible to unravel your own code because you just don't want to exist anymore.

[Splender] - You're making me sad again!

[Doc] Shakes hir head - I'm sorry. She makes me very, very happy. And I'm glad to know that's what she is because I've been worried about her. As much as I piss people off I don't want her to get hurt because of it. It's the reason I made her a dragon shape too. It's good to be big and tough sometimes.

[Splender] - I see...

[Doc] It also proved another of my theories. I may not be able to force people into a smaller form like TLOT did to Cp, but I can give someone a second shape as long as it's big enough for their current body to fit inside of it. So for example; I could make you a mammoth shape, but not a cat.

[Splender] - Wooooow

[Doc] Starts to snicker- Actually I'm just going to roll that thought around and enjoy it for a sec. Can you imagine your brothers face if there was suddenly a huge polka dot mammoth on top of his desk?

[Splender] Starts laughing really hard-

[Doc] Also laughing - I'm unmotivated, but I do have a bit of griefer in me all the same.

[CP] - Well this is getting boring, I'm leaving

[Doc] Wait! I actually have a question for you!

[CP] Groans- Now what!?

[Doc] What would happen if you took a spawn egg out into the real world and clicked it open?

[CP] - A more realistic version of them comes out, they'd look like my mobs

[Doc] Have you ever used that as a distraction while running from the SCP? I would.

[CP] Growls darkly- I would never do that to a mob. Besides, that's would be more information for them to use against us

[Doc] No! Not the intelligent ones! Like cows, or pigs. Though a mooshroom would certainly have them scratching their heads.

[CP] - They could still gather data from them, so no

[Doc] Okay, okay, but the important question is; would the spawned thing persist? Is that a shortcut from digital to irl?

[CP] - What are you talking about?

[Doc] For example, I go out with two spawn eggs, I spawn a cow and something that dosen't belong out there normally, like an Endermite. Does that mean that I now have both things in the flesh and high res until they age and die normally? Or does the cow stay real and the endermite fade away because it has no physical counterpart outside?

[CP] - They exist as they do in game, until they are killed

[Doc] Really? That's interesting... though I bet some of the mobs are horrifying in high res.

[CP] - You can go look at mine if your really interested

[Doc] Well I saw Giselle and Winston and a bunch of your pig guys. No biggie.    But I'm thinking a high res Enderman or a creeper wouldn't be too nice to meet in a dark alley.

[CP] - Again, you can go look if you want

[Doc] I'll just... tag along next time you go out. I could use some practice navigating in the null space anyway.

[CP] - Whatever

[Doc] I still need you to help me with that program for Mix you know....

[CP] - What program?

[Doc] Oh, she needs something similar to what we used to find the eggs, just readjust what it's supposed to look for. She has a bunch of gold and diamond shards she wants traced to their home seed.

[CP] - Can't you just do that?

[Doc] It's your program. I could axe my way into it and spend an afternoon fiddling with it, or you could just change the parameters for me and get on with your day. I'm sure it wouldn't take you more then a few minutes and I'd kind of prefer you went with us anyway. I have a bad feeling about where she wants to go. She may not like what she finds. If she finds anything at all.

[CP] - Fiiiiiiiiine

[Doc] Sweetly- Thank you Cp.

[Doc] But I do think you should take Lie home for now.

[CP] Starts walking off with Lie-

[Doc] Brushes hir tail fluff softly across hir mates neck.

[Deer] Twitches in her sleep-

[Doc] Giggles softly- So when will Ej be ungrounded Splender?

[Splender] - Within a few days if he behaves

[Doc] It's already been a week, hasn't it? It's not really his fault Markus picked a fight with him.

[Splender] - But he knew better, he is a guest, he shouldn't have done it at all

[Doc] I hate to say it, but he was defending himself.

[Splender] - He stepped in when I was trying to discover what was happening. It would have ended peacefully had he not intruded

[Doc] Okay. It's your call. I'm certainly not ungrateful to you for keeping him from murdering anyone. But I did promise to spawn some mobs for him to examine/fight while he was here. It's the least I can do.

[Splender] - I understand

[Doc] Turns to the other doctor - Sorry Ej, I tried. It's up to your guardian.

[EJ] - I don't need your fucking help

[Doc] Wilts a little, kinda hunkering down in the grass. - Geeze you guys are hard on my self-esteem.

[Splender] - No! Don't be sad!

[Doc] I'm not sad. I kind of expect Ej to hate my guts.

[Splender] - If you say so...

[Sally] Is idly dancing around-

[Doc] It's more of an 'I don't want to fight' reaction. I do have some animal traits in this shape.

[Splender] - Weren't you going to get some code for CP?

[Doc] Well, he went home, and I'm pretty much stuck until Deerheart wakes up. I don't want to leave her alone since I know her energy is low.

[Splender] - Then take her home, we'll be fine here

[Doc] I guess I can just bridal carry her into the house. I don't want to pick her up in my mouth when she's sleeping. I'll get drool on her clothes and possibly give her bad dreams. Can you hold her up so she doesn't flop on the ground when I shift back?

[Splender] - Absolutely!- He reaches over with a couple of tendrils and picks Deer up

[Doc] Thank you - Xe rolls sideways to get clear of Splender and shifts. Xe gets to hir feet, dusting off hir coat and reaches out for hir mate-

[Splender] Gently hands Deer over-

[Doc] Takes her and holds her close, resting hir forehead against Deerheart's. Xe feels the woman's antlers curl and brush against the plume of hir hair like vines seeking a foothold. -I love you so much- Xe whispers. Xe nods to Splender and starts walking back towards the castle as the sun slips redly down against the horizon.

[Flux] Is keeping an eye on Notch after his small outburst-

[Deer] Groans as she finally sits up the next morning in her and Doc's bed, her head is pounding as she holds it-

[Doc] Is half-dressed and fussing around in a trunk - Oh! You're awake! You slept for a long time. How do you feel?

[Deer] - Like my head was slammed into something very hard...

[Doc] Oh, let me get you something for it. - Opens a different box and moves the bottles inside around with a bevy of clinking - For what it's worth that was still impressive. I don't even know how you managed to force me to change shape like that.

[Deer] - I'm not sure myself...

[Doc] Offers her a slightly fizzy healing potion- Well, I still think we haven't even scratched the surface of what you're actually capable of.  I think it's something you and Flux need to discuss. Since she's the expert.

[Deer] - True, but she always seems so stiff and...  Distant...

[Doc] Looks a little sad - She's used to being alone. I don't know why Cp's Notch hid her from them. She wanted to be like a mother and watch over them.

[Deer] - Well have you asked her?

[Doc] I didn't want to ask right then, she misses her NOTCH badly and I didn't want to keep bringing it up.

[Deer] - Good point, but she does seem to have an interest in our Notch~

[Doc] It's rather funny watching him fuss with his new hair and old clothes when she shows up.

[Deer] Giggles a little- I'm sure he doesn't know what to do with himself

[Doc] And poor Steffan... I thought he'd die of embarassment

[Deer] Finally notices the potion and takes it- Do you think he has a chance?

[Doc] I think Markus has a better chance, he's more mature, and Stevie already looks up to him.

[Deer] Drinks the potion- true, poor Steffan

[Doc] He's obsessed with a girl that married someone else a long time ago. I don't think he'll ever succeed with anyone until he can let that go.

[Deer] - I see, well at least he has Bro- She stands and stretches a little- Shall we go see about some food?

[Doc] Sure, let me finish getting dressed. - Plops down on the edge of the bed to pull hir socks and boots on

[Deer] Pounces on Doc from behind while their distracted with their shoes-

[Doc] Is pounced and falls over - whoah! Someone woke up with renewed energy!

[Deer] Purrs a little- And a playful spirit~

[Doc] Is it now? - Xe reaches up and runs hir bare fingers through Deerhearts hair, the long panes are warm and soft as the hair clings in grassy strands. - It's funny, I've always said you were my world. I was more right then I realized.

[Deer] - True, but you are absolutely mine

[Doc] Lays back submissively - trully. Especially since you can literally make me an animal. I'm suprised Cp wasn't laughing his ass off at me.

[Deer] Crawls on top of Doc- He seemed a bit...  Preoccupied

[Doc] Ah, he might come back at me with it when he's calmed down. - Runs gentle hands over her breasts and cups her chin to kiss her-

[Deer] Happily moves into the kiss, her own hand starting to ghost own Doc's side-

[Doc] Uses one hand to curl around her shoulders and another to finger around the base of one antler, hir hand moves with the tinest jerk as xe takes a little breath- that's new...

[Deer] - What is love?

[Doc] I can feel your pulse in the base of your antler, it's probably a side effect of you getting the hang of wiggling them around. Since it wasn't a replacement like the hand I made for Cp, I guess it took longer for your body to figure out what to do with them.

[Deer] - Oh, I see...- She leans closer and nips at Doc's neck

[Doc] You don't get it, it means I can do with them what I can do to your neck- xe reaches up and puts a hand around the bases of each of her antlers and massages them, varying the amount of blood that's allowed to flow.

[Deer] Gasps a little and whimpers a little-

[Doc] Goes a bit harder, pinching and rubbing - Gods that feels good in my hands, all warm and smooth and muscly, reminds me of something else. - eyebrow waggle-

[Deer] - Well perhaps something else should come out to play?

[Doc] Up to you my dear, you're on top.

[Deer] Her hand travels down to rest over Doc's crotch- So which way are we going today love?

[Doc] Male at the moment, though my nips are still sensitive from the previous days gender.

[Deer] - Good- Her hand begins rubbing against Doc's crotch, teasing through the fabric of their pants as her other hand presses against Doc's chest

[Doc] Hums as xe is touched, hir hands creeping up under Deerheart's thin shirt to fondle her.

[Deer] Her breath hitches as she feels Doc's hands travel upwards and she presses herself a bit closer to her mate-

[Doc] Moves to scratch lightly down her back with one hand and then push her pants down a bit

[Deer] Wiggles a little, trying to help Doc get her pants down farther-

[Doc] Seeks out her muff and rubs a finger on her clit.

[Deer] Yelps a little, not expecting Doc to move quite so quickly and tries to pull away a little-

[Doc] Twists up her shirt in hir other hand holding her close as she's played with.

[Deer] - Ah!  D-Doc!

[Doc] I think you should come up here for a bit. Give me a chance to warm you up. - Xe licks at hir lips eagarly

[Deer] - Perhaps you should catch your prey first~- She slips out of her shirt and darts to the other side of the bed with a mischievous giggle

[Doc] Sheds hir clothes and crawls up on the other side of the bed- Ah, I have to catch you to get a taste of you eh? - Xe makes a playful swipe to grab her.

[Deer] Giggles some more as she moves just out of reach, only to forget her pants are still around her legs and she trips and falls onto the bed-

[Doc] Tries to nab her-

[Deer] Squeaks and tries to scrabble away-

[Doc] Wiggles to pounce and suddenly loses hir balance as well, falling the floor beside the bed- What the fuck?

[Deer] - Love?

[Doc] Well that's awkward. - Xe stands up and turns sideways. Xe now has hir usual dragon tail in a smaller form protruding from hir rear. - I guess my codes a little scrambled this morning.

[Deer] Reaches out and strokes Doc's tail- A dragon in disguise?  In my bed?

[Doc] Shivers plesantly- I am what I am. And sometimes a little bit more.

[Deer] - But how ferocious is this dragon?

[Doc] Me? I guess it depends on what catches my eye... I could be pretty tenacious when I see something I want. - Xe gives Deerheart a lusty look and lets hir tongue slip forked from between hir lips.

[Deer] Shivers a little in anticipation- And what does this dragon want?

[Doc] I think I like the taste of fair maidens... - the tail in Deerhearts grip only betrays hir movement by seconds as xe scuttles back onto  the bed, leaving her mate holding only the fluffy tip as she's pounced on.

[Deer] Yelps as she's pressed into the bed- Oh no!  Whatever shall I do?

[Doc] Be the vessel for my lust, maiden fair! - Xe deleves between her legs, lifting her hooves high and licking at her warm opening before snaking a lot of overlong tongue inside.

[Deer] Shivers as her hands reach forwards to run their fingers through Doc's hair-

[Doc] Crackles with statick as though hir spirals were part of hir human form. The light dances over Deerheart's fingers and plays in hir hair. There's a warm, wet noise as xe licks at Deerheart's insides

[Deer] Moans as she feels Doc's tongue going deeper-

[Doc] Seeks out the tenderest spots and presses against them, xe's fully hard and rubbing a bit against the sheets with a needy whimper.

[Deer] - Doc please, oh gods I need so much more!

[Doc] Pats the bed with one hand and comes up with hir belt. Xe wraps it around hir mate, trapping her arms against her. Xe pulls back to roll Deerheart onto her side

[Deer] - Ah, love...

[Doc] Playfully swats her rump with the whippy fluff of hir tail.

[Deer] Yelps and jumps a little-

[Doc] Chuckles - Just having a bit of fun, don't worry, I'll give you what you want.- Xe bellies up behind her, holding both her legs togeather in one hand and off to one side before nuzzling the warm head of hir cock in between Deerheart's legs

[Deer] Moans appreciatively-

[Doc] I'm the kind of dragon who collects pleasant moments. - Xe happily stuffs Deerheart full of cock and wiggles around to get her situated.

[Deer] Groans as she feels herself being filled and tries to press herself back onto Doc even more-

[Doc] Uses hir tail to hook under the belt and pulls hir lover closer on the other side with one hand before begining to piston into her. She's hot and tight and so wonderfully slick. Xe's so happy xe doesn't even realize what a silly, lovestruck face xe's making.

[Deer] Moans and squirms a little from pleasure, she shifts her arms wanting to get one free so she can touch Doc-

[Doc] Takes the hand closer to hir and grasps it as xe fucks her more vigorusly.

[Deer] - Oh gods Doc!  Please, I want you...  So badly...  Please....  Harder

[Doc] Anything for you. - Xe throws off a few sparks and changes to slower, harder strokes, making her shake with each imact.

[Deer] Cries out in ecstasy at each thrust, her mind awhirl with pleasure-

[Doc] Gives a throaty growl, lifting her higher to make sure she's getting every pixel of length xe has to offer.

[Deer] Her cries grow higher in pitch before reaching the peak of it's crescendo as she comes, her fluids spilling out around Doc-

[Doc] Is purring as the bit of warmth flows over hir, xe leans over her and changes their position a little so Deerhearts nearly up on her shoulders against the bed, her legs spread wide as Doc pumps her up and down

[Deer] - Ah!  Doooooc~

[Doc] Goes for a full on evil laugh as xe releases, hir tail thumping against the bed as xe cums and jerks against hir mate -

[Deer] Moans happily as she feels every inch of her being filled-

[Doc] Makes some extra movements to stir what xe's released, trying to push it deeper and plug Deerheart for a few moments before xe starts to relax.

[Deer] Trembles as another orgasm goes through her-

[Doc] Drags her closer with a squish, happily squeezing her ass as she squims helplessly.

[Deer] - Mmmm, Doc...

[Doc] Peppers her with kisses and gives her a rather lovestruck grin.

[Deer] Kisses Doc full on the lips, savoring the taste of her mate-

[Doc] Enjoys the taste of her as well, using one hand to undo the belt buckle and free her arms.

[Deer] Her arm immediately move to encircle Doc-

[Doc] Grasps her as well and rolls down beside her laying hir tail over Deerhearts waist and wagging the tip happily

[Deer] - Oh love, that was amazing...

[Doc] Grins - You're always amazing.

[Deer] Hums as she snuggles closer to Doc- You more so

[Doc] Cuddles her, - you flatter me so.

[Deer] - Because you deserve it

[Doc] Makes a happy squeak - It's always something around here, I'm so grateful to have you. You're just too perfect.

[Deer] - Well, I was made for you

[Doc] Still reeling over that too. It makes me feel incredibly special.

[Deer] - Because you are

[Doc] Is blushing now and nuzzles into her hair - I always wanted to give this whole world a hug.

[Deer] - Well now you can do more than that

[Doc] Yep, I can lick down in the bushes and get a reaction too! - Chuckles

[Deer] Giggles as well- I think we've strayed from our original goal of food love

-There's a buzzing noise from the steps-

[Doc] It looks like I need to feed the animals too.... can you give me a hand for a moment?

[Deer] - Sure, but only if you let me up

[Doc] Of course, -xe stands up and waits for Deerheart to rise as well.

[Deer] Stands and doesn't bother with her clothes-

[Doc] Xe turns hir back to Deerheart and swishes hir tail against the floor. -Can you help me with this? I'll have to push up against the wall otherwise. It's not supposed to be out in this shape so I need to fold it back in. Just grab the middle part and bend it straight up against my back.

[Deer] - Absolutely- She grips Doc's tail and starts straightening it

[Doc] Winces as there's a cracking noise from the base of hir spine. The tail crinkles up and folds against hir back with a series of clicks until the fluffy tip lays down into hir hair, and the entirity of it melts into hir and fades away.

[Deer] - Better?

[Doc] Ow.... Not better, but as it should be. I don't feel like knocking things off the shelves in the house, nor do I want to cut a hole in my pants.

[Deer] - Speaking of pants...

[Doc] Are you implying I should hurry to gird my loins? Or asking where yours landed?

[Deer] - Well it's not that I don't mind the view, but I do know you don't like to advertise which way your swinging

[Doc] Oh! I had no intention of going out naked. I am going to go downstairs and rinse off first though.

-Buuuuuuz!-

[Doc] I'll hurry!

[Deer] - Alright, I'll start on the animals for you

[Doc] Thank you. You're a peach. Hey... speaking of such? Did you ever try the ones I brought from Okami? They're in the trunk by the kitchen fridge. I'll happily split one with you.

[Deer] - Once you're cleaned up, sure

[Doc] Be right back then- Slides down the ladder and dashes the few steps across the open floor to hop into the water trough beside Deerheart's sugarcanes.

[Galvantula] Is peeking in the room from the ceiling of the staircase

[Deer] Gives the Galvantula some berries before going to get a peach-

[Galvantula] Happy buzz and moves out of the way.

[Goomy] Is dozing at the top of the steps and wibbles to warn her of a little slime on the floor

[LH] Mew?

[Deer] - Hang on, hang on

[Shaymin] Is on the kitchen table, nibbling at the cake in the center.

[LH] Sashays her hooves

[Deer] takes the peach into her inventory and goes up the stairs to feed all the other animals- LH move

[LH] Stubbornly keeps bumping against her

[Deer] Trips and falls because of LH-

[Shaymin] Nearly gets squished

[Goomy] Small noise of alarm from halfway down the stairs

[Deer] - Ow...  LH!

[Doc] Is clean and dressed and heading up

[Deer] Pushes herself back up- Bad cat!

[LH] Mew!

[Galvantula] Is still blocking the steps but moves as Doc comes up from the bedroom

[Deer] - You're going to be fed last now LH

[LH] Pouts-

[Doc] Is petting the Galvantula

[Deer] - Oh, there you are love

[Doc] I just came up, everyone that could came running since we slept in, huh?

[Deer] - Yes, and some are being annoying

[Doc] Oh? Who-

-Before xe can finish hir thought there's a sound like someone blowing a raspberry and the big Gastly zips through the wall with a huge grin and shoots up towards the top of the vine room with their little ones clinking chains like a trail of chicks behind them.-

[Deer] - Awww... Oh, and LH

[Doc] He's a little hellion. I'm not suprised. It's what I get for naming him after a griefer.

[Deer] - He made me trip and fall

[Doc] Bad cat!

[LH] Immediatly presses himself against the floor-

[Deer] Shall we finish feeding the animals and feed ourselves?

[Doc] Well TLOT and Steve will do the caged ones downstairs, If you get the charged creepers and the bats, I'll feed the chickens and your Mudsdale and then we can both get the few living horses in the indoor pen.

[Deer] - On it

[terabitweb]

Original Post from InfoSecurity Magazine Author:

US Lawmakers Hear Testimony on Concerns of Deepfakes

Days after a video of a transformed Arnold Swartzenegger went viral on YouTube, members of the US House Intelligence Committee heard testimony on Thursday, June 13, on raising concerns about the threat of  “deepfakes,” according to The Hill.

In his opening remarks, committee chairman Adam Schiff said, “Advances in AI and machine learning have led to the emergence of advanced digitally doctored media, so-called ‘deepfakes’ that allow malicious actors to foment chaos, division or crisis….Of great concern is that deepfakes could have the power to disrupt the democratic process, particularly the presidential race of 2020.”

Schiff noted that three years ago, lawmakers feared that falsified documents could be used to meddle in elections. “Three years later, we are on the cusp of a technological revolution that could enable even more sinister forms of deception.”

Of paramount concern is that foreign actors could use these deepfakes to spew misinformation through malicious campaigns intended to deceive the public or sway public opinion. Throughout the course of the more-than-two-hour hearing, the committee saw convincing examples of deepfakes and examples of synthetic pictures of people that don’t exist at all.

Former FBI special agent and senior fellow for Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund, Clint Watts was part of a four-person panel that testified before the lawmakers on the potential for foreign adversaries to craft synthetic media capabilities that could be used against the US.

“The falsification of audio and video allows manipulators to dupe audience members in highly convincing ways, provoking emotional responses that can lead to widespread mistrust,” Watts warned.

It’s not only lawmakers that are worried about the potential threat of deepfakes. In a June 13 blog post, Neiman Labs looked at myriad ways that deepfakes could be used to manipulate the outcome of an election, noting that “deepfakes have the potential to wreak havoc in contexts such as news, where audio and video are treated as a form of evidence that something actually happened.

“So-called ‘cheapfakes,’ such as the widely circulated clip of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have already demonstrated the potential for low-tech manipulated video to find a ready audience. The more advanced technology creates a whole new level of speed, scale, and potential for personalization of such disinformation.”

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Go to Source Author: US Lawmakers Hear Testimony on Concerns of Deepfakes Original Post from InfoSecurity Magazine Author: US Lawmakers Hear Testimony on Concerns of Deepfakes Days after a…

[the-connection]

It started while I was on a Hawaiian vacation in May. I judged I’d just tweaked my back promoting a poolside lounge chair. Back home, my back aching grew severe, and I started observing gut ache in my legs. For eight epoches I could just slither around the house. My wife and two daughters nicknamed me “the worm.” At 45, I’m in pretty good shape--avid cyclist, runner, weightlifter, yoga lover with a resting pulsation in the 50 s.

So it was weird when my primary care doctor threw me on a concoction of sting assassins, gut blockers, and cortisone shots. I even tried acupuncture. But as my back began to improve in late June, I started to feel off. Sick to my stomach. Weak. Couldn’t sleep. I lost more than 10 pounds. But I chalked this up to a few months of too much Vicodin after a lifetime of anticipating two Advil was excessive. My physician articulated I was fit and healthy and that there was no need to run any blood tests. He speculated aloud if this was all in my head.

It wasn’t like exertion was driving me crazy. Just the opposite. As the CEO of the startup Mighty AI in Seattle, I was on a roll and having a explosion. Our fellowship, which produces data to train artificial intelligence for self-driving gondolas and other lotions, was racking up new purchasers, constructing brand-new capabilities, shipping better software, and drumming the event. We were coming chatter. WIRED and The Financial Times wrote about us. There was a feeling that our growing unit could do anything it is imperative to. Morale was high-pitched, and our corporation was still small-scale enough -- 45 people or so--that I could chitchat with anybody at work about real things in life besides work.

Unfortunately, my nonwork life was get all too real. Typically I’m pretty good at unplugging from stress. When I’m experiencing down or the shit is hitting the supporter at the part, I unroll by hanging with my bride, Amy, and our daughters, Anna, 14, and Elsie, 11. I’ll play some music or go for a bicycle ride.

But that stopped making this summer. At the bureau I appeared guilty for not putting in 100 percent attempt. At home--well, I was a insect! After nearly a month of feeling unpleasant despite my back getting better and being off all remedies, I touch a wall. On July 26, a Wednesday, I finished my day’s gathers and drove myself to the least busy ER I know of--the one at Swedish Medical Center in the Issaquah Highlands, 20 miles east of downtown.

A couple hours later I announced Amy and asked her to join me. They’d previously done a assortment of tests and ruled out the obvious--urinary tract infection, epidural abscess--and were sort of grasping at straw. Over the phone, I requested Amy, who is a clinical psychologist, if she could think up anything else I should tell the doctors. “Have you told them about the darknes sweats? ” she requested, her belly settle. The look on the ER doc’s face when I overtook that on should have been my first clue.( Night sweats are a symptom of some early cancers .) They described more blood and did a CT scan.

About an hour eventually, a doctor who specializes in hospital admissions affiliated the ER doc to report on their findings. The ensuing representation is seared into my brain. He interposed himself to Amy and me so awkwardly that we could not understand him. I gently interrupted his prepared remarks to ask his refer, hoping this might set him at ease.

It didn’t. He went on to explain that I had countless tumors in my liver, pancreas, and chest. In add-on, he explained that I had quite a few blood clots, including in my heart and lungs. “What is' many’ tumors? ” I invited. He searched demolished, saying they stopped weigh after 10. I thought he might cry, and then he started in with some absurdity about how maybe it was all just bad evaluations, or perhaps I had a rare water-borne pest illnes. Amy inaugurated exclaiming, hard. I went into speechless jolt and simply tried to get this chap to shut up and leave.

Bencke and his wife, Amy Mezulis.

Kyle Johnson for WIRED

The next few hours were a blur of tests and procedures. They finally stopped protruding and prodding me at around 2 am. It’s kind of hopeless to explain how I find, let alone to continue efforts to share how Amy seemed. Neither of us slept that night. With intruders gone, I was finally able to cry. I knew I couldn’t fully understand it all. But the thought of breaking the story to Anna and Elsie procreated it all too real. Anna is tough--stoic, introspective, meticulous, deep-keeled. But still, she’s 14. Elsie is our little angel from sky. She’s bubbly, extroverted, universally adored, unusually empathetic, and sensitive. I simply couldn’t imagine her taking the report, let alone growing up without her daddy.

My head was rotating. Think of Amy produced fresh sobbings to my hearts because she and I have worked so hard to raise a family while pursuing two bold business. We had predicted one another that in a few years, when the girls foreman off to college, we’d cultivate less and walk more. Amy didn’t deserve to lose those daydreams, or her attendant, just as we were on the brink. Then I thought of my moms and pops. My mummy would crack. She lost her youngest son, Joshuah Paul, to a heroin overdose eight years ago. I screamed and exclaimed, and so did Amy.

Thursday we were right back at it. They had a lot to do--classify the cancer, measure its progress, propose management. They took a biopsy of one of the tumors on my liver. They surgically implanted a stent in my gall bladder, which immediately allayed my backed-up liver. The medical staff likewise looked for secondary impacts of the cancer. First among them was blood clots. A couple doctors examined my legs and replied, “Slim to zero fortune you have clots in your legs--they look too healthy. But let’s check.” A few hours later, bad news: My left leg had clots from my hip to my ankle, though thankfully not fully occlusive. My right leg had coagulates from knee to ankle.

We devoted often of Thursday waiting for the pathology report, representing a peculiar mental game trying to convince ourselves it was anything but pancreatic cancer. We’re not dumb--we could see how the MDs glanced away when scheduling alternatives and could hear how they demurred when discussing potentials. Maybe "its been" lymphoma--there were protrude lymph nodes. Perhaps it was colon cancer--that’s treatable, right? But little did we know that the official diagnosis would be the least of our concerns that day.

When the clock impressed 10 pm Thursday night, I passed out. I’d spoken with some of our friend during the day, but it was a bit awkward. What was I supposed to tell them? “Hey, I’m in research hospitals. I have cancer. Not sure what category. Oh, and a cluster of clots. But at least I can urinate! ” I’d shunned announcing my mama back. She’d phoned and texted about 1,000 times. I was certainly not ready to speak with her. I needed a full plan.

On Friday the docs woke me with an dire problem: They had noted a blood clot the dimensions of the a Ping-Pong ball in my heart’s right ventricle. If it separated loose, I would die instant, whether I was in an ER or my basement. To realize topics worse, they showed me an image of the coagulate, and it was precariously wiggling on an already-loose attachment. Each period my center outdo, the ticking ticking bomb swayed precariously. The lump was too big to suck out with a vacuum-clean, too risky to slice and remove bit-by-bit, and too big to remove from the side by divulging open a few ribs. Nope, removing it was urgent and would require cracking my sternum. Today.

Events were happening at a dizzying pace. Clearly I needed to start doing some calls--to renounce my character as Mighty AI CEO, to connect with my momma and other immediate family members, to alert more of my closest pals. It was around 9:10 Friday morning. Mighty AI’s weekly functionings meeting "wouldve been" getting started at 10:15, so I had a lot of calls to make.

I phoned our members of the security council one at a time, sharing the story to those used I contacted. Each of them was supportive and encouraged me to take a leave of absence to focus on getting healthful. I asked for and went full support efforts to refer our benefactor and CTO, Daryn Nakhuda, as Interim CEO. That made about 11 hours. At 9:21 I announced Daryn to share the report and ask if he were willing to serve as interim CEO. He was perfectly poised, encouraging, and ready to step up. I scheduled a 9:35 all-hands video meeting.

Why an all pass? Well, this was obviously large-scale report, and I wanted everyone to hear it all at once. I wanted to share it raw and to project confidence, anguish, and adore. Why video? Well, I acknowledge I regretted that pick a smidge when I watched myself in a thumbnail on my laptop screen with a infirmary night-robe, an open weave at my neck where they’d fished in the stent, and limbs connected to various IVs and beeping monitors.

I hadn’t practised, and I don’t recollect exactly what I announced. But here’s the gist of what I recall :P TAGEND

Hey folks, many of you are familiar I haven’t been seeming well for various weeks. Well, I checked myself into the hospital a marry nights ago, assuming they’d sounds a bad bladder illnes or something. Regrettably, as it is about to change, I have cancer. It looks like it’s metastatic, Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. I have extensive tumors in my liver, pancreas, and chest and quite a few blood clots. The worst of these may require immediate open-heart surgery to address the possibility that a large clot in my heart could cause instant death without warning.

Obviously I enjoy our company and our unit. We have created something really special now at Mighty. Just look at our recent account contract, having zero late deliverables, and flourishing our unit with people who will lend diversity. No mistrust in my spirit we will all looked at on these professional years as best available in "peoples lives", the age when we will have played a significant role in altering transportation.

I’ve ever thought of my job as your servant. Now it’s day for me to take a leave of absence were concentrated in my state. Effective instantly, Daryn is our CEO. Please proved him the respect and aid we all know he deserves. Each of us was already stepping up in new ways as we flourished. This just got all the more real for Daryn and pretty much everybody else, too.

I gotta be honest, my prognosis isn’t immense. So far, medical doctors with whom I’ve spoken have said my ailment is quite advanced, terminal, fatal. Don’t worry, I’ll be get brand-new physicians. I’ll be offline, but that will make it all the sweeter to come back when I’m ready and be amazed by all you will have accomplished. Thanks for "re giving me" the greatest honour of my professional life, and now go make me proud!

I could see lots of sobbings and scandalize. It was so sudden--for my squad and for me. The following Tuesday I phoned into the first council fulfill Daryn ran. Of direction he did immense. As we disbanded, everyone pleased me well. Every member of our board is a singular individual, and we’ve each bonded. So the goodbyes were psychological even wrap in the plated armor of venture capital. As we hung up, I realized I was surely no longer CEO. Took less than a week.

Bencke nurses up a picture of his family.

Kyle Johnson for WIRED

As it is about to change, they decided my liver and nature were too weak to risk surgery to remove that big lump. That led to three days of infirmary inertia as the oncologists and cardiologists suggested over what to do. On epoch five, Amy and a got a couple of MD friends started to question whether infirmary hell was in my best interest( one of the hospital’s endowments to me was pneumonia !), and on epoch six they got me checked out and sent home.

The clot is still here. I don’t feel better. My blood pressure is superb, my oxygen frequency 99 percent, and I have no chest pain. But in my memory I know it is there, and I know that necessitates it could detach at any second and kill me. I’ve always tried to live each day to its fullest, but this Damoclean time bomb spawns articulating goodnight to my girls all the more difficult.

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