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Meta Remains a Dangerous Place for Children, Recent Lawsuits Claim + More
Meta Remains a Dangerous Place for Children, Recent Lawsuits Claim
“With this lawsuit, New Mexico joins 33 other states that have also sued CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Meta and its wholly-owned subsidiaries for allegedly failing to protect children from sexual abuse, online solicitation of minors and human trafficking by sexual predators,” explained Susan Schreiner, technology analyst at C4 Trends.
While the safety and well-being of children on the platforms should have been the highest priority — that has been far from the case. Instead, the numerous lawsuits argue that the company deliberately designed platforms to hook and addict children and teens, and knowingly produce products and features through its apps.
This has been business as usual for many of the social media platforms, added Titania Jordan, chief parent officer at Bark Technologies, and co-author of Parenting in a Tech World: A Handbook for Raising Kids in the Digital Age.
Jordan explained that even after the testimony to Congress by whistleblower Frances Haugen — who worked as a manager for Facebook — about the dangerous nature of the platform and how kids were being targeted with unhealthy and unsafe content, very little was done to address the threat.
“In the U.S., the “Protecting Kids on Social Media Act” is meeting headwinds with objections from privacy advocates who perceive that such laws have less to do with protecting kids than creating digital authoritarian surveillance,” said Schreiner.
Apple Now Requires a Judge’s Consent to Hand Over Push Notification Data
Apple (AAPL.O) has said it now requires a judge’s order to hand over information about its customers’ push notifications to law enforcement, putting the iPhone maker’s policy in line with rival Google and raising the hurdle officials must clear to get app data about users.
The new policy was not formally announced but appeared sometime over the past few days on Apple’s publicly available law enforcement guidelines. It follows the revelation from Oregon Senator Ron Wyden that officials were requesting such data from Apple as well as from Google, the unit of Alphabet (GOOGL.O) that makes the operating system for Android phones.
Apps of all kinds rely on push notifications to alert smartphone users to incoming messages, breaking news, and other updates. These are the audible “dings” or visual indicators users get when they receive an email or their sports team wins a game. What users often do not realize is that almost all such notifications travel over Google and Apple’s servers.
In a letter first disclosed by Reuters last week, Wyden said the practice gave the two companies unique insight into traffic flowing from those apps to users, putting them “in a unique position to facilitate government surveillance of how users are using particular apps.”
Ready to Rumble: Lawsuits Against Censorship-Industrial Complex Heat Up After Musk Kicks Open the Floodgates
It took the richest man in the world to begin dismantling the censorship-industrial complex; a tightly connected network of government agencies, think tanks, private media platforms, and activist organizations whose goal is to censor, control, and bankrupt free speech platforms under the guise of battling ‘hate speech’ and ‘misinformation‘ that run counter to prevailing establishment narratives.
One of these entities, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, is a dark money organization run by an alleged former British intelligence operative.
We know all this because just over a year ago, X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk disseminated the “Twitter Files” to a small group of independent journalists, from which we learned that the Biden administration collaborated with Twitter to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story, ban Donald Trump, and that the FBI essentially had its entire arm up Twitter’s ass to shape and control narratives. We also learned about the aforementioned relationships between the censorship-industrial complex.
In August, Musk kicked off what has become several lawsuits against anti-free speech advocates, filing a lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which X has accused of “actively working to assert false and misleading claims encouraging advertisers to pause investment on the platform.”
And so, as the lawsuits against the censorship complex begin to fly, one can’t help but feel that the tide may be turning — or at least, said censors will think twice before spouting defamatory claims about platforms that allow divergent opinions.
Major Report Declines to Recommend Banning Social Media for Youth
A committee of experts declined to recommend banning social media for youth 18 and younger in a report issued Wednesday.
Convened by the nonprofit National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the committee reviewed numerous studies on the topic of youth health and social media use and found that most of the research shows only an association between a range of online behaviors and different physical and mental health outcomes.
In the absence of research demonstrating a compelling cause-and-effect relationship, the committee recommended further research as well as the creation of strong industry standards for social media platform design, transparency, and data use.
Earlier this year, Congress heard testimony from parents who supported bipartisan legislation banning social media for youth younger than 13, in addition to a requirement that older minors receive permission from their parents before opening a social media account. There have been separate attempts in the U.S. to ban TikTok, typically for cybersecurity reasons.
Patients Worry About How Doctors May Be Using AI: Survey
The vast majority of American patients are wary of how their doctor may use generative AI to help treat them, according to a new Wolters Kluwer Health survey.
Why it matters: The technology is still in limited use in physician offices — mostly to help with administrative tasks — but one day may help doctors make diagnoses or develop care plans.
By the numbers: Roughly 4 in 5 say they have concerns about their provider using generative AI to make diagnoses or set treatment, with the vast majority saying that’s because they don’t know where the information the tech uses comes from or why it should be trusted.
Threads Is Getting Its Own Fact-Checkers to Combat Misinformation
Meta plans to add direct fact-checking for Threads, to address misinformation on the app itself instead of referentially through its other platforms.
Though the owner of Facebook and Instagram uses third-party fact-checking teams to debunk misinformation and disinformation on these sites (whether it’s wholly successful is another thing), Meta’s answer to Twitter/X doesn’t have its own standalone fact-checking team.
“We currently match fact-check ratings from Facebook or Instagram to Threads, but our goal is for fact-checking partners to have the ability to review and rate misinformation on the app,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri wrote. “More to come soon.”
A key factor here is Threads’ connection to news. Though Threads is making moves toward making trending topics more intuitively collected, Meta doesn’t really push the platform as a news and current affairs-forward space, with Mosseri writing in July, “Politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads — they have on Instagram as well to some extent — but we’re not going to do anything to encourage those verticals.”
Notably, certain words have been blocked from Threads’ search, with The Washington Post reporting words like “coronavirus,” “vaccines,” “vaccination,” “sex,” “porn,” “nude,” and “gore,” as intentionally blocked. Threads still doesn’t have its own community guidelines; instead, the company says Threads is “specifically part of Instagram, so the Instagram Terms of Use and the Instagram Community Guidelines” apply to Threads too.
Hackers Had Access to Patient Information for Months in New York Hospital Cyberattack, Officials Say
A group of New York hospitals and health care centers were targeted in a cyberattack that for two months allowed hackers to access patients’ private information, officials said this week. The attack targeted three separate facilities in the Hudson Valley — HealthAlliance Hospital, Margaretville Hospital and Mountainside Residential Care Center — which all operate under the same parent company and within the hospital conglomerate Westchester Medical Center Health Network.
HealthAlliance, Inc., the corporate parent of the three facilities, said Monday that it “began mailing notification letters to patients whose information may have been involved in a data security incident.” The security issue was acknowledged publicly in October by the broader Westchester health network, but few details were released about the nature or the extent of the breach as an investigation got underway. Now, officials say the probe involving the New York State Department of Health, local authorities in the Hudson Valley, the FBI and a third-party cybersecurity firm determined that hackers were able to access the parent company’s information technology network from Aug. 18 to Oct. 13.
“While in our IT network, the unauthorized party accessed and acquired files that contain patient information,” HealthAlliance said in a statement. “The information involved varied by patient, but may have included names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, diagnoses, lab results, medications, and other treatment information, health insurance information, provider names, dates of treatment, and/or financial information.”
Another Top U.S. Health Provider Sees Millions of Patient Records Stolen — Here’s What We Know + More
Another Top U.S. Health Provider Sees Millions of Patient Records Stolen — Here’s What We Know
Kentucky-based healthcare provider Norton has confirmed that it has suffered a significant ransomware attack that may have put the data of millions of its patients at risk.
In a filing to the Maine Attorney General on December 8, the healthcare giant said that 2.5 million individuals had been affected by the breach.
Norton said that the attack took place between May 7 and May 9, 2023, stating that it took until mid-November to analyze the extent of the attack and the types of patient data that had been exfiltrated.
Avoiding specifics, Norton says that some or all of the following data may have been exposed: name, contact information, Social Security Number, date of birth, health information, insurance information, and medical identification numbers. Some driver’s license numbers or other government ID numbers, financial account numbers, and digital signatures may also have been exposed.
When Protecting Kids Online, Don’t Let Apple and Google Off the Hook
In the last year, Utah, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas passed landmark laws mandating age verification and parental consent for minors to access social media. We have worked with many state legislators to draft principles for this legislation.
With America’s youth caught in social media addiction and internet-mediated experiences influencing every part of their lives, parents need tools to control who is talking to and influencing their kids in order to raise them. In response, some Big Tech companies have either lobbied against the bills or tried to carve out exceptions for themselves.
Because of the constitutional, privacy, and practical concerns in having users age verified by tech platforms, we also have argued that legislatures should ensure that “age verification…be both effective and capable of preserving user privacy.”
Requiring users to give social media companies more personal information is akin to putting the wolves in charge of the chicken coop. Additionally, online anonymity would be threatened. This is why we have recommended that verification be conducted by a third party in a two-step authentication process, or even more securely by a third party using cryptographic methods like zero-knowledge proofs.
Another simple and straightforward solution that legislators should consider in their efforts to protect kids online is requiring age verification at the device level (as one of us has elaborated on in a recent policy brief from the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Institute for Family Studies). Smartphones serve as children’s main portals to the internet and social media platforms, and yet they have been unaddressed by any laws to date. According to a 2022 Pew Research study, 95% of teenagers have access to smartphones.
What’s Making Critics Most Worried About Competing Surveillance Bills in the House
There are two competing House proposals to revise and extend a potent surveillance tool due to expire at year’s end — and the opposing sides of the debate have tried to paint each other’s bills as fatally flawed.
On one side, critics say the House Intelligence Committee-approved version would dramatically expand the range of businesses that could be compelled to aid government surveillance, down to coffee shops that provide WiFi service.
On the other side, critics say the House Judiciary Committee-approved version would delay or inhibit investigations into a range of heinous crimes, such as human trafficking.
That only scratches the surface of the broadsides launched against both bills, which tackle an update and extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, long touted by national security officials as one of the most powerful surveillance authorities in the government’s arsenal and long decried by civil liberties advocates as privacy-invasive.
Pharmacies Share Medical Data With Police Without a Warrant, Inquiry Finds
The nation’s largest pharmacy chains have handed over Americans’ prescription records to police and government investigators without a warrant, a congressional investigation found, raising concerns about threats to medical privacy.
Though some of the chains require their lawyers to review law enforcement requests, three of the largest — CVS Health, Kroger and Rite Aid, with a combined 60,000 locations nationwide — said they allow pharmacy staff members to hand over customers’ medical records in the store.
Pharmacies’ records hold some of the most intimate details of their customers’ personal lives, including years-old medical conditions and the prescriptions they take for mental health and birth control.
Because the chains often share records across all locations, a pharmacy in one state can access a person’s medical history from states with more restrictive laws. Carly Zubrzycki, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut Law School, wrote last year that this could link a person’s out-of-state medical care via a “digital trail” back to their home state.
WEF Likens ‘Misinformation’ to a Cybersecurity Issue in Calls for More Action
According to a recent study by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and allied organizations, cybersecurity concerns are taking on new dimensions.
Misinformation and disinformation disseminated via the internet are now being framed as key challenges in ensuring “cybersecurity.” The troubling report was launched on December 5 and designated as “Cybersecurity Futures 2030: New Foundations.”
The study postulates the future of cybersecurity lies rather in safeguarding the integrity and source of data. This introduces a novel perspective on the significance of locating and quashing fabricated information, cynically tagged as “mis”- or “dis-information” held in the cybersecurity domain.
The report’s writers unfold an interesting perspective where “stable governments,” with long-term tech and cybersecurity strategies up their sleeves, morph into reliable and trustworthy information gatekeepers. The study also puts the roles of government and the private sector in preserving trust under its lens, particularly in the U.S. context, deliberating who should be entrusted with the key censorship task.
Amazon Is Still Selling the Clothes Hook Spy Cameras It’s Being Sued Over
Amazon may be responsible, at least partly, for a man spying on an underage girl using a clothes hook hidden camera, a U.S. judge ruled less than two weeks ago. You’d think the first thing the retail giant would do is pull down any and all such listings — but no.
The original listing for the camera referred to in the ongoing case is no longer online, but the BBC found several identical products on Amazon’s U.K. website. Quartz independently verified at least three listings of the sort on Amazon.co.uk and at least one on Amazon.com. No such results showed up for “clothes hook camera” on Amazon.co.in.
What’s more, the Seattle-based e-commerce titan lets vendors sell many more everyday items doubling as hidden cameras, such as alarm clocks, wall chargers, USB chargers, car keys, photo frames, and smoke alarms. Potential uses in the product descriptions include identifying an intruder, monitoring pets and kids, and catching a cheating partner.
COVID Vaccine Mandate Cases for Executive Branch Employees and Troops Thrown Out by Supreme Court + More
COVID Vaccine Mandate Cases for Executive Branch Employees and Troops Thrown Out by Supreme Court
The Supreme Court on Monday threw out several cases challenging the federal government’s now-defunct COVID-19 vaccine mandates for executive branch employees and military service members.
The court’s action comes after the federal employee vaccine requirement was rescinded by President Joe Biden in May, and the Pentagon — as a result of congressional action — rescinded its mandate for the military in January.
In throwing out the three cases, the justices wiped away the appeals court decisions in which the challengers to the mandates prevailed in one case and lost in the other two and instructed the courts to dismiss the cases as moot.
Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson publicly dissented from the court’s action in two of the cases, saying she disagreed with her colleagues’ decision to wipe away the lower court rulings in those matters.
DNA Companies Should Receive Severe Penalties for Losing Our Data
Personal data is the new gold. The recent 23andMe data breach is a stark reminder of a chilling reality — our most intimate, personal information might not be as secure as we think. It’s a damning indictment of the sheer negligence of companies that, while profiting from our DNA, are failing to protect it.
The 23andMe breach saw hackers gaining access to a whopping 6.9 million users’ personal information, including family trees, birth years and geographic locations. It brings to the fore a few significant questions: Are companies really doing enough to protect our data? Should we trust them with our most intimate information?
Companies are promising to keep our data safe, but there are a couple of quirks here. Government overreach is certainly a possibility, as the FBI and every policing agency in the world are probably salivating at the thought of getting access to such a huge dataset of DNA sequences. It could be a gold mine for every cold case from here to the South Pole.
The audacity of 23andMe, and companies like it, is astounding. They pitch themselves as guardians of our genetic history, as the gatekeepers of our ancestral pasts and potential medical futures. But when the chips are down and our data is leaked, they hide behind the old “we were not hacked; it was the users’ old passwords” excuse.
Tennis Star Novak Djokovic Reiterates Stance on Vaccines: ‘I’m Pro-Freedom to Choose’
Novak Djokovic is the number one tennis player in the world at 36 years old, tallying 24 Grand Slam titles over his illustrious career, which does not seem to be coming to an end anytime soon.
Through all the success though, Djokovic was cast as a villain in recent years for his decision not to get the COVID-19 vaccination.
Despite the backlash, he has remained steadfast in his belief that he does not have to get the vaccine. In September, Djokovic spoke with tennis great John McEnroe about his stance, though it was not the mindset people believed he had.
Djokovic said he was not “anti-vax,” but rather “pro-freedom to choose” whether a person wants to get the vaccine or not.
Despite Mounting Mental Health Concerns, Teens Remain Heavy Social Media Users
Despite growing worry that social media use can harm youth mental health, teens still use major platforms at high rates, according to a new survey conducted by Pew Research Center. About half the respondents characterized their use as “almost constant.”
The online survey of 1,453 U.S. teens between the ages of 13 and 17 was conducted this fall, months after the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory warning that social media can pose a “profound risk of harm” to youth.
Dr. Laura Erickson-Schroth, chief medical officer of The Jed Foundation, did not review the findings prior to publication but said that social media platforms remain vital for teens.
In general, teens are also at a key developmental stage in which they’re seeking validation and recognition, Erickson-Schroth said. Social media platforms can take advantage of those needs by inviting them to regularly post text, pictures, and videos with the hope that friends and strangers alike will find them funny, smart, attractive, charming, or clever. That incentive also makes it harder to quit social media.
When Will A.I. Be Smart Enough to Thwart Violence?
Our world has long been filled with cameras peering out over streets, malls, and schools. Many have been recording for years. But for the most part, no one ever looks at the footage. These little devices, perched on shelves and poles, exist primarily to create a record. If something happens and someone wants to learn more, they can go back.
Due to advances in artificial intelligence, the point of the security camera is undergoing a radical transformation. Over the past few years, a growing number of buzzy startups and long-standing security camera companies have begun offering customers — ranging from Fortune 500 companies to corner markets — abilities long limited primarily to billion-dollar border surveillance systems. Their capacities range dramatically. But they’re all way past motion detection. Unlike their predecessors, they most definitely know the difference between a person and a car.
More significantly, many of these systems promise to instantaneously flag or even predict certain types of activity based on what a person is holding, whether a face seems to match a photo of a specific individual, and other clues flagged by A.I. tools predicting the likelihood of “suspiciousness.”
In other words, millions of cameras in public and private spaces throughout the country are currently pivoting from documentary receptacles into digital security guards. And because most of the physical cameras were already there, this shift may pass largely unnoticed. You’ve probably missed much of what’s happened already.
BJC Reinstates Employee Mask Requirement in Response to Uptick in Virus Cases
St.Louis Post-Dispatch reported:
BJC HealthCare will reinstate a mask requirement for employees, effective Wednesday, in response to rising virus cases in the community.
The health system said in a statement Saturday that it will institute temporary, heightened mask requirements from time to time when infection rates are particularly high and will loosen the requirements when appropriate. Beginning Wednesday, employees will be required to wear masks in patient care areas.
Though reported case rates of COVID-19 are still well below the waves of the first two years of the pandemic, the region has seen an uptick recently. St. Louis County reported a seven-day average of 157 new cases, as of Tuesday, up from 68 in early November.
Ex-Commissioner for Facial Recognition Tech Joins Facewatch Firm He Approved
The recently departed watchdog in charge of monitoring facial recognition technology has joined the private firm he controversially approved, paving the way for the mass roll-out of biometric surveillance cameras in high streets across the country.
In a move critics have dubbed an “outrageous conflict of interest”, Professor Fraser Sampson, former biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner, has joined Facewatch as a non-executive director.
Facewatch uses biometric cameras to check faces against a watch list and, despite widespread concern over the technology, has received backing from the Home Office, and has already been introduced in hundreds of high-street shops and supermarkets.
There’s a Big Catch in the EU’s Landmark New AI Law
The European Union’s comprehensive AI regulations, finalized Friday after a 36-hour negotiating marathon, come with a catch: The EU is stuck in a legal void until 2025, when the rules come into force. Why it matters: As the first global power to pass comprehensive AI legislation, the EU is once again setting what could become worldwide regulatory standards — much as it did on digital privacy rules — but the transition could be bumpy.
Because the law will not be in force until 2025, the EU will urge companies to begin voluntarily following the rules in the interim. But there are no penalties if they don’t. The hiatus leaves plenty of room for the U.S. or others to undercut the EU’s plans before they go into effect by, for instance, implementing less restrictive rules before Europe’s kick in.
Details: The EU law bans several uses of AI, including bulk scraping of facial images and most emotion recognition systems in workplace and educational settings. There are safety exceptions — such as using AI to detect a driver falling asleep.
The new law also bans controversial “social scoring” systems — efforts to evaluate the compliance or trustworthiness of citizens. It restricts facial recognition technology in law enforcement to a handful of acceptable uses, including identification of victims of terrorism, human trafficking and kidnapping.
Apple Is on Track to Be the First $4 Trillion Company by the End of 2024, Wedbush Says
Apple is on track to notch a $4 trillion valuation by the end of next year — the first-ever company on the stock market to do so, according to Wedbush.
The investment research firm raised its price target for Apple to $250 a share from $240 previously, implying a 30% upside from Monday’s price of around $192 a share.
Meanwhile, the company’s market cap is currently at $2.99 trillion, after notching a historic $3 trillion valuation earlier this year.
The Bombshell Revelation About Government’s Chilling Alliance to Censor Americans + More
The Bombshell Revelation About Government’s Chilling Alliance to Censor Americans
A bombshell revelation demonstrates the chilling lengths the government will go to censor the American people. I wish I could say I’m surprised, but federal officials have been pressuring Big Tech to censor constitutionally protected speech for quite some time.
The House Judiciary Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government recently released a report revealing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Global Engagement Center (GEC) coordinated with Stanford University, along with other entities, to censor speech leading up to the 2020 election.
The government created an entity called the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) to outsource its censorship efforts in an attempt to disguise efforts to violate our First Amendment rights. Under this scheme, government officials and federally funded organizations flagged posts they deemed ‘misinformation’ to EIP analysts, who in turn would flag them for the intended social media platform.
As the report shows, EIP was formed “at the request of DHS/CISA.” Although the EIP was intended to hide the federal government’s involvement, the connections are clear. Documents show that CISA had direct access to the EIP’s inner workings, including incoming misinformation reports from the EIP’s centralized reporting system.
Elon Musk Is Asking the Supreme Court to Get Rid of His ‘Twitter Sitter,’ Arguing It Stifles His Free Speech and Is ‘Unconstitutional’
Elon Musk is asking the Supreme Court to get rid of his “Twitter sitter.”
The Tesla boss filed a petition with the court requesting it undo a 2018 settlement with the SEC that requires a company lawyer to vet any posts on X, formerly Twitter, Musk makes about Tesla before he sends them.
The petition, initially reported by CNBC, describes the arrangement, which has become known as the “Twitter sitter” clause, as imposing “unconstitutional conditions” on the tech billionaire by limiting his freedom of speech.
“It restricts Mr. Musk’s speech even when truthful and accurate,” it reads. “And it chills Mr. Musk’s speech through the never-ending threat of contempt, fines, or even imprisonment for otherwise protected speech if not pre-approved to the SEC’s or a court’s satisfaction.”
U.K. Accuses Meta of Empowering Child Sexual Abusers With Encryption Rollout
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has been accused by the U.K. government of empowering child sexual abusers after the tech firm began rolling out the automatic encryption of all messages on its Facebook and Messenger platforms.
The home secretary, James Cleverly, described the move as a “significant step back” for child safety after Meta said it would introduce end-to-end encryption on the apps. The move means that only the sender and receiver of messages on the platforms will be able to access their content.
Cleverly said: “Law enforcement, charities and our close international partners all agree: these plans to roll out end-to-end encryption without appropriate safety measures will empower child sex abusers and hamper the ability of the police and NCA [National Crime Agency] to bring offenders to justice.”
The new features will be available immediately, but Meta said it would take some time for end-to-end encryption to be rolled out to more than 1 billion users as a default option. Users will receive a prompt to set up a recovery method to restore their messages once the transition is completed. Calls will also be encrypted.
SAG-AFTRA Hit With Over 100 COVID Vaccine Mandate Suits By Members; ‘Claims Are Without Merit,’ Guild Says
Hollywood’s vaccine mandates are gone, but as new legal actions filed today against SAG-AFTRA make clear, the battle over COVID-19 protection is far from over.
Over 100 individual suits placed in the LA Superior Court docket Thursday claim the Guild threw members under corporate buses during the height of the pandemic, essentially linking arms with the studios to require vaccinations to work.
Hollywood’s vaccine mandates are gone, but as new legal actions filed today against SAG-AFTRA make clear, the battle over COVID-19 protection is far from over. Over 100 individual suits placed in the LA Superior Court docket Thursday claim the Guild threw members under corporate buses during the height of the pandemic, essentially linking arms with the studios to require vaccinations to work.
Along with SAG-AFTRA, studios like Disney and Netflix have been taken to court over the vaccine requirements, with most of those cases still winding their way through the justice system — which still has a backlog from its pandemic lockdowns and mandates.
AI Can Help Combat Health Misinformation, White House Cancer Research Head Says
The head of the White House cancer moonshot initiative said artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to help combat health misinformation.
In a conversation with The Hill’s Bob Cusack on Thursday, cancer moonshot coordinator Danielle Carnival said patients and caregivers need trusted and accurate information to drive the care they need. There’s a significant opportunity for artificial intelligence to help with that, she said.
“There are lots of risks with artificial intelligence … but one of the opportunities I think is going to make a huge impact in healthcare is the ability for people to get targeted information in a language or a culturally appropriate way that they can receive and act on,” Carnival said during The Hill’s “U.S. Healthcare’s Annual Checkup” event.
Thursday’s event was sponsored by CVS, Novo Nordisk and AstraZeneca.
New AI-Powered Doctor’s Office Allows Patients to Draw Blood, Take Vitals
Now coming to a mall, gym or office building near you: A self-contained doctor’s office, powered by artificial intelligence, where you — the patient — draw your own blood and take your own vitals.
Why it matters: The traditional annual checkup is being disrupted in various tech-heavy ways, from telehealth to concierge medicine to the CarePod, above, a DIY health clinic-in-a-box.
Driving the news: A company called Forward is installing CarePods around the country, with the hope that people will visit them regularly for preventative care and specific concerns. Of note: The first three CarePods are in Sacramento, California; Chandler, Arizona; and Chicago’s Willis Tower, with plans to roll out many more in 2024.
When asked how patients would draw their own blood inside a CarePod, Aoun whipped out a small vacuum chamber that suctioned to his upper arm and siphoned out a small sample. Skin scans and mental health screenings are also on the CarePod menu, and more tests will be added over time.
Zoom out: Amazon is getting into this space as well with Amazon Clinic, offering video visits and messaging with clinicians for common maladies.
Ireland Must Say No to Orwellian ‘Hate Speech’ Laws
The Irish government is pressing forward with a new law to criminalize “hate speech” following the recent stabbing of four Dubliners, including three schoolchildren, by an Algerian resident of the country. As Ireland processes this atrocity, it must be asked — what does criminalizing speech have to do with preventing brutal crimes of this magnitude?
In recent months, tensions have flared in Ireland — mirroring those throughout Europe — regarding the country’s immigration situation, with nationwide protests demanding government action. The stabbing incident gave rise to riots in Dublin. Coming across as both tone-deaf and opportunistic, the government’s positioning of the proposed “hate speech” law as the solution to the evidently mounting crisis has drawn international condemnation, and for good reason.
What happened in Dublin is a horrific tragedy that demands targeted government action with regard to the specific issue at hand — peace and security on the streets of Ireland. Criminalizing free speech, the cornerstone of any democracy, is in no way going to solve this issue.