404 Media

One of the most popular types content on Facebook is "Elon Musk will fix America with this absurd invention" AI content that have millions of views and endless people commenting about how he and Donald Trump will save America thinking it's real https://lnkd.in/dM9NK3_4

How would you feel about your doctor asking ChatGPT to check your medical records, handle your billing, or suggest a diagnosis? At Northwell Health — according to an internal presentation I obtained that was given to a group of clinicians earlier this year — leadership is encouraging staff to use a tool called "AI Hub." It can be used for "clinical or clinical adjacent" tasks, they said, as well as answering questions about hospital policies and billing, writing job descriptions and editing writing, and summarizing electronic medical record excerpts and inputting patients’ personally identifying and protected health information. The demonstration also showed potential capabilities that included “detect pancreas cancer,” and “parse HL7,” a health data standard used to share electronic health records. The leaked presentation shows that hospitals are increasingly using AI and LLMs to streamlining administrative tasks, and shows that some are experimenting with or at least considering how LLMs would be used in clinical settings or in interactions with patients. https://lnkd.in/er7h-riP

New: inside the US government-bought tool that can track phones at abortion clinics. Called Locate X, it tracks phones around the world without a warrant. Leakers showed it in action, we watched a phone go from Alabama where abortion is illegal, to an abortion clinic in Florida, back again. The leak is especially timely as abortion is one of the most important issues to voters in the US presidential election. Leakers also showed us tracking of a synagogue, a mosque, a school. For years I've covered this industry, now you can see one of the main tools itself for the first time. “Whether location data is being used to identify and expose closeted gay Americans, or to track people as they cross state lines to seek reproductive health care, data brokers are selling Americans' deepest secrets and exposing them to serious harm, all for a few bucks. These services could do terrible harm in the hands of MAGA politicians like Donald Trump and JD Vance, who are determined to drag our country backward and rip away the rights of women to make decisions about their own bodies,” Senator Wyden said. https://lnkd.in/dYEFnBDF

This week, Automattic's CEO upped the ante with yet another ultimatum: take a new buyout and stop speaking to the press, or get fired and/or sued. I spoke to several employees about the poisonous environment this drama is creating. Here's what some of them had to say: “He clearly has no clue what people care about or how the community has contributed to the success of WordPress." “There is a vocal group of sycophants who are cheering on Matt's actions via Anonymattic ... drawing favorable comparisons to how Elon Musk and Donald Trump operate. Their morale seems high, but I can't relate.” “Overall, the environment is now full of people who unequivocally support Matt's actions, and people who couldn't leave because of financial reasons (and those are mostly silent)." https://lnkd.in/epM7ZRkv

Incredibly cool: A community of people on Discord are salvaging Redbox kiosks from Walgreens all over the country and are reverse engineering and modifying them. Redbox OS got dumped this week and people are actively figuring out how to repurpose it: https://lnkd.in/gx6Wpw4Q

New: The National Archives is pushing Google Gemini AI on workers despite concerns from archivists about accuracy of the historical record. Internal presentation shows the "AI-Mazing Techventure" they are embarking on https://lnkd.in/eA_vwEAC

New from 404 Media: there are thousands of internal AI training sets and tools exposed to anyone on the open internet. Some belong to tech companies. No authentication, just visit IP and look. Can include raw training data, ability to use models https://lnkd.in/eW-BbBuR

I talked to a couple of Wikipedia editors who founded a project to protect the site from AI-generated misinformation https://lnkd.in/eeDh_M3T

If you're not caught up on what's going on with WordPress lately, it's moving from a niche beef between two huge platforms to something that's threatening to implode the entire WordPress open-source project. As of today, a dubious checkbox appeared on the WordPress org login page, forcing users to confirm that they are "not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise.” It's a move that's dragging the contributor community into a messy legal battle, and questioning the move seems to get you exiled. If you work at Automattic, or are one of the 159 people who took Matt's deal to leave, I'd love to talk to you. Reach me on Signal: sam.404 https://lnkd.in/eQVbQcVZ

I can't believe it's been one whole year. Thank you for being on this ride with us. We couldn't go this far without going together. https://lnkd.in/ejEjSt7E