Showing posts with label the economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the economy. Show all posts

Monday, April 14, 2025

Post-Post Consumerism


What point are we at in the breakdown of the consumer economy, I forget. Here the tech sector bubble begins to pop, which is probably the least surprising development in the past couple years:

Apple working to update AI feature after BBC complaint
Dec 2024, BBC News

Apple, the one company who waited to jump into the artificial arena of artificial intelligence, finally jumps, and day one produces completely hallucinated and outright dangerous headlines about world news, but while pretending to be the BBC, because when the average person reads a headline summary as coming from the BBC, they will assume it comes from the BBC, go figure. BBC asks Apple to stop, and they refuse, and this reminds us who is really in control. Large corporations are in control. Until they aren't large anymore, of course.  

Unrelated image credit: AI Art - Sandwich Man 1 - 2024

Thomson Reuters Wins First Major AI Copyright Case in the US
Feb 2025, Wired Magazine

“None of Ross’s possible defenses holds water. I reject them all,” wrote US Circuit Court Judge Stephanos Bibas in a summary judgement. (Bibas was sitting by designation in the US District Court of Delaware.) [Ross is the AI startup that stole from Reuters.]

The main argument was this: "Ross “meant to compete with Westlaw [Reuters' legal branch] by developing a market substitute.” And that's not considered fair use under copyright law. 

Here's some notes of my own while reading law blogs on the decision:
unexpected, landmark case, pivotal, substantial, significant implication; licensing could become critical; financial burden forced Ross to cease operation; major distinction between NLP (Ross) and LLM (all the rest, like Cohere)

Google parent Alphabet’s earnings disappoint Wall Street amid stiff AI competition
Feb 2025, The Guardian

“Although it’s still well insulated, Google’s advantages in search hinge on its ubiquity and entrenched consumer behavior." This year “could be the year those advantages meaningfully erode as antitrust enforcement and open source AI models change the game. And Cloud’s disappointing results suggest that AI-powered momentum might be beginning to wane just as Google’s closed model strategy is called into question by DeepSeek.”

Closed model strategy!! Fightin words


And here's a list; keeping track of the history, as it happens: 

Ford Motor Co sues Blue Cross Blue Sheild in anti-trust case over 'astronomical' profits
Jun 2023, Reuters

Google accuses Microsoft of antitrust violations over Azure cloud platform
Sep 2024, Ars Technica

Google accused of shadow campaigns redirecting antitrust scrutiny to Microsoft
Oct 2024, Ars Technica

FTX sues Binance for $1.76B in battle of crypto exchanges founded by convicts
Nov 2024, Ars Technica

Albertsons calls off merger and sues Kroger
Dec 2024, CNN Business

Beyonce and Adele publisher accuses firms of training AI on songs
May 2024, BBC News

Horizon insurance drops N.J.’s largest hospital system as in-network provider
Jan 2025, nj.com

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Friday, January 3, 2025

The Psychological Operator


You probably don't need more reasons to adjust your position relative to the corporate state, but just in case:

“Deny, denounce, delay”: The battle over the risk of ultra-processed foods
May 2024, Ars Technica but Financial Times

When the Brazilian nutritional scientist Carlos Monteiro coined the term “ultra-processed foods” 15 years ago, he established what he calls a “new paradigm” for assessing the impact of diet on health.

Monteiro had noticed that although Brazilian households were spending less on sugar and oil, obesity rates were going up. The paradox could be explained by increased consumption of food that had undergone high levels of processing, such as the addition of preservatives and flavorings or the removal or addition of nutrients.

But health authorities and food companies resisted the link, ...

In 2019, American metabolic scientist Kevin Hall carried out a randomized study comparing people who ate an unprocessed diet with those who followed a UPF diet over two weeks. Hall found that the subjects who ate the ultra-processed diet consumed around 500 more calories per day, more fat and carbohydrates, less protein—and gained weight.

The industry has responded with a ferocious campaign...

The industry has also successfully framed the issue as one of personal choice. ... Manufacturers also argue that the harm caused by their products is a result of a lack of personal willpower or failure to exercise ... 
In summary, all that needs to be said:
Innovations in processing over the 20th century not only made food more affordable and accessible, the industry’s advocates note, but also created beneficial products like sugar-free sweeteners and protein-enriched milk. [aka sugar-free sugar and milk-added milk]

Above image credit: Fruit fly Drosophila brain vasculature - Nikky Corthout and Miranda Dyson for Nikon Small World - 2024 [link]


Vegetarians consume more ultra-processed food than those who regularly eat meat, study finds
Nov 2024, phys.org

This paragraph in itself is just really funny:

Such ultra-processed foods have been found to contain a host of added, sometimes unhealthy, compounds and chemicals to enhance taste, improve texture, help with freshness, or simply make them look more appetizing. Meat, on the other hand, tends to undergo less processing because it looks and tastes good in its natural state.

via Imperial College London, University of São Paulo, and International Agency for Research on Cancer of France: Kiara Chang et al, Plant-based dietary patterns and ultra-processed food consumption: a cross-sectional analysis of the UK Biobank, eClinicalMedicine (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.eclinm.2024.102931

130,000 brain cells and 50 million connections of a fly - Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge - Oct 2024 [link] It's the most detailed analysis of the brain of an adult animal ever produced.

Opioid giant's tactics to influence doctors revealed in court documents
Jun 2024, phys.org

Opioid giant Mallinckrodt, selling more than Purdue Pharma in the US, was forced by the courts to publish more than 1.3 million internal documents.

  • recruiting physicians to serve as influencers
  • planting articles in scientific journals
  • coordinating conference presentations
  • developing continuing medical education courses

"Creating the term pseudoaddiction and distorting the terms tolerance and dependence were strategies that distracted physicians from noticing their patients were addicted."

Mallinckrodt continues to sell opioids today, with sales up 25% from the year before.

via Department of Philosophy at Queen’s University in Canada, and Institute for Science in Society at Radboud University: How an opioid giant deployed a playbook for moulding doctors' minds, The BMJ (2024). DOI: 10.1136/bmj.q1208


New research reveals that a tobacco company has secretly funded Japanese academics
Jun 2024, phys.org

Every major industry does this:

Philip Morris International (PMI) and its Japanese affiliate, Philip Morris Japan contracted a third-party external research organization to secretly fund a study on smoking cessation conducted by Kyoto University academics (no public record of PMJ's funding or involvement in this study was found), and paid a life sciences consultancy to network with scientists and promote PMI's science and products at academic events (also kept secret both within and outside the company).

PMI has a track record of scientific misconduct and misinformation:

  • The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW) claims to be independent, but TCRG research has found that it is solely funded by PMI and published by PMI-favorable research.
  • Journalist investigations and academic reviews of PMI's science have raised serious concerns over the quality and ethical standing of PMI's clinical research.
  • In 2022, a review by TCRG found PMI's clinical trials on its heated tobacco products were at high risk of bias and poor quality.
  • A 2020 TCRG report on PMI detailed the company's "relentless lobbying, PR campaigns and multifaceted approaches to influencing science and public health in order to manage the future direction of tobacco control."

Note: The researchers used the Science for Profit Model—How and why corporations influence science and the use of science in policy and practice, Tess Legg, Jenny Hatchard, Anna B. Gilmore, 2021, PLOS One. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0253272

Cerebral Organoids - Institute of Industrial Science at University of Tokyo - Apr 2024 [link]

Bonus: 
Clinical trial shows that plant-based cytisinicline can help people quit vaping
May 2024, phys.org

Is this a merry-go-rund or more like musical chairs?

They're a plant-based oral tablet; AKA a pill.

So first you get addicted to cigarettes, then you vape to quit cigarettes, and then you take these pills to quit vaping, and then you ... 

via Massachusetts General Hospital: Rigotti Na et al, Clinical trial shows that cytisinicline can help people quit vaping, JAMA Internal Medicine (2024). DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2024.1313

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